Comments | Eastern NC Now

This is just a circling of the wagons by the education elite, sensing their comrade Cheeseman is in trouble and wanting to give him some protection. What they are really giving him an award for is pushing the leftwing mantra of school consolidation. Calling Cheeseman, who is a total control freak, someone who "ensures voices are heard" is just laughable. His machinations on the Snowden closure move and total failure to follow state law on public hearings on the Washington consolidation make this statement of this group of Cheeseman's buddies a total lie.

Commented: Friday, May 30th, 2025 @ 8:17 am By: Conservative Voter

I attended the so-called 'hearing' at Southside High School last night. Congratulations Beaufort County School Board. They've joined the ranks of those, exposed on YouTube, fascist school boards that go on extended bickering personal rants, while turning off the microphones of people they do not want to hear. I can't remember if it was the board chairman or the board vice-chairman that tried to justify having the hearing outside Auroara by saying they already did one in Aurora. He forgot to mention that in the meeting in Aurora, the cowardly board was not facing the community. The Superintendent was handling that for them in Aurora. It really is shameful.

Commented: Friday, May 30th, 2025 @ 6:27 am By: Van Zant

When Tillis was Speaker of the NC House, he listed on his economic interest statement that he was "owner" of a small bank in Mecklenburg County that specialized in lending money to the wind and solar electric projects. In actuality the term "owner" was a stretch, but he was a large shareholder of it. Tillis is probably corruptly feathering his own nest with trying to protect the "green" boondoggle.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 8:37 pm By: Rino Hunter

CV: A lot of people I speak with are concerned about the hearing process. The two Washington schools to be closed have had no hearings. I've heard they may have them after the fact. That's wrong too. With Snowden the hearing process is sort of being done but in a very strange manner - shoddily done at the last minute. It's leaving a very bad taste and rightly so.

SD: You're right. Predictably, the local ruling coalition is getting set to lay all the blame for these fiascos in the making to be the fault of their chosen boogieman. People need to be paying close attention.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 3:06 pm By: Van Zant

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

Steve Rader: Thank you for being there at Snowden.

Your wisdom did fill up the room, and most people listened, just not the School Board Zombies ... All except Charles Hickman ... That guy is a great representative of his constituents.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 7:20 am By: Stan Deatherage

Speaking of kayfabe, I could swear I was hearing a Gordon Solie commentary during that commission meeting. Also, I do think the Snowden deal is done. Why else would the county manager incorporate that, so far officially undone, event in his proposed budget. Mind you, the backroom deal was done long ago between the School Super and County Commission Chairman. The only thing remaining to find out is if the School Board has any spine. So far it has consistently been 7 to 2 in favor of jello.

Commented: Thursday, May 29th, 2025 @ 6:54 am By: Van Zant

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

SD: What happened was Hippie Cheeseman tried to get over on Unca Hood....and he did BUT, as some of you are scratching your heads on my comments, he didn't get over on the Old Man.

I don't think Unca Hood recognized the kayfabe shenaniganry being executed but a kayfabe maneuver was identified between several Commissioners and Frisco Bay.They also confirmed, but didn't confirm that they are closing Snowden.

The audience didn't pick this up collectively.

I wonder if Cheeseman has read Machiavelli?

Commented: Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 @ 6:56 pm By: John Valley

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