Open letters to the Beaufort County conservative School Board Members | Eastern North Carolina Now
Beaufort County Conservative Republican Club voices concerns to conservative School Board Members
Open letters to the Beaufort County conservative School Board Members
BY: BEAUFORT COUNTY CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN CLUB
Open Letter 1:
May 13, 2025
Dear Stacey Davis, Charles Hickman, Donald Shreve, Gary Carlton
We are writing to express the Beaufort County Conservative Republican Club’s strong opposition to the closing of the Snowden School in Aurora. No citizens are fighting to close the school but rather your Board is pushing the School’s closure. This shows the Board Members are representing the Superintendent’s wishes over their constituents.
School consolidation has never been shown to help student outcomes. How much will a 5 year old student spending 4 hours on a bus daily improve their life? Also, some consolidations fail to even improve the financial conditions of school systems.
The genesis of the movement to close Snowden has come from the Superintendent. The Superintendent pushed the concept and your Board is now holding hearings to close a much needed School. The Board must standup and stop this assault on our children and the Town of Aurora. The Town of Aurora will be devastated if the school closes. The Board must stop allowing a Leftist Superintendent to dominate them.
Understand the Superintendent will say there is no way to keep the school open due to his desire to find ways to close the school versus saving the school. The Leftist attorney, your Board has carelessly allowed to continue to serve, will have no solution to the issue because he is allied with the Superintendent. This issue will take leadership and smarts to overcome due to the Leftist remaining in their positions despite a 8 to 1 Republican Board.
Remember the Leftist model for schools is to consolidate as many as possible to make the system easier to control. This issue has little to do with the School’s financial viability but more to do with subtle, creeping, Leftism being allowed in our School System by Republicans.
We respectfully ask for your leadership and support to keep Snowden School open. Our organization will only support those fighting for the people.
Respectfully,
Open Letter 2:
May 14, 2025
Dear Stacey Davis, Charles Hickman, Donald Shreve, Gary Carlton
Our Club wants to support School Board Members who are supporting issues that the majority of citizens desire. We want our children to have the best opportunities to learn and become valuable citizens. Our current school system is harming our children.
In your elections, each of you promised to stand for certain issues. Our Club supported each of you because of these issues. We want to list some of the items that are important.
These are a few of the issues you claimed to support. To this point, each of you has allowed the Superintendent to control your agenda at meetings. We would like to ask that each of you focus on putting items on the meeting agendas that push the items above. The Superintendent and Chairman will never put these issues on the agendas without your direction. You must step up and be leaders on these items. The Parents and Public will rejoice if you push these items. Make motions and second those motions. If the rest of the Board votes against these issues, they are voting against the people. We can then use these issues against them in the next election. Please step up and push your agenda and not the Superintendent's. Please be leaders and take control of the direction of the Board.
Respectfully,
Both letters were signed by at least 25 individuals.
https://www.deltamateind.com/hris/
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The movement to consolidate schools is not favored by most citizens. Most citizens lucky enough to have a community school want to preserve it. Moving schools out of small communities, like Aurora, may well be an inconvenience to some, but to working families or broken families it could be devastating. Yesterday it was high school consolidations, then John A. Wilkenson entirely. Next will be the community schools in Chocowinity. On and on. We've seen the ivory tower studies that look more like sales brochures and the newspaper editorials wanting to consolidate into one or two county schools. One step leads to another step. Eventually, this type of movement will affect all of us. Then what? All of us do not have the option of homeschooling or paying for private schools. We're paying for public schools now. Are consolidation plans like this really trying to serve the public?
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This vote on Snowden will tell us who the genuine conservatives are and who the poseurs are. I wish our state had recall elections to be able to remove some of the Cheeseman poodles from office.
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This power is also used by the superintendent to intimidate or punish teachers who get in his way. He is a bully. The school board should really supervise him on use and abuse of this power.
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RH: I agree, but I seriously doubt this particular board is going to add any responsibilities. They seem to like the easy path.
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RL: You're right. Richland Township deserves better. Hood is right too. Wouldn't it have been so much better if the BCS Central office had given positive support to SWS rather than contributing to so much uncertainty for the future of Snowden. I think you call that self-fulfilled prophesy. That kind of thing is bad policy for Beaufort County. In the end Beaufort County families are the victims in all of this.
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The power to reassign teachers unilaterally is a power Cheeseman uses to intimidate school board members to his position. The only way to fix that is to remove that power from Fuehrer Cheeseman by requiring board approval of all such transfers.
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Dr. Cheeseman made it very clear at the Monday, May 19, 2025 meeting of the Beaufort County commissioners budget meeting that HE would not be closing the S. W. Snowden school in Beaufort County. He clearly stated if the school was closed it would be the responsibility of the elected school board members. It is also very clear that closing Snowden is his preference and he will encourage the elected members to consent to his desires. Dr. Cheeseman and the staff that works at his pleasure are responsible for assigning teachers and teacher assistants to each school. Should a school board member not bend to his wishes, he can reassign key personnel from one school to another district school requiring longer travel time for teachers.
Hood is correct. If there is a constant rumbling that the Snowden is slated for for closure, it is natural for parents to select other options for their children's educational options when available. Aurora and the Richlands community deserve better. |
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On the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners, there are three Republicans: Commissioners Hood Richardson; Stan Deatherage and Tandy Dunn, and then there is the Center/Left (2 commissioners) - Left Coalition (2 commissioners) Coalition, in relative order, those members of this voting coalition are Frankie Waters, Randy Walker (wife is a school board member), Jerry Langley and Ed Booth (wife is a school board member).
The Center/Left - Left Coalition is comprised of county commissioners, who routinely swap votes to share power here in Beaufort County