More on the Eastern Elementary School Disaster | Eastern North Carolina Now

More on the Eastern Elementary School Disaster

BY: HOOD RICHARDSON

What gives the Big Cheese and his sock puppet, Chairman T. W. Allen the confidence to stall the City of Washington, to lie to the school board and violate several other laws and regulations.  They have been so skillful that the school board has not been offended about being lied to.

This 52-million-dollar school building project has been dictated by one man, the Big Cheese.  He has the cooperation of the School Board Chairman who is T. W. Allen, Fake Frankie Waters, the County Manager, Jerry Langley, Ed Booth and Randy Walker.  The Big Cheese has not followed the law, he has decided by himself how the 52 million dollars will be spent.  Fake Frankie Waters violated the open meetings law by going out of the County, setting up a “so-called” school progress committee to which he appointed Jerry Langley and himself.  This cut off all other commissioners.  The Gang of Four (Fake Frankie Waters, Jerry Langley, Ed Booth and Randy Walker) refused to require the Big Cheese to do a report examining alternatives or to allow public participation in any part of the planning process.  Some of those alternatives would have been to improve the Chocowinity schools, examine neighborhood schools for these primary school students, eliminate cross town bussing…. and heaven only knows what other good ideas might have been proposed.

One may ask, why does the big Cheese need to control two pieces of land (Kugler Field and the P. S. Jones Park) the School System has no use for.  Probably because he and his cronies got caught red handed, lying, and they wanted to punish everyone involved.  This is immature behavior.

All the money comes to the Board of County Commissioners.  Commissioners, at a minimum, are supposed to do oversight.  That is why we have the money.  Statements made by County employees that once appropriated, the money can be spent as other elected officials and employees please are not true.  They are laying out a cushy job for themselves.  Using County employees’ and Fake Frankie Waters’ advice, Commissioners’ only function is to collect taxes and there is no oversight of how your money is spent. Lack of supervision is how Joy McRoy got charged with fraud in Chocowinity.  We still do not know how much County money is in the McRoy fraud because of the Gang of Four and the County Manager.

The group of seven people named above are supported by two of the wives of Commissioners who are members of the School Board.  Is this another ethics violation?

If you see a school board member (other than T. W. Allen) or county commissioner (other than Fake Frankie Waters), ask them how more than fifty million dollars could be spent without them seeing what it’s being spent for…. or how the public can know the students could be provided with what they need for less than 50 million dollars.  Ask them why the public was not allowed to know how much the cost of busing children from one side of town to another is costing the taxpayers.  I have been told that the busing patterns in the Washington Attendance Area may indeed be the most expensive student assignment plan in the State.  

How much time and money would be saved by converting Washington to K-5 or even K-8 neighborhood schools?  Why is this money being spent to increase seating capacity on the eastern side of Washington when the growth is on the western side?  Who decided this money should all be used to build one school without knowing how much it would cost to upgrade the existing Eastern Elementary School?  Who decided the needs in Washington were so much greater than Chocowinity which has the most overcrowded schools in the County?  We have not seen a study of the facility needs at Chocowinity Primary and Middle Schools.

Here is my question: How could this happen?  How could fifty-two million dollars be spent without the entirety of both boards voting on it, without any public participation?  And how could both boards vote on spending that much money without a long-range facility study of the school needs in the County?  How could those needs be met without various options being considered?  And finally, how much will the cross-town busing cost over the life of the new school?

This boondoggle should be stopped right now and not a dime more money spent until we have a sound long range facility plan to meet the schools’ needs.  All of the schools…not just one school!  And the school Board should bring in somebody to do a facilities study before any more foolishness happens.