To our School Board: You need our parents and community | Eastern North Carolina Now

This was the three-minute public comment that I made to the school board Tuesday evening, March 21, 2023. 

You need parent involvement.

As we look at our own school board meetings and the ones across our Nation, there seems to be a reluctance to include parents in Beaufort County.  You need parent involvement to help your failed school system.

This was further evidenced in the session we had on confronting the Savvas curriculum.

We had parents and the public standing, and some sat on the floor, but no one tried to accommodate even the elderly, with comfortable accommodations.

School board meetings are held at 5:30 in the afternoon.  Another deterrent for working parents to be able to attend.  For any of us to speak from the public, we are allowed 3 minutes to make a statement.  4 of us can speak on a topic so the public gets to have their say for 12 minutes one time per month.

You and our County are faced with a failed system that now has eight of your public schools rated a D.  What was 35% at reading and math levels now shows in some reports to have dropped to 29%.  Your Superintendent has reported that some students are now four years behind in their school work.  You have discipline problems to the point that one substitute teacher that I know refuses to teach in one of your schools because student behavior is so bad.

I looked at the Beaufort County Schools website and tried to find something on PTA’s or PTO’s .  I found an application form but could not find any organizations.  So, I clicked on the button marked “Community” at the top of your page and a blank page came up. 

I would offer that you should have been using parents and the community to help you with the poor student performance we are witnessing and instead you are refusing to move ahead with a simple thing like videoing these meetings for the public.  It is not a matter of money.  It is a matter of management. 

The poor performance of our students is not the fault of dedicated and hardworking teachers, it is management.  I repeat, it is not the teachers fault.  It is management.

Instead of alienating parents and the public, I suggest that you embrace them and utilize the synergistic effect of this community.  Another problem with management.

After all of this criticism, I would like to suggest that you stop stonewalling those things that alienate our parents and the community and work to bring us back together.

It is the opinion of this Beaufort County Citizen and the Beaufort County Education Committee that you need these parents and help from the community to overcome the failed system that we now have.

If this School Board can move ahead and do this, we are with you.  If this Superintendent can show us success, we will pitch in and help.  If not, this is the real world.  We need to make changes where needed. (end of presentation.)

As I was about to say the last line, the school superintendent, Mathew Cheeseman shouted out, “Your three minutes are up”.  I note that he read the rules for public comment period, instead of the School Board Chairman.  Then he became the timekeeper.  The seating arrangements for the Board have him scrunched up close to the Chairman while the Board members are scattered about the U configuration of the board.  He is not a board member, but they do not seem to understand that.

The battle continued on videoing the meetings and it was stone walled by putting it into next years budget.  With a budget of over 90 million dollars in school funds they cannot find $4500 to move ahead with letting the public know what is going on with your children!  We also offered to have volunteers run the camera and produce the videos but the Superintendent was not comfortable with that.

This whole mess of the failed school system is back to management at all levels and not teachers.  Unless things change, we need new management at all levels.


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Comments

Big Bob said:
( March 27th, 2023 @ 10:18 am )
 
This is fun! Now explain away Jim Crow.
( March 27th, 2023 @ 8:51 am )
 
You seem particularly ignorant of history, Bobbie, Prior to the War Between the States, free blacks in the South, which were about 20% of the black population, had more civil liberties than the free blacks in the north. The northern states mostly had very draconian Black Codes that were far more severe than the later Jim Crow laws. It is the north's Black Codes that are the real precussor or Jim Crow.

A very interesting example is Illinois, Lincoln's home state. As part of the Northwest Territory, it was governed by Thomas Jefferson's Northwest Ordinance that prohibited slavery, but when it became a state its Constitutiion and laws neither allowed nor prohibited slavery, and by 1850 there were quite a number of slaves being held in southern Illinois by farmers. The state government decided to do something about it, but instead of banning slavery, they passed a law banning all black people from living in Illinois. The state senator who sponsored that law became a Union general in the War Between the States and there is a statue of him in Washington, DC (hmm, BLM must not have figured that one out yet).

If one compares racial restrictions in the military, the Confederate Army was much more enlightened than the Union army. Minority soldiers were placed in segregated regiments in the Union army, while Confederate regiments were integrated. The Union army paid minority soldiers half the pay of white soldiers, while the Confederate army gave them full pay. The Union army did not allow minority soliders to serve as commissioned officers while the Confederate army did. The highest ranking minority to serve in the war was Confederate General Stand Watie, who was the commander of the last sizable Confederate force to surrender at the end of the war.
Big Bob said:
( March 26th, 2023 @ 9:03 pm )
 
Studied, yes. Celebrated no. The confedercy lost the civil leaving Jim Crow as a legacy. We were all to young to be involved with slavery but each of us has profited from Jim Crow. We supported it. We looked they other way. I hold no malice towards anyone for I am not perfect. But I will not celebrate the idea that the content of a persons character is determined by their skin color.
( March 26th, 2023 @ 8:14 pm )
 
The great British political thinker Lord Acton, best known for his famous quote that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", wrote in a post war letter to General Lee that expresses why he believed the Confederate States SHOULD be celebrated:

"Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic [the USA] have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo." -Lord Acton
Molly said:
( March 26th, 2023 @ 8:05 pm )
 
There are definitely active PTO at most of the schools. Many of them have their own Facebook page and update regularly. In fact, just a bit behind you, a current PTO treasurer spoke that night. Also, TW Allen is the timekeeper. He’s the one watching the stop watch and if I remember correctly he tried to get your attention when your time was up before Cheeseman spoke up. I don’t disagree with your assessment that Cheeseman shouldn’t be front and center. He should be seated with the other county employees to the left (as you’re looking at the board) during meetings. He is hired by the board and is there at the courtesy of the board. Myself and a few other parents wondered during this meeting if perhaps we should appeal to a local business or two to possibly sponsor the video cost? As to who should run the video, I don’t see why BCS Public Information Officer Kristin Riddle or BCS Director of Community and Family Engagement Ashley Padgett aren’t a clear and obvious choice.
Big Bob said:
( March 26th, 2023 @ 1:22 pm )
 
Love the founding fathers. Agree that the confederacy should not be celebrated. Able to study history as it really was and no, the statue of David is not porn. I’m going to stick with “crackpots” should not be setting policy for 200 CV.
( March 26th, 2023 @ 7:32 am )
 
The real destortions of history are in the left's War on History, including their elimination of historic monuments, their twisted CRT history, their mangled 1619 project, their hate against our founding fathers, etc. Yeah, one school district in Florida decided Michelangelo's David, which features a graphic set of male genitals is pornographic. It may be art, but it also may be inappropriate at some ages. The crackpots are generally in the education establishment.
Big Bob said:
( March 25th, 2023 @ 10:23 pm )
 
Do you really want to live here n a world where the history book makes no mention that Rosa Parks is Black and Michelangelo’s David is pornographic? That’s Florida. NC can do so much better. Some parents are crackpots. Crackpots don’t get to set policy.
( March 24th, 2023 @ 2:36 pm )
 
Our Republicans in the US Congress are to be congratulated on sticking to principle and passing the national Parents Bill of Rights forcing the public school establishment to respect the rights of parents. Now we will see if we have any RINO defectors in the Senate. Hopefully not, but with the likes of McConnell in charge, it may not be as united as the GOP in the US House of Representatives.

In the General Assembly, it is shameful that liberal RINO Speaker Tim Moore prevented the state Parents Bill of Rights from being voted on last session, and there is real concern that he may do it again.
( March 24th, 2023 @ 12:02 pm )
 
Thanks for the satirical support Wyatt.

I have always enjoyed your Georgia Peach Approach to speaking your truth.

My truth up here is a bit more complicated, where even elected Republicans have a very difficult time knowing how to pay attention to what us real. I reckon the learning curve is a bit too steep for some.

Having said that, and since that nasty business of the allocating of business shell game, there were three new school board members that now have a chance to prove whether they can keep their eye on the ball, because this whole governing of the public's interest surely is NO game to be flippantly played.

My individual and dependent advice to all three new members is to start taking all points of positions within their new found responsibilities very seriously.

So far, all three are doing just that.
( March 24th, 2023 @ 11:17 am )
 
Stan: I just read your dissertation about losing the local school districts website business, and how your county's taxpayers on the hook for a bunch more money to let that local business "far, far away" and I think I got your problem figured out, even though it is too late to do anything about it now.

Now Stan, you know that I have known you a very long time, and I do respect your integrity as someone that knows you, and someone that has read most of what you write here, but my good friend, you have to understand that losing that business is your own fault, and it you want someone to blame go haul your ass to mirror and take a good long look at your conservative Republican self.

Stan, you are a smart guy, and you should know by now that these county schools are mostly run by Democratic, which sounds like it is the case in your Beaufort County, and no good Democratic is going to do business with you when they can place that business with some Democratic business, even if it is "far, far away," and for significantly more money. So, here is the solution even if it is a bit too late for the learning.

Why don't you drop all that integrity stuff that you just can't seem to quit, and join up with the Democratics? There you go, problem solved. You can then promise the moon, deliver so much less, and walk away far richer than you probably are now.

Or, be like that "Fake Frankie" fellow that I read about when that Hood fellow writes those articles that I also enjoy reading; then you get to stay a Republican, but vote like a Democratic; keep the local business, and who knows maybe these Democratic school fellows might even pay you the additional $"16,900.00" too much. Heck, its only the people's money, and when have Democratics ever cared about that inconvenient reality?

Of course, here in Wilkes County, Georgia, there is big change a happening, where Republicans are getting most of the vote now, and they are voting only for those real kind of Republicans like yourself, so that might not last too long if Beaufort County starts changing over to that real side of living as free folk.

I got another idea Stan, maybe you should move here. It is mighty pleasant in these north Georgia hills. Heck, I might even enjoy your company ... that is if you promise not to ever take my advice about that recent nonsense about you turning Democratic.

We could use another real Republican down here. You could be one of our county commissioners, plus most folks like doing business with you real types down here.

If you want to build your "platforms" down here too, you should not have any trouble doing business. On that, my friend, your little company is in a league of its own.
( March 23rd, 2023 @ 12:15 pm )
 
Parents have an essential role in education, and the public school establishment needs to remember that. A recent poll by the Civitas Institute found that 71% of North Carolina parents are concerned about political indoctrination of their children in the public schools. Radical curricula, like those recently promoted by the NC Board of Education, are the focus of that concern. Schools should involve parents in adoption of curricula so that they are not radical. It is county school boards in North Carolina that have power over what is taught in their schools and they need to exercise it.
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