In the shadow of the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning USA, a stain now exists upon our nation's collective conscious, a condition that must be excised, or our nation will not function properly as one of a self-governed people. Understanding these long standing truths: What would you suggest as a quick, and, or proper corrective measure?
20% Destroy the Fascist Donald Trump and all of MAGA, because America must never be Great Again.
80% Our self-governed people, and their properly restored institutions, under President Trump, must discover the root causes to properly correct, and save our Constitutional Republic.
0% I thought we had to shut down Free Speech we don't like to save our "democracy," so I am totally confused now.
Publisher's Note: We do very much appreciate this well considered article on the long awaited facilities plan for the Beaufort County Schools from our friends of the Beaufort Observer.
Hopefully, Beaufort County is on the verge of doing some long-awaited long range school facilities planning. It was a long time coming and arrives too late to save more than thirteen million dollars, but at least it would appear we're on the verge of some solid planning.
On Tuesday (12-21-10) a committee composed of school board members and county commissioners heard a proposal from Jimmy Hite, a Greenville architect and one of the state's leading school construction architects, to provide the two boards with a detailed school facilities inventory. You can review a summary of Hite's proposal by clicking here. You will also hear him explain the proposal in the second video below. You will note in the summary that the inventory will focus on identifying capacity of each facility using state standards but will also include assessment of the life expectancy of each facility, including data about systems which could be used in the design of a facilities maintenance plan.
In the first video you hear County Manager reviews how the process has developed up until this point and an introduction of what he and school superintendent Don Phipps envision going forward:
Those sitting at the table were, from left to right: School board members Barbara Boyd-Williams, Teressa Banks, Mike Isbel, Terry Williams, E. C. Peed, Robert Belcher, Superintendent Don Phipps, Commissioners Hood Richardson and Jay McRoy. Commissioner Chairman Jerry Langley is also a member of the committee but was not present.
The second video is primarily the presentation by Mr. Hite:
The third video is a discussion of the proposal by the committee members. There was general agreement on the need for a physical inventory of facilities. The questions came about how extensive the student population data needs to be.
Hite reviewed student demographic services that could be available from the Operations Research /Education Laboratory at NC State University. After some discussion you will see in the video that the consensus shifted toward initially gathering current enrollment data with the possibility of obtaining assistance from the Department of Public Instruction to provide student population projections for the future.
The fourth video concludes the discussion, with general agreement to proceed with the inventory and seeking demographic data from the Department of Public Instruction.
If you've read this far you will probably be interested in the relationship between this meeting and the portion of the School Board meeting the previous night that "adopted" a long range facilities plan that might appear to be "getting the cart before the horse." The simple answer to that is that the state requires every school board in the state to jointly submit a Long Range Facilities Plan to the state. Because the deadline for doing so precedes the plan the Hite proposal addressed the decision was to present the plan adopted by the School Board on Monday night and then revise it as the Hite proposed plan is developed.
The video below depicts the School Board's actions Monday night:
Commentary
We want to extend a rousing applause for County Manager Paul Spruill and Superintendent Don Phipps for finally getting us headed in the right direction in this county in developing a solid planning process for school facilities, the single most expensive investment the taxpayers of Beaufort County make. And we think Hood Richardson deserves most of the credit for initiating this move. Unfortunately, the previous and current school board had to be dragged to the table to get it done and in the meantime they have not only wasted over eleven million dollars in the bond construction program building schools where the students used to be rather than where they will be over the next ten-twenty years. We blame Jeff Moss for that debacle. They have spent two million in the last two years on facilities that should have awaited this study. And we blame Robert Belcher for that.
But at least we are finally going to get some solid numbers about how much capacity we have, where it is located and what kind of condition it is in. Then if we get some solid student demographic data we at least have the basis for developing a sound facilities plan. The same data will, if used correctly, allow us to develop a maintenance plan for getting the most use out of the facilities we do have.
The shameful waste of money the Beaufort County School Board has imposed on the taxpayers of Beaufort County, and the shortchanging that imposed on our children, is nothing short of inexcusable. But at least it appears we have turned the corner and better days are ahead. We hope so. But rest assured that we will monitor this process and let you know how it develops.
