Everybody that knows anything knows that the Cleveland Community College is in a heap of trouble, that the new President Dr. Jason Hurst can’t fix all by himself and the silly CCC Board of Trustees have been in “heat” for over a year in their gridlock over what to do with their Executive Vice President and her hand picked sycophants (some would say (psychopaths). Throw in the Senior Dean for Development and Governmental Relations, Eddie Holbrook, who nobody can explain just exactly what Eddie Holbrook does to deserve a $125,000 salary at CCC and also a salary as a County Commissioner Chairman too, and you have a recipe for disaster.
And now, disaster has struck.
The North Carolina General Assembly run by Cleveland County Attorney Tim Moore as Speaker of the House, has just ratified NC Sessions Law 2018-15 on June 20, 2018. This new law changes the way Cleveland Community College Board of Trustees are appointed. And the new law affects only Cleveland Community College. Imagine that. That particular tidbit surely indicates just how low Cleveland Community College has sunk and how bad their leadership actually is.. And their gridlocked Board of Trustees too. No matter what happy, happy, happy stories about CCC are run in the Shelby Star. Often called the Shelby Daily Liar. This new law is attached at the end of this article for all you Country Club-Moss Lake gossiping Doubting Thomas’s to see.
This law changes how the CCC Board of Trustees are selected and by whom. The “by whom” tells the tale in this article.
According to this new law, the Governor and the Cleveland County School Board will no longer appoint anyone to the CCC BoT going forward. In my opinion this will be a good thing over time all by itself. The present Democrat Governor won the Governor’s Office only by the support of city-boy Democrats in Durham out voting the rest of us. Or maybe it was how they did the “counting” of the votes in Durham that elected Democrat Governor Roy Cooper.. Anyway, the Governor will not be appointing Board of Trustee members for Cleveland Community College going forward. This was a pretty political astute maneuver as the Governor will not likely file a lawsuit (though he might veto) over the piddling Cleveland Community College and the piddling Cleveland County as he has done over other things the NC General Assembly has done to limit the power of the Governor in statewide affairs. So, taking away the Governor’s appointments of four CCC BoTs will probably be good over time as this Governor has little to do with Cleveland County to begin with.
As for the Cleveland County School Board losing their four appointments going forward, that appears to be for the best also. In the long run that is. CCS has a built in conflict of interest with CCC such that educating students was not and is not the highest priority for either CCC or CCS.
For example, the latest identified “crisis” in workforce development at CCS AND CCC is not new at all. It has been a slow transition of wrongheaded teaching practices and stupid administration priorities that favor the 17% of CCS graduates that enroll in college at the expense of the 83% of students that want to or have to go to work after graduation from CCS. The discussion coming out of CCS to justify this has been a scam and a fraud on the citizens of Cleveland County for so many years that it is pitiful voters just didn’t clean house on the School Board. The fact that 46% of CCS graduates cannot read, write and do math at grade level when they graduate means the “average” CCS graduate is a dummy who is not ready or able to make themselves into productive members of society without additional help. Totally sad and totally true according to CCS’s own records and test results. Records and Test Results they, the School Board and Administration, don’t talk about either.
Even the term “workforce development” nowadays is a scam and a fraud on the people. In literal terms “Workforce Development” in days past meant exactly the same as the “Education” of our children in Public Schools. It begins in the First Grade with teaching kids how to read, write and do arithmetic. Such is the basis of all education and workforce development as you might chose to call it. Then there is advancement at every grade level through the 12th grade such that a High School Diploma represented a person holding such documentation has the basic skills mix, educational and vocational, as necessary to become a productive and self supporting member of our society. Going to college or to work or whatever. Starting a family of their on in the process. Not so today.
For example, when I graduated from Burns at Fallston High School in 1965 I knew how to pick cotton, tend a garden, milk a cow, bag groceries, run a cash register, weld, work on cars, paint a house, do wood working, type a letter, read and write in cursive and do reading, writing and arithmetic well enough to go to NC State and earn a degree in Nuclear Engineering. While at NC State, over summers and sometimes holidays, I worked at PPG, Cleveland Mills in Lawndale, Duke Power at Cliffside and other things and places. When I graduated from NC State, with all my “workforce development,” I believed I could get a job anywhere doing just about anything and pretty much did exactly that over the years. About the only things I turned down were jobs on the Alaskan Pipeline, the shipyard in Cam-Ranh Bay (Vietnam), the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, Nuclear Plant Construction at Dothan (Alabama) and Soddy-Daisy (Tennessee) and the secret Uranium Enrichment Plant in Paducah, Kentucky.
What I am saying here is that I am satisfied with the workforce development education I received in Cleveland County Schools. Education in the United States was number one in the World in 1965. The USA put a man on the moon, cured Polio, won wars when we wanted to and had the world’s greatest economy. Of course there were social and racial problems, but the basis and processes for a top notch education was known, although not always equally applied and available to all.
What to do and how to do education was known in 1965, the same year Cleveland Community College came into being. CCC did well too for about 40 years,
Now it is 2018 and education, academic and vocational (now called workforce development), is broken. Vocational Education is in a “crisis” according to 12 year incumbent Commissioner Eddie Holbrook. It didn’t get that way overnight. And 12 years of vocational education-workforce development decline in Cleveland County happened during Commissioner Eddie Holbrook’s watch.
First, there was the “New Math” that nobody understood the terminology of. New Math hit after I graduated from high school and I couldn’t help my younger brothers and sisters with their homework. I am sure math teachers were not doing well with it either. Math scores for US students dropped from Number One in the World to about No. 15 or 20. So much for New Math. Old math taught students who could count and do arithmetic at every level. While New Math produced high school graduates who cannot count to 100 or make change for a dollar.
Progressive Supreme Court decisions changed Freedom of Religion to Freedom FROM Religion. And selectively took Bible reading and Prayer out of our public schools. Schools began indoctrinating students instead of educating students. On and on it went until the last go around with “Common Core” that the NC General Assembly has been trying to get rid of over the liberal kicking and screaming of School Boards like the CCS School Board. So, actually stopping the CCS School Board from appointing CCC BoT members is strategically the right thing to do. But tactically the Devil is in the Details. Read on.