School Board Refuses to investigate big teacher turnover; Refuses to dump Communities in Schools!!! Knowing there is a Problem but refusing to Inform the Public on What or Where the Problem is!!! Did they do Right?? Or obstruct Justice?? –Report, analysis and evaluation by Robert A. Williams

Over the past four years I have attended almost all of the Cleveland County School Board meetings and workshops. I sit up close to the stage in the Roger Holland renovated Central Services Auditorium and still have problems hearing. I keep on wondering about those new auditoriums for 50 year old Burns and Crest High Schools that School Board Chairman Phillip “Bully” Glover talks about but knows there is no money to build them. The School Board made sure that money was spent somewhere else. We certainly don’t need two more auditoriums like the one at the Central Services anyway. Just like we don’t need a new $16 million North Shelby School that the School Board is too ashamed of to let me take a look at it during construction.

During these past four years of observation as well as receiving information from before this, the problem issues at Cleveland County Schools come under the following major headings, with different details and combinations:

1. Sex Scandals
2. Fraud and misapplication of funds
3. Waste
4. Ineffective leadership at both CCS management and school board levels
5: Cover-ups for all of the above

I was not able to personally attend the August 28, 2017 School Board meeting, but I watched the video on the CCS website. The CCS video people have done a relatively good job and now include close-ups of the Board Members as they speak. It was watching this video that I realized just how effective and pertinent Board Member Danny Blanton’s “Gomer Pyle” style questions are and how the rest of the school board and the superintendent, Dr. Stephen Fisher, struggle trying to keep the cover-ups covered up. Especially during this school board election year.

The first example was regarding the Personnel Report. Danny Blanton noted, as he has many times, that there is a very high rate of teacher resignations at CCS and suggested the Board look into this. Blanton correctly stated “it costs a lot of money to train so many new teachers” to fill the slots where experienced teachers have resigned. Blanton asked why has CCS not asked those resigning why they are resigning and try to correct any system problems that might have occurred that caused so many departures? This is a simple question, like I said, a “Gomer Pyle” style simple question, but has always gotten the same reply. Or I should say a lack of a reply. Watching the video, I recognized the MO. Dr. Fisher, at the boards request for an answer (the rest of the Board never has an answer), but goes into what I will call his “Fast Talking Mode.” Lots and lots of words, coming fast, but no wisdom. No answers either. Fisher says “maybe the teacher’s spouse gets transferred,” maybe they do this, maybe they do that, maybe, maybe, maybe. Then follows up with “our turnover rate is right in line with everybody else’s turnover rate.” Therefore we don’t need to do anything. And they don’t. And the rest of the board members, especially Kathy Falls and Bully Glover, who, along with Danny Blanton, are up for re-election this year, are fine with doing nothing and not knowing why. Fisher’s fast talking Gobbledy-Goop is good enough for them. But not for me and any other person who gives a whit about the goings on at CCS.

Also, the Personnel Report itself is a cover-up.

Some time ago, we noticed on the Personnel Report that several teachers, one is still in prison right now, had gotten caught having sex with students and were forced to resign. (Note that this scenario is important to the next example coming up in this article.) When the Superintendent can get a teacher or staff member caught red handed with a criminal act to resign, that is considered “taken care of” by the CCS Board majority. But us using this particular finding to identify others who had been caught and resigned by noticing irregularities in the Personnel Report caused the Board majority and Superintendent to get the School Board’s attorney to come up with the excuse that the Personnel Report is not official until it is approved by the School Board. Therefore the School Board had to “approve it before they could read it.” Didn’t we learn anything about the Democrat approved ObamaCare? They had to approve it before they read it. What a mess ObamaCare turned out to be and what a mess the CCS Personnel Report is. Board Member Danny Blanton usually just votes NO on such a mess as this.

The next example is even better.

Communities In Schools, a suspicious group of propaganda mongers that took over from the failed and Criminal Youth Assistance Program (YAY), comes up on the agenda wanting more money for their next year’s big dollar contract. Former CIS employee and School Board Member Donnie Thurman, Jr. as well as the CIS Executive Director are conspicuously absent from this school board meeting. (CIS seems to always want taxpayer’s money but never seems to be able to show what they do to deserve the funding they are asking for. It’s the same thing this time too.) Astonishingly though, a CCS person presents the CIS contract request to the School Board for approval. The CIS Executive Director should have presented the request and answered any questions from the Board.

It soon became apparent why nobody from the CIS administration was there to answer questions. Board member Danny Blanton had gotten wind of some major problems at CIS and was likely going to ask questions that CIS didn’t want to have to answer..

But, before we get into Board Member Danny Blanton’s question, we are going to look a little deeper into all of this CIS stuff and do some common sense thinking. For a big reason that Danny Blanton is about to bring up. The big cover-up at CIS as well as what they were trying to cover up.

First of all folks, the very fact that the Cleveland County School Board thinks they need something like Communities In Schools that they fund using taxpayer dollars without any real control, no real measures of success (aside from spending all the taxdollars they are given) and no transparency presents a perfect example of the failures of CCS to properly teach our children in the very first place. And then you go downhill from there. All this became perfectly clear when the Communities In Schools came to the August 28, 2017 School Board meeting with their hands out for hundreds of thousands of taxdollars for the upcoming year, offering no good reasons, without any justification for those reasons, or why CIC even exists.

Lets analyze this a bit. If the existence of CIC is necessary because CCS fails to educate many of our children properly, why don’t we just get rid of CCS and let CIC run it all. Or, If there are problems with CIS, why don’t we just get rid of CIS and fix CCS. The answer is easy, if there are problems with CIS, get rid of it and fix CCS.

A little deeper analysis calls the question, just what is CIS and what do they do for CCS that justifies CCS giving them taxpayer dollars? The next question would be, why does Pinnacle Classical Academy or the other nearby Charter Schools not need a CIS too?

Now the immediate issue at hand is, are there problems at CIS??? Let’s look at what went down in this August 28, 2017 School Board meeting and you decide. Just like you need to decide who to vote for in the upcoming 2017 School Board Election.

Back to the meeting when the school board gets to the CIS funding part of the agenda.

Board member Danny Blanton, in his very effective Gomer Pyle style, states to the full board, minus Donnie Thurman, that he cannot support funding CIS without knowing that some “problems” he has become aware of at CIS are brought to the attention of the full board. Blanton states that he has discussed these problems with Board Member Roger Harris (a well known and proven cover-up artist) who is also the Chairman of the Board for CIS as well as CCS Superintendent Fisher, who is also a CIS Board member. Blanton is asked what these problems are? Blanton replies that the problems are of the nature that a Closed Session would be required to discuss them. Remember the five categories of problems we listed earlier in this article. You can bet the problems Danny Blanton is talking about involves one or more of those categories.

The simple solution for the CCS board here is clear. Make a motion to go into closed session and the full board gets to hear from Danny Blanton about the problems. But NOOOO! The Board doesn’t want to do that. They effectively are saying they don’t want to hear about the problems at CIS, just give them what they want ($$$) and move on, to Hell with taxpayers.

And, Their statements are stupid too. Especially Board member Kathy Falls. First Falls asks Superintendent Fisher, “for the public to know, what is the role of the CCS Board in this matter?” How stupid is that? Falls asks Fisher to tell her what her job is. For your information Kathy Falls, CCS is paying the bills with taxpayer money and the board’s role is what they chose their role to be. The fact Kathy Falls asks such a question shows her incompetence that should disqualify her from ever sitting on the School Board, much less getting re-elected. Falls says she doesn’t want to “start any rumors coming from the Board” about problems at CIS, especially during election year when she might get asked a question during a candidates forum. What Falls should have said was “I make a motion to go into Closed Session to hear the facts of this matter and then move forward with any actions that are appropriate.” But Nooo!!! again. For Kathy Falls, she prefers the see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil approach followed by spend, spend and spend some more. Glover, Miller and the rest of the CCS Board (aside from Blanton) are content with Kathy Falls’ approach. Then they ask both Roger Harris and Stephen Fisher if Danny Blanton had told them about problems and would such problems need to be heard in Closed session. Yes to both questions from both Harris and Fisher. Harris incredulously says the unbelievable, “there is no problem” NOW “because it has been taken care of.” (Note that CCS Board Member Roger Harris has been a longtime cover-up artist for CCS. (A forthcoming article regarding Roger Harris’s cover-up escapades and obstructions of justice is coming soon. This will expose that fact for all to see. Perhaps Roger Harris will resign before he is thrown out of office in 2019, or thrown in jail where he belongs. Others too!!)

Blanton asks Harris if the rest of the CIS Board was told about the problem and how it “was taken care of.” Harris would not say yes to that simple question, but like Fisher, Harris went into his own Fast Talking Mode-lots of words but no wisdom OR Truth. Kathy Falls makes the motion to approve funding CIS and it passes. School Board Members Jo Boggs and Jeff Jones sat through all that and never said a word. CIS gets their money with no more questions asked by a simpleton School Board that is content to spend taxpayer money without having a clue what is going on or went on at CIS. And Kathy Falls and Bully Glover are proud of that.

If Danny Blanton had planned to show up the stupidity of his opposing candidates Kathy Falls and Bully Glover he has found the perfect way to do it. Just ask simple “Gomer Pyle” style questions, then sit back and let Falls, Glover and the rest of the board hang themselves by just running their mouths. Lots of words without reason. Right???

Readers and voters, my question to you is why in the world would you re-elect such foolishness as Bully Glover and Kathy Falls to the School Board? It seems apparent to me that voters should end up with Glover, Falls and Thurman all gone from the school board and Danny Blanton and three helpers being elected to the school board in the November General Election. Stay tuned for more information about this 2017 school board election process.