The perils of not paying close attention to your local school board
A board of directors is meant to give direction to an organization’s paid staff. Not to sit back and wait for the paid staff to tell them what is going to happen.
Unfortunately, the latter is most often the scenario you find in local school boards across our fair state — and nation. A board of education is meant to represent the wishes of parents and taxpayers in the community in the management of a school system.
More often than not, those elected are often left sitting back and waiting to be told what’s next by school system staff. And, sadly, our elected representatives follow the edu-crats like sheep. Local drive by media often compound the problem by either minimizing or largely dismissing the action at the local school system administrative office.
Hence, our problem here in Moore County. A few years ago our board actually grew a pair and tried to fire our too-big-for-his-breeches superintendent. The superintendent cried on-camera, in a manner that would have made Oprah and Dr. Phil beam with pride, and you could literally hear his job security lock firmly into place.
Now, on a yearly basis, the superintendent and his team scare the hell out of parents about how we’re just not coughing up enough money to properly educate their babies. Those terrified mommies then run screaming to the county commissioners and our legislators with the local drive by media dictation pool in tow. Before you know it, we’re hit with yet another bond issue and / or tax increase. (The Crying Man wins again.)
Now, we’ve got major school construction projects underway. Of course, they’re over-budget. Instead of taking responsibility and trying to cut some cost internally, the superintendent and his team ran sobbing to the county commissioners seeking even more money to cover cost over-runs.
Oh, along with those new schools, we’ve got some redistricting coming along. The superintendent and his gang of edu-crats scared parents and other local pols into approving these new schools. Now, we’re told some kids are going to have to be moved around in order to fill up the new schools.
The problem? Many parents in the county made home purchases based on the school district that parcel of real estate was in. Now, that could all change. Their kids could be moving from their high-performing highly-rated school to a much lower-performing one in a neighboring town. All thanks to the machinations of unelected edu-crats and their dreams of “diversity.”
I’m not hearing anything about checking immigration statuses of students currently taking up slots in our schools. (There are plenty that need to be checked.) Nor am I hearing word about weeding out kids from outside the county / district taking up valuable space in our existing schools. (Also plenty to check on.)
School board races in our county are usually genteel affairs. Usually they are uncontested. Usually the winners are the people voters most remember from the Southern Pines – Pinehurst cocktail party circuit. Voting for Ed Dennison or Bruce Cunningham because they are so gosh-darned fun at those after-five shindigs has turned over our kids’ futures and the economic future of our county to the same crowd marching under the raised fist logo on May 1 in Raleigh.
It is the fault of edu-crats that we have a mixture of really bad and really good schools. It’s patently dishonest to try and juice the scores by shifting kids from wealthier neighborhoods over to less wealthy ones.
Shifting kids around like this will create uncertainty that will hurt real estate sales and likely damage residential property values. Stuff like that was kind of what we hoped you folks on the school board would be debating and considering AS OUR DULY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES ON THE MOORE COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION.
Want to put the brakes on the mayhem in Moore County public schools? Toss out some of that dead weight on the current board and elect some folks who don’t mind making the superintendent and his team of edu-crats squirm.
Hey it could be worse.In Huntersville and Cornelius in Mecklenburg County the school board has voted not to fund any new schools here for 15 years!We dared to want to have our own Towns ‘ charter schools because they keep jerking us around.
It can always be worse, however that is no reason to become complacent. We all need to advocate for our children. If you don’t have children, you are surely paying #TAXES in the community of which you live. Therefore, you have every right to stand up for what you believe is right; think about what you would want done if you DID have children in the school system.
If you think that is bad check out the Gaston county school board sued over a land deal
Plyer v Doe in 1982 barred any school district from excluding anyone based on being an illegal alien.
When judges abuse their offices to make tyrannical politicized rulings like that one, it is those judicial tyrants who should pay for it. The entire cost of that ruling should be taken out of the budget of our out of control federal courts. Democracy in our country today is threatened more by men in black sheets than even those despicable men in white sheets.
Rick Shaftan this was Not legal by the Constitution nor Natural Law. That judge should have been removed & others as John Steed is saying. Looking for Real Men to work with Republic Patriots to do this very thing.
Many families move to this county for better schools, lots of new military families. These families making our community feel safer. We are doing these children specifically a disservice. Some of these children on their 7th or 8th school before high school. But hey, let’s just move them again for the sake of numbers vs finally giving these children some stability?
And let’s not talk about the nightmare of a large family with multiple children across schools. Carpool and transportation already at nightmare in our county. 4 hours of bus transit time a day for some with a school miles from their home. How about we improve and fix our current standards of transportation, crime, bullying in schools before moving more children into the craziness.
After decades of this kind of loathsome behavior by our Republican school board, many are homeschooling or paying the big bucks for private education. We’ve got brand new schools full of enept “educators” both in the office and the classroom, teaching to the slowest students and allowing the brighter kids to languish and become disinterested in school. If you love your kids, get them OUT of govt run schools.
This is exactly why we have decided to pull our very bright children from
public to attend private schools. Atleast we can be thankful for the variety of options our county provides is in private education. I see this as a growing trend with the redistricting proposed today by the board.
Bravo
Very well written. I’m so glad you published this and I hope it is widely shared.
No matter what – It is way past time for our superintendent to have to answer for low-performing schools. Shifting kids is not the answer. Blaming teachers is not going to fly much longer.
Your excellent suggestions about looking at the students’s status is a good place to start.
It is also time for the superintendent to learn how to work within the school budget; a budget I think has been extremely generous.
Your observation regarding Local School Bds. is right on target. I can speak from personal experience by having served for 8 Yrs. on a School Bd. in N.C. and previously 9yrs. in N.J.
This problem is true across the nation and more prevalent in the large School Districts in N.C. and the South in general and large cities.
However it does not have to be, if the School Bd. members take off their diapers and respond to their constituents rather than to the strong push from the “EDUCATION COMMUNITY”
Ron Margiotta
any system that has more administrators than classroom teachers is already in trouble. As Deep Throat famously said “follow the money”. See who is being paid most.