Boards abandon governing to the bureaucrats | Eastern North Carolina Now

By:  Hood Richardson

Normally the public, that is the taxpayers and voters, count on their elected officials to actively represent their interests, concerns and complaints about government.  Glaringly, during the past ten years, elected officials have handed off their power to set policy and maintain core values to bureaucrats. Bureaucrats include every person hired by any government.  Some examples of this are immigration policy, porous borders, men crashing into women’s sports, the pronoun thing, sex identification and school consolidation.  I believe 70 percent of the population favor the reverse of what has been going on. County Commissioners and School Board Members have failed to act cohesively (as a governing body) to address the concerns of the majority of the people.  

The majority of the Board of Education and the Beaufort County Commissioners are guilty of abandoning the public interest.  Fake Frankie Waters and the newly elected RINOs  (Gary Brinn and Ron Buzzeo) wasted no time, several years ago, in announcing they intended for all the County staff to make more decisions.  This left the Board with nothing to do other than to listen and approve.  The majority became benevolent rulers.  Right away county government began to grow.  We went from 300 to 400 employees. One can see growth by visiting the parking lots of all County Departments during holidays and weekends.  Observe the number of new government automobiles and trailers in these lots.  Compare this with what you remember from ten years ago.  The growth is astounding.

While the School Board and County Commissioners pretend to hold meetings, they are short and infrequent.  There is virtually no debate or exchange of ideas and information.  These meetings are scripted.  One or two of the top dogs on each board is making almost all decisions while cooperating with the Manager and Superintendent.  If there is any dissent the majority quickly circles the wagons, and the issue vanishes into the back room.  No public debate.

The newly elected School Board members have been harassed for speaking out and bringing controversial items to public view.  The idea is that all decisions are made by a select majority in the back room and then they vote in public, only if necessary.  The school superintendent, Matthew Cheeseman, and Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, Fake Frankie Waters, got so comfortable with this arrangement that they violated the open meetings law several months ago.  Fake Frankie Waters, Superintendent Matthew Cheeseman, and Chairman of the School Board, T. W. Allen, met secretly (without notice to the public or their respective boards) in Greenville and formed an exclusive Committee to oversee the new school construction.  

In forming this committee, they cut off public input, County Commissioners input, and School Board member input as to the long term future of education in Beaufort County.  They excluded the feelings of the teaching staffs who will work in this monster school. They guaranteed the construction of a school for 1,000 students in the pre kindergarden thru third grade.  This means cramming these small children into one huge school, guaranteeing cross-town bussing, and continuing the failed concept of large schools providing better education.  Our present school system is low performing and has latched onto several failed teaching concepts.  We do not teach cursive writing any more.  We teach new math, which is not based on logic.  We do not teach multiplication tables by rote anymore.  We have had the pronoun problem and sex identification issues.

There is a controversy between Matthew Cheeseman and his supporters on the school board about whether or not the Curriculum Committee should have a School Board member or two on the committee. The present committee is staffed mostly by teachers and/or bureaucrats.  Now you know why we do not teach real math, cursive writing, multiplication tables, have pronoun problems and sex identification issues.  

There is no doubt smaller neighborhood schools will allow parents to know what is going on in school, and what their children are learning better than a large consolidated school.  A useful exercise would be for the present school board to determine why parents are removing their children from the public schools.  The Board prefers to keep their heads in the sand.

The abusive power of bureaucrats reached the Supreme Court this year, in the Chevron Case.  The court ruled that only elected officials have the power to make laws and propagate rules. The Supreme Court says elected officials do not have the authority to  hand off their responsibility to bureaucrats.  Ultimately elected officials must enact rules and regulations into law when written by bureaucrats.  

Voters have an opportunity to correct these issues in the November 2024 elections.  There are three contested school board races that offer opportunity for change.  Malissa Polk is running against Etha Booth, Stacey Davis is running against F. Mac Hodges, and David Hudson is running against T. W. Allen.  We support Polk, Hudson, and Davis.

There are two conservative Republicans running for Commissioner. They are Tandy Dunn and Hood Richardson.  Other Republicans are Randy Walker and John Rebholz. Both are liberal and trying to get Beaufort County into public housing projects.  Neither Rebholz nor Walker has tried to lower taxes.    Walker is married to a school board member.  Etha Booth is married to Ed Booth, a County Commissioner.

We need to replace the Knots-on-A-Log board members with people who will support open discussion and debate on important matters.  To get that we need to change the current members who have opposition in the November Election. If we elect the same people we will get the same thing we have always gotten.   It is time for a change on the School Board and County Commission.