hired the consulting firm of Cresap, McCormick & Paget to conduct an audit of the system's management organization and operations. In 1968, based on their consultant's recommendations, the school board put a significantly modified version of the decentralization plan into effect, dividing FCPS into four areas which were, in effect, miniature school systems. In January of the following year, Funderburk resigned, telling the school board he did not want a third term as superintendent. The school board selected Lawrence M. Watts from the Greece School District in Greece, New York to take the reins of the Fairfax County Public Schools system, which had grown during Funderburk's tenure from 65,000 to 122,000 students, in May 1969. In May 1970, Watts appointed Taylor M. Williams as the first black high school principal since FCPS had desegregated, placing him in charge of James Madison High School in Vienna. Watts' appointment of Williams would be one of his final official acts. After less than a year as superintendent, Watts died, aged 44, of a heart attack at his home in Oakton in June 1970. Assistant Superintendent S. Barry Morris was named interim superintendent while the school board sought a replacement to lead the 130,000 student school system. The board did not have to look far for its new superintendent. In September 1970, Area Superintendent S. John Davis was chosen following a nationwide search to serve the remaining 33 months of Watts' four-year term. During the mid-1970s, Davis had difficulties dealing with the start of a demographic crash and a population shift. The student population dropped from a high of 145,385 in the 1974–75 school year to an eventual low of 122,646 in 1982–83. Additionally, families migrated from established eastern and central parts of the county to newer developments in the west and south, leading to the unenviable task of Davis having to request the closings of some schools while needing to build entirely new ones elsewhere. In a 6–5 vote, the school board voted in May 1976 to re-institute textbook rental fees, hoping to raise an additional $1.3 million to close a projected budget shortfall. The plan was scrapped two months later, in July, when the board was able to find a $1.4 million surplus. In 1978, Fairfax County began countywide enforcement of its 15-year-old standardized six-point letter grading scale, with a ten-point spread at the bottom of the grading range. The grading scale,