Comments | Eastern NC Now

Mr. Ceres, I can support some of your findings but disagree slightly with your conclusion regarding what I consider Cheeseman’s resume bullet, the consolidated school being built in Washington, and the folly of closing the S. W. Snowden school in Aurora. Like you, I also attended a large high school with a student population of more than 2,000 students that was ranked among the top 100 high schools in the nation. This was a public school in central Florida. The student to teacher ratio was about 25 students per classroom although the advanced/gifted classes tended to be slightly smaller. I believe this smaller student to teacher ratio directly correlated to the success of the graduates. I attended a college that had a smaller student population than my high school and even smaller student to professor ratios on average. I believe this directly contributes to the quality of education received by the students.

When it comes to community schools and the importance of keeping them close to where students reside, I believe that is necessary just as the ability to retain those smaller student/teacher ratios is vital. My high school was fed from three elementary schools which fed into two middle schools. These schools were located within the communities they served, the students could walk or ride their bikes to school. Start times were offset to facilitate the best interest of the students and their pre- and after- school activities. I believe we can both agree that this model of education better serves communities, parents and most importantly students better than consolidated schools, regardless of student/teach ratios, that are located outside of the communities they serve. I would also posit that unfortunately, the education you and I received 30 or so years ago was superior to what is currently being taught and the standards children are being held to in today’s public education system. We can look at the vast increase (88% in administrative bureaucracy vs. 8-10% in student/teacher population growth) over the past 25 years as cause for the symptoms we are seeing in today’s public schools. The article points to the fact we have less parental involvement or awareness of what is being taught to our children. It is more difficult for parents to be involved, especially in our county where most folks have to work long hours and aren’t able to be as involved as they would like to be because schools have been removed from the communities they serve.

As far as large, consolidated schools and high student/teacher ratios, I lived in Charleston, S.C. prior to moving back home to Beaufort County. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue that led to my decision to move back home was the terrible state of education in Charleston. Schools were located within 10 miles of where anybody lived. However, while there were several (2-3) elementary and middle schools, there was only one high school. This was a result of a lack of competence, future planning ability, or just negligence on the part of the local school board, town and county governments. The average student to teacher ratio in the elementary schools was 30 students per teacher. My children had to get on a bus at 5:45 in the morning and didn’t get home until after 4:00 in the afternoon because of the number of stops and amount of traffic in the area. This was insane! I also had to explain to my kindergarten children what it meant to have “two daddies or mommies” because this was being taught in school. I have lived this before and left to get my family away from this indoctrination and consolidation. Now I see it repeating itself here in Beaufort County. The line must be drawn, and common sense must prevail.

Concerning fiduciary responsibility, Cheeseman spent close to an hour of what should have been a public hearing justifying the need to close Snowden based solely on money. I don’t believe this to be true. In fact, I don’t believe Cheeseman really cares at all about the success of Beaufort County Schools or our students. Remember that we had zero (0) underperforming schools in our county prior to him becoming superintendent. On his watch, we saw that number climb to eight ( underperforming schools that fortunately through the hard work and dedication of our teachers (not county administrators) has dropped to six (6) which is still an abysmal track record on Cheeseman’s part. Remember also that Cheeseman is required by state statute to receive a performance review due to the number of underperforming schools in our county and that the weak school board has failed to provide this to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). This is a violation of state statute, illegal to call it what it really is and this has been proven through public records requests as mentioned in other articles in the Observer. However, I digress. The school board under Cheeseman’s guidance or by his decision alone, have sent numerous contracts out of the county for higher dollar expenditures. These include grounds maintenance, BCS website development/maintenance, the school board attorney (a Durham based attorney who is head of the Democratic Party and also represents DPI, if that isn’t a conflict of interest) and others. Why are we sending contracts out of county for more money? Is it corruption, kick-backs or some other reason. I mentioned this at the public hearing last week and asked for Cheeseman to please provide those answers as well as a few others at the next public hearing. I won’t hold my breath on that. I also questioned why we don’t have a grant writer on staff at BCS? We used to have one. Wouldn’t that position be worth the investment as they could actively seek out funding that Cheeseman says we need but can’t get and better serve our county schools? If the school board or Cheeseman were anything but incompetent, wouldn’t they have realized the need to build a consolidated school, somewhere between Aurora and Chocowinity prior to now and used the lottery funds for that endeavor? Many folks may not know but I stated to anyone who would listen that Snowden would be closed the minute the funding became available to build the mega-school in Washington. Unfortunately, I am afraid that scenario may come to fruition. School consolidation, as well as the effort to bring leftist curricula into our schools seems to be Cheeseman’s preferred modus operandi. Look at where he bragged about having built his resume last week: New Jersey, Philadelphia, California and other left leaning, blue states before coming here. Beaufort County cannot afford the likes of him, culturally or financially if our future and the futures of our children are truly important, and I would argue they are most important. Not the resume bullets Cheeseman hopes to get before moving on to another higher paying job at a larger school district somewhere else. This weak school board needs to grow a spine, listen to their constituents and start doing what is right for our citizens and county. It’s not hard. If they don’t want to do the work, the door is always open for them to resign or quit and let others who actually care about our students and communities take on the yoke of leadership themselves. If not, we better vote them out come reelection time because we cannot afford their corruption, waste, fraud, abuse and incompetence anymore!

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 11:35 pm By: David Hudson

If we have any problem in public education, and I am not saying that we do, the way to fix it is more new school buildings because students learn better in brand new school buildings.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 8:54 pm By: Big Bob 2.0

Conservatives have pushed for neighborhood schools and community schools for decades while the liberal education establishment has pushed their mantra of consolidation into bigger and bigger schools. At the high school level, where it means more electives can be offered, that might carry some weight but not at the elementary school level Children adapt better in smaller environments in the early years. This is also a period whenf parental involvement is also much more important. When parents live closer to a smaller community school this enhances their ability to be more involved with their children's education. Of course with some of the crap crammed into today's curriculum, the liberal education establishment may not want parents around to become aware of what they are putting in kids heads.

Big cities are more densely populated, so a neighbor school area would likely encompass more students, but Beaufort County is rural and that is not the case here. The insane attendance area that Cheeseman is pushing south of the river would have very young children having to ride a bus two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, and create difficulties for parents going to the school for teacher conferences, PTO meetings, and the like.

Lets look at "Cheeseman's Folly" the Washington mega elementary school. There are statutory processes that Cheeseman was supposed to go through, under the law on that project but he failed to do that. Why? To blindside taxpayers and parents so he could do what he thought would look best on his resume for his next job.

Instead of one big mega K-5 school, it would be better to have two more reasonably sized elementaries that would be closer to parents and students. One understands some of the design drawbacks of the present Eastern Elementary, but John Cotton Tayloe could be used as one of two smaller K-5 elemtary schools. That would save constrution costs because the new K-5 would be smaller. Good planning would locate that new smaller elementary west of Wasington, where population projections say most of the county's growth will be. The attendance areas for each would be smaller, facilitating more parent involvement and less exhaustion of schoolchildren by long bus rides.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 6:27 pm By: Conservative Voter

Ceres: trust me, dude; I, too, understand your frustration in regard to the resistance of the old guard "doomer" generation to the younger Trunp-era brand of Conservatism.

We research, debate and challenge matters that either the old heads will not touch or know anything about BUT, at the end of the day, there is a portion of hard truth in some of their rambling, if you will.

It's about bottom line and the bottom line is, regardless of the 10.5 million we're allegedly only "paying " our tax dollars are being pissed away for the political gain of Cheeseman....one man. That's insane!

All of the 50. whatever million is made up of our tax money, in actuality. It's just being laundered through the "Education Lottery" which, judging by how Washington High School looked last Thursday at "Steppin' Out", doesn't seem to have anything to do with education..looking from 73 miles up.

"Educational Lottery" systems seem to be benefitting individuals more than communities. We need an audit.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 4:15 pm By: John Valley

Gary: The essential key to making that whole "property tax limitation" work is locating and cutting "waste, fraud and abuse" here in Beaufort County. The public schools are making terrible decisions, which are costing way too much money to educate children in an environment where they are losing students, ergo, "waste, fraud and abuse."

This is a time when management is most important, because when one governs as a body politic of the State of North Carolina, as is the county commissioners, it eventually comes down to the math and the management, accordingly, this necessary tandem is failing on the school board, and with the Center Left Coalition - those who swap votes to share power - it often unrealized on the Board of Beaufort County Commissioners.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 3:08 pm By: Stan Deatherage

Every single day of the Trump Presidency so far is outpacing my expectations! Couldn't be happier with the job he's doing!

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 3:01 pm By: Gary Ceres

Gary: If the The Hood does not mention you in an article, you would be wise to back out of any argument with the venerable commissioner.

The school board, in toto, is having a most difficult time making sense of things, and from a governing sense, they best start finding some footing real fast.

From a political sense, the sentiment in the county at large is not good.

Gary, you don't need to die on that same political hill along with the those school board members that keep making these huge governing mistakes, which makes a good many of them resemble complete amateurs.

One more thing Gary: The matching portion on the school that we do not need, built on the lowest point of the land, is 10,500,000.00 ... so far.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 2:46 pm By: Stan Deatherage

John Valley: Now I agree with your analysis on why ... but the fact is its happened. Right now we can stave off tax increases if we act and part of that is planning for the future. The cost to Beaufort County is not 53 million dollars ... our matching portion is 10 million. We currently have a 40 million or so surplus in the county Treasury. So no direct cost in extra taxation. Now if we hold off ... you are looking at 60-75 million dollars down the line. That's not fiscally conservative to me.

You can limit taxation while doing this. I reject that tax limitation is an expense. Limiting property tax growth would enable business investment and economic growth that exlands the tax base and increases county revenues which would more than make uo the 10 million dollars to replace the surplus in coming years. I am 100% with you on cutting spending elsewhere. The misconception here is this isn't a proposition to take 53 million dollars for economic reviatalization or build the school. The grant is solely for the school and is 42 million dollars. Our portion is just 10 million. This is a no-brainer to me as a fiscal conservative that is looking long-term to limit spending and hold taxes down. But I respect the opposite viewpoint. What I reject is being demonized and foolishly being labeled liberal for thinking independently.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 2:34 pm By: Gary Ceres

We could start with an audit of the Housing Authority.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 1:46 pm By: Gary Ceres

I pay rent sir which is directly affected by property taxes. We need to pass property tax limitation legislation which limits how high a single parcel can be increased in property tax between assessments. Those on fixed incomes cannot afford massive property tax increases which are inevitable if down the line the county will be paying 10s of millions more for needed school construction in coming years because right now 42 million is coming from the Education lottery grants and considering this is the first ever allocation for Beaufort County it is not in our favor to get another grant anytime soon. We also need to make sure multiple parcel owners and business owners have some stability in the projections for property taxes and without property tax limitation you cannot serve the interests of renters, fixed income individuals, multiple land owners and business developers. It's great to advocate conservatism ... its another thing to actually accomplish conservatism. You don't do that by demonizing allies.

I graduated from Frank J Dugan Elementary School in Marlboro, New Jersey.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 1:21 pm By: Gary Ceres

I never attended an Elementary school under 800 students. We outperformed metrics across the board. We can have a reseaonable debate on these things. There are certainly pluses and minutes to small and large schools. But you are precluding debate by labeling all opposition to one way of thinking as liberal.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 12:04 pm By: Gary Ceres

899 students is crammed? Lol. My God ... please do some research. I graduated from a school that was 1,875 students and ranked in the top 200 schools in the country. Our graduation rate was 99%. Please look at statistics before making irrational statements.

Commented: Monday, April 21st, 2025 @ 11:09 am By: Rational Observer