The May 14, 2018 School Board Meeting was well attended, not packed, but well attended. Channel 9 news was there all set up and ready to go. Eight people had signed up for Citizens Participation.
NC State Law requires a “Citizens Participation” for governmental agency meetings at least once per month and each speaker is allowed at least three minutes to speak. A total of 15 minutes is required by state law. The Cleveland County School Board has taken what the NC General Assembly intended as a MINIMUM allowance for Citizens Participation and made it the MAXIMUM allowed. All in the name of the law according to CCS.
So, eight speakers times 3 minutes equals 24 minutes. Well within what the NC General Assembly intended but the nitwit CCS Board members only allow 15 minutes. School Board member Danny Blanton came to the rescue and made the motion to allow the public speakers to have sufficient time for all of them to have their say. It passed unanimously. No nitwit Board Member was going to be caught voting against such a motion on TV News.
Then Danny Blanton made the motion I suggested in a previous article to hold a Citizens Participation at every School Board Meeting (including workshops) and Dena Green seconded that motion. This set the motion up for a vote. CCS Board Chairman Shearra Miller asked if there was any discussion. Phillip “Bully” Glover spoke up saying that he thought such an action should go through the Board Policy Committee, which Danny Blanton is not allowed to participate in.
Blanton did not have to agree. All he had to do was call for a vote that would have been an unanimous approval with the TV Cameras rolling and a room full of people. But, like a fool, Blanton agreed to withdraw his motion and no vote would be taken. Out smarted and out maneuvered again with five years on the School Board and Danny Blanton has not yet learned his Parliamentary Procedures enough to get this simple motion passed when it would have easily passed. (Before the night is over, Blanton will be shut down again with a School Board full of nitwits laughing at him.)
The eight speakers basically skewered the CCS School Board. And when their time was up the whole audience got up and left the meeting with an agenda full of items left to be heard. The TV Camera crews picked up and left too. The meeting was back to business as usual. In an almost empty building.
The overall details of this meeting will be included in another article as there are serious things to report. This article is only about how a duly elected school board member, Danny Blanton, a representative of the people is so poorly treated by the CCS School Board and CCS staff too.
At the end of the meeting, a most egregious display of venom and bile from the School Board came to the surface when Danny Blanton asked to speak. CCS Board Chairman Shearra Miller ruled that the agenda was over and Blanton could not speak.
What happened next is unbelievable and never would have happened if the TV News Cameras were still rolling.
Blanton, stating he was an elected school board member and was indeed going to speak as that was his right. Blanton started to speak about Teacher Pay, a totally valid point of discussion, especially since there was a State Wide Teacher Protest Rally in Raleigh yesterday about that every same thing. I suspect that a delegation of teachers from CCS participated. Probably on PAID leave too.
But instead of allowing Blanton to make his point for the record, Miller speaks over Blanton asking for a vote to adjourn the meeting. At this point the CCS cameras are rolling and Blanton asks for them to keep on rolling. But at that point the CCS Cameras stop recording, or if they didn’t stop, the footage after this point was cut and discarded.
While Blanton is speaking, or trying to, the other Board members get up and walk out. None of which is shown on the CCS video. But I was sitting there observing the whole thing and that is exactly what happened. I also turned around and observed the CCS video team winding up camera wires etc. while the action was still going on. Then I came home and watched the video. Which I suggest every one of you readers do too. Go to the end of the video and watch where the video stops.
The only thing is, Shearra Miller was right from a technical and tactical viewpoint. Blanton was in fact out of order by not sticking to an agenda that he himself had voted to approve. Again, Blanton was outsmarted and out maneuvered. But, from a strategic point of view, Miller and the other School Board Members might have been technically correct but they were also totally stupid on several items. First, a discussion of the NC Teacher Protest issues should be a top priority for all school boards in North Carolina to be talking about. Secondly, they are making Danny Blanton, a representative of the people, a martyr for their own obvious and selfish purposes. The School Board will be and is viewed as totally insensitive morons, oblivious to the needs of our children and the teachers we pay to educate them. At a clip of $155 Million per year on top of that.
The conclusion here is Danny Blanton was Morally RIGHT although technically wrong. Shearra Miller and her band of nitwits were Morally WRONG but technically right. I believe the vast majority of citizens in Cleveland County would hold being Morally RIGHT a much better attribute than the other way around. But, the fact remains, Danny Blanton must learn about proper procedures in Robert’s Rules of Order if he is going to be effective in properly dealing with the other CCS Board Nitwits. Mr. Blanton should have asked for a part in the agenda to include teacher issues while the cameras were rolling. It would have been as simple as that.
Folks, we tell it like it is. Key words “We,” “tell it,” and “LIKE IT IS!!!”
Stay tuned for the corruption and cover-up explosions at CCS, CCC and Commissioners that we haven’t exposed yet. Key word is “Yet.”