Comments for School Board goes NON-transparent on Snowden closure | Eastern North Carolina Now

How does this Cheesehead still have a job?

Commented: Friday, May 30th, 2025 @ 11:34 am By: Richard Marvin Butkus

I wonder how involved that out of town lawyer from Raleigh or Durham or wherever he is from has been involved in Cheeseman's butchering of the law on these consolidations. I wonder how involved he was in that fiasco over the four acres at the Washington mega school site that became such a problem. I am guessing Cheeseman just did not bother to involve him in his charades. School board members need to remember that they work for the citizens / voters, not for Cheeseman.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 3:14 pm By: Rino Hunter

And, Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson is the problem here; the really bad guy in these foreseeable calamities in the making.

This reminds of Central Committee governing by directive of blame, rather than consideration of what is real within our community of Beaufort County.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 12:14 pm By: Stan Deatherage

After seeing the video of the BoE meeting on May 27th, I was very impressed by the presentations and passion from the speakers from Aurora. It would be heartless to pull the rug out from under those people now.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 11:07 am By: Van Zant

I am still waiting for the DPI review of the projected enrollment to evaluate the reasonableness of this projects and size as required prior to issuing the grant for the new K-3 elementary school in Washington, NC as required by NC General Statute.

NCGS 115C-546.11(d)
(d) The Department of Public Instruction shall review projected enrollment to evaluate the reasonableness of a project's size and scope.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 10:14 am By: Ray Leary

SD: Yeah, that's true. If that format does turn out to be the case, I would hope the public would ask specific board members some hard questions.

Commented: Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 @ 8:19 pm By: Van Zant

Stan, I was there in Aurora, too, and have the same concerns about proper and correct conduct of public hearings. Back in the Jim Martin administration, when I served as General Counsel of the NC Department of Health and Human Services, I monitored public hearings of our department's rulemaking public hearings, often conducted by independent boards. I have never seen a travesty like I saw at Aurora. Advocacy sessions, especially prolonged ones like at Aurora, preceding a public hearing make a mockery of the process and I never saw anything like that happen in state government. An even bigger mockery was trying to limit the public to questions instead of comments. Also, every public hearing I went to had the decision makers all sitting up front facing the public instead of hiding in the crowd. Some of the school board members I know I do not believe would have done that unless instructed to do so.

I was also surprised not to see legal representation present. In state government, if I could not attend any of the public hearings conducted by the department itself or one of the independent boards housed in our department, I always delegated another lawyer from the department's Office of Legal Affairs to attend. Of course, when your only lawyer lives halfway across the state from Beaufort County like the school board's lawyer,, it creates logistic problems in having proper legal representation present here in Beaufort County for such matters.

Commented: Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 @ 6:21 pm By: Steven P. Rader

RINO Hunter: If it was the one public hearing required by law, it was a very strange one, most unlike any county commissioner open hearing I have participated in during my nearly 25 years on the board.

Commented: Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 @ 4:29 pm By: Stan Deatherage