Beaufort County School Board, Pomp and Ceremony | Eastern North Carolina Now

Beaufort County School Board, Pomp and Ceremony

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

All government meetings have statutes that determine how they are to be conducted. Most of these statutes came into being because of the abuse of government officials.  In North Carolina these are generally referred to as the “Open Meetings Laws”.  They are clearly stated in two or three pages.  In general government deliberations, debates, reports and the decision-making process must be open to the public view and examination.  Even with these laws a lot of government business is still conducted by elected officials behind closed doors.  The weakness in North Carolina statutes is that there are no stinging penalties prescribed.  The verdict in most lawsuits about open meetings laws is usually a slap on the wrist and a restraining order that says, “Don’t do that again”.  Doing it again could lead to some jail time.  A judge can declare the secret meeting action to be null and void and he can require the government to pay the winning sides legal bills.  Payments to plaintiffs and monetary fines are as rare as hens’ teeth.

Exceptions to the open meetings law that allow closed sessions are specifically defined by statute.  These include:  preventing confidential information as defined by federal and state laws from being made public, preventing special award disclosure, consulting with attorney on matters that are specifically shielded from public observation, deciding economic development incentives, negotiating to purchase property, considering personnel matters with respect to a specific individual, discussing allegations of criminal conduct, and certain matters relating to hospitals.  Other than these things, all business must be conducted in open session with the public having the right to be present.  

The law is very clear, both in statutes and case law: The presumption of openness is the standard and the government entity may be held accountable to show a legitimate need for keeping its action secret and then only until the need therefore has expired.  The legal presumption is: “Open unless a valid legal reason is present to shield the action from the public.”

Most Beaufort County School Board meetings are held in the old P. S. Jones cafeteria on North Pierce Street.  This room has poor acoustics.  After many requests the meetings are now filmed and posted on the School Board web site.  The school board attorney is rarely present.  The superintendent sits beside the Board Chairman and among the nine school board members.  This allows the Superintendent to whisper to the chairman during meetings, hand him papers and to anyone who did not know better he appears to be a member of the board.  

There are several things that should be changed regarding these arrangements.  Usually, the politically elected body sits separately from the hired help.  The present arrangement separates and divides the elected body and allows the Superintendent to appear to control the meeting.  The Superintendent is separated from his staff.  The staff presentations appear to be scripted.  There are usually 50 to 100 employees of the school system present during a meeting.  Why?  They sit in the front center of the room with members of the public squirreled away in a corner of the room.  A more normal seating arrangement is needed that does not appear to intimidate the members of the School Board.

The layout of governmental bodies in meetings is important.  A good example of this principle is how the public views the video of School Board meetings.  There is usually only one camera, and it is static (i.e. does not move to show who is speaking).  A better example is how Commissioner meetings are arranged.  But even then, there is a need for a camera operator allowing the public to see who is speaking.  Randy Walker did a good job of videography when he recorded meetings.  Good videography usually dictates multiple cameras and operators.  If the situation necessitates multiple cameras, that can be accomplished by an operator who can control multiple cameras and efficient editing software and hardware.  The School Board should take note of that.

The audio speakers should be improved in the room so one does not have to strain to hear.  There are comments about the poor quality of the videoed meeting on the school board web site.  This should be moved to the public access channel on the cable website. The same site the commissioners’ meetings are on.

The school board lawyer lives in Durham County and is the Chairman of the Durham County Democrat Party.  This is the same Democrat lawyer that the School Superintendent used when he tried to intimidate Republican Stacy Davis when she was a 2024 candidate for the board.  The Superintendent claims of Stacy Davis’s illegal use of a school logo had little if any merit.  Would a School Board attorney living in Beaufort County allow the Superintendent to get involved in school board elections.  Does the Big Cheese’s behavior make any sense at all?

The loss of 762 students from our schools from 2017 to 2022 and the corresponding increase of 739 students in charter, private and home schools during the same time period tells me that Beaufort County Schools are not satisfying parents about our children getting a quality education.  (This information came from the Numerix, LLC Beaufort County School 2022-23 membership report dated September 17, 2023).

It is time for the school board to take the bull by the horns and correct these glaring deficiencies.