School Board Plans District Meetings

by Cal Bryant - January 16th, 2006 - Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald

Bertie School Board members have been under a microscope since April of last year when a study, ordered by the Bertie Board of Commissioners and conducted by MGT of America, found several problem areas within the school system, including mis-use of credit cards by school administrators, an overabundance of county-owned vehicles and questionable cell phone usage.

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Meanwhile, a request made to the Bertie County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a closer look into the credit card usage has been forwarded to the North Carolina SBI for further investigation.

This to me is the most important information in Cal's article about the new school board plans. It is consistent with the argument that our school board has failed to teach our children (our system is in the bottom 10% in student achievement) and has wasted money on a massive scale (our BOE spends money at a rate that puts us in the top 20% in North Carolina counties) for these unacceptable results. The money wasted is criminal in some instances and shows a lack of concern by some of the BOE in others. No one has yet been held accountable for anything.

As one parent pointed out, the school board has shown they cannot manage small schools (just look at our results). However they have repeatedly argued that school consolidation is the way to solve our problems. Business has never used this rationale. If a manager fails at a small venture, business does not put them in charge of a larger and more complicated enterprise as a solution for their failure. Why are we doing this with our schools? (Check out www.smallerschools.org for the right answer)

At these public hearings you will be given a lot of financial data by the BOE and their new Superintendent to justify their plans . . . . but you cannot depend on it. The BOE still does not accept that they allowed the disasters documented in the MGT audit. "It was not our fault," they claim. They then insist that losing 348 sudents in recent years is the problem. However they reject the argument that this is "bright flight" due to the fact that they are doing a poor job of educating our kids. They wish to spend millions on more faciltities when they have lost huge numbers of students. Why does fewer students not mean they have all the facilities that they need? (Yet teachers complain they do not provide text books for the students in the facilities they have.)

Let them have their way and we will continue to waste money and fail to educate our children. Let them have their way and Bertie County will continue to lose population and lose business opportunities. The single largest handicap to growth in our county is our school system.

There are 3 members of this BOE that are not focusing on teaching our kids but focusing on grand plans for new facilities to divert attention from actions of the past. Their own so called "desgregation" plan as sent to the Department of Justice and the Judge is based on the argument that someone in Bertie County is still discriminating and resisting desegregation. However they refuse to say who that is. They want the Judge to order them to close schools and build a new one. We need to attend these meetings and insist on accountability for their failures, not excuses.

The hearings (all to be from 6 PM to 8 PM) as announced in the article are as follows:

Monday, January 23rd in Indian Woods (Missionary Baptist Church Family Life Center) Gloria Lee's meeting.

Tuesday, January 24th in Colerain (Community Building) Seaton Fairless' meeting.

Monday, January 30th in Windsor (Community Building) Melinda Eure's meeting.

Tuesday, January 31st in Lewiston (Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church) Gary Cordon's meeting.

Thursday, February 2nd in Merry Hill (Oxley Hill Baptist Church) Rickey Freeman's meeting.


If you care about our children or the business future of our county, I hope you will be there.

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