The tail wags the dog at Snowden hearing in Aurora

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The tail wags the dog at Snowden hearing in Aurora

Published: Thursday, April 17th, 2025 @ 7:15 am
By: John Steed ( More Entries )

The Beaufort County School Board was hardly a profile in courage at the meeting in Aurora on the future of Snowden elementary school. While only one failed to show up, all https://nrrc.tu.edu.iq/ of them hid in the crowd. Only Charles Hickman had the courage to stand up and raise any issues over the closing. Ironically, his primary challenger showed up but did not have the backbone to say anything, the second meeting over Snowden in which that had happened.

The architect of the scheme to close Snowden, liberal school superintendent Mathew Cheeseman, spent an hour banging on about why he wanted to close Snowden while the elected school board members hid. It was very clear that the tail is wagging the dog on our school board.

Cheeseman tried to cut off early speakers from making comments, demanding they only ask questions, but finally speakers were able to get comments in, and it was clear that the very large crowd very strongly wants their school saved.

The school board will meet again for another hearing and then vote on Cheeseman's scheme to close Snowden and bus children 30 miles to Chocowinity.

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Stan Deatherage said:

( April 18th, 2025 @ 9:45 pm )

Steve: Yeah; that is what I saw too.

Conservative Voter said:

( April 18th, 2025 @ 3:49 pm )

How symbolic! Cheeseman has chosen the biggest holiday in the communist world, Worker Liberation Day or May Day, for the next dog and pony show (you can't really call it a public hearing the way it is manipulated). It is at Snowden again, starting at 6pM.

Washingtonian said:

( April 18th, 2025 @ 3:46 pm )

No, no, no. The School Board does believe that the Superintendent and staff work for them. They believe that Cheeseman and his staff do all the working and thinking... so that they dont have to do any work or thinking.

Basically, I was told this years ago when a school board member said: "Look Washingtonian, we board members have jobs, and family, and a life, and that's why we have a staff to do this for us."

Sooo yeah, they think the employees do work for them. LOL
Easy life being on the School Board.

Steven P. Rader said:

( April 18th, 2025 @ 2:05 pm )

Stan, I am reminded of a comment on school boards by a former Florida State Senator. According to the late State Senator Dick Deeb (R-Pinellas), he observed that "too many school board members think the superintendent is their boss, when he is really their employee".

I was in law school at the time and attending a meeting of the Pinellas County chapter of the Florida Conservative Union. Senator Deeb was explaining his local bill in the Florida senate to make the office of superintendent of the Pinellas County Schools an elected office by the voters of Pinellas County. He and others were frustrated at the fact that even with electing mostly Republicans to the local school board, they were unable to muster a majority of them with enough backbone to stand up to a liberal power bully school superintendent.

Senate Deeb's bill passed the state senate with flying colors, but when it got to the House, legislators there who had similar superintendent problems back home in their own counties started amending the bill to include quite a few other counties. Unfortunately that got the bill bogged down where it failed in the House.

Power bully superintendents are hardly unique to Beaufort County.

Stan Deatherage said:

( April 18th, 2025 @ 9:15 am )

Steve: I was under the impression The Snowden Meeting would be a public hearing.

In my nearly 7 full terms as a Beaufort County Commissioner, I have never witnessed a public meeting conducted in such a manner.

Also, of all the seven county commissioners, only those individual commissioners who are known as the Conservatives spoke to the public; not one of the four members of the Center Left Coalition, those who swap votes to share power here in Beaufort County, expressed their opinions, their promises of support one way or the other.

This is all very telling.

Bubba said:

( April 18th, 2025 @ 9:03 am )

Our school problem is that we have a school board controlled by Cheeseman groupies. That needs to change.

Concerned Taxpayer said:

( April 17th, 2025 @ 1:24 pm )

Cheeseman seems to want to make his plan to close Snowden all about money, so that begs the question of how the half million dollars Cheeseman blew in his bungling on the 4 acre screwup on his new monster consolidated elementary school in Washington ties into this. Half of that half million came directly from the school system budget and the other half ostensibly from the county commission but that probably also represents an advance from the commission on what the schools would have gotten this year. Is Cheeseman closing Snowden to make up for that half million dollars he blew on the mismanagement of his Washington consolidated school boondoggle? Will the school board sit there as sock puppets and let him get away with that?

There was an article on the BO on all the state statutes that Cheeseman ignored on his Washington consolidation boondoggle, and it appears he is on the same path with Snowden. Was his liberal Durham lawyer even apprised on how Cheeseman was handling that or did Cheeseman wing it on his own? Regardless, if the school board plays sock puppet and rubberstamps Cheeseman on this, the people of Aurora should raise the money and hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit over it.

Steven P. Rader said:

( April 17th, 2025 @ 12:31 pm )

I have never seen a public hearing conducted like the travesty at Aurora for Snowden school. As General Counsel of the NC Department of Health and Human Services in the Jim Martin administration, I monitored the public hearings conducted by boards and commissions housed within our department such as the NC Social Services Commission, the NC Mental Health Commission, and the NC Child Day Care Commission. I have never seen a bureaucrat run a hearing instead of the presiding officer of the policy making body. Where was School Board chairman T.W. Allen? Hiding in the crowd, like most of the rest of the school board. I have never seen a public hearing open with a bureaucrat giving a one hour spiel trying to explain away his proposal. I have never seen a bureaucrat then preside over the hearing and try to channel speakers away from substantive comments and only into questions. When several speakers tried to offer comments, the superintendent cut them off and asked "what is your question?" Only when Buzz Cayton refused to be bullied that way, did the meeting open up for actual comments.

I commend Charles Hickman for being the only school board member with the brass to actually speak up and point out that Cheeseman was not properly following the statutes. I also commend county commissioners Stan Deatherage, Tandy Dunn, and Hood Richardson for speaking out strongly for community schools and against Cheeseman's consolidation mania and pledging to work through the county commission to put a stop to it.

All over the United States, school consolidation is an issue that separates the education establishment liberals from the conservatives. Any school board member who votes for Cheeseman's poisoned chalice on consolidating Snowden with Chocowinity and giving little children two 30 mile bus rides each day will need to put a big "L" beside their name in the next primary.

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