Hey Jeff Jones and Supt. Dr. Stephen Fisher, I want to see those public documents. Preferably in this century please.
Then, when it came to making a motion to approve the Personnel Report, Shearra Miller added another item to the Personnel Report and asked for a motion to approve both reports with one vote. Which they did. Then, Danny Blanton reminded Chairman Miller and the other nit-wits and nincompoops that they had refused to add his three requested items to the January 28, 2019 School Board meeting Agenda, which brought an apology, sort of, from Chairman Miller.
Folks, keep on reading!! We are just now getting to the good part. Uhhh, bad part I should say as it soon became obvious that the Children of Cleveland County have been short changed of a quality education for many years. At least 15 years that school board member Roger Harris claimed that he knew about.
First, some cold hard facts:
• Various Cleveland County Officials have identified the Workforce skills and development are severely sub-standard to support the present businesses in Cleveland County
• Cleveland County Schools have been singled out as being severely sub-standard in the area of vocational training
• Up until the present, no CCS Representative has been involved with official Workforce Development issues-i.e. looking for deficiencies in the programs and fixing the deficiencies
• The Cleveland County Commissioners have recently appointed CCS School Board Member Danny Blanton to the Region C Workforce Development Board to begin the effort to improve workforce development training at CCS and also to investigate how CCS can best develop their vocational program to mesh with Cleveland Community College’s Advanced Manufacturing training programs
• At the January 28, 2019 School Board meeting Board member Danny Blanton requested the first ever Region C Workforce Development report to the CCS Board be placed on the CCS Board Meeting Agenda
• The CCS School Board and Administration refused to allow Danny Blanton the opportunity to present his report and suggestions
• Three days later The Shelby Star, per information provided by the CCS Superintendent (and not reported to the CCS Board) reported that CCS had initiated a very limited and stop-gap vocational training partnership with Cleveland Community College to begin in the 2019-2020 school year (perhaps to coincide with the 2020 School Board Elections)
• My article published Feb 4,2019 stated:
“CCS’s Fisher says free bus transportation will be available. Like there will be large numbers enrolled in the program. That is doubtful since, unless State law changes, the state mandated calendar for CCS and the Schedule for classes at CCC do not match. Therefore, thirty days or so will be lost per school year due to the difference in schedules. (Hmmmm, I wonder if this applies to all the dual enrollment courses too??? That’s a question for another day.)”
Note that my Feb 4th 2019 article was officially sent to all the School Board members and Supt. Dr. Stephen Fisher, as well as CCC, for information and comments prior to publication. I do that for every article that I write about the schools and anybody else I mention in my articles. I don’t blind-side anybody. But the underlined and “bolded” print shown above hit a spot that exposed the school board and administration’s shenanigans to the core. So much so that an item was added to the Feb 11, 2019 School Board Meeting agenda to, not fix, but hide major problems with several CCS-CCC partnerships. The problem and CCS discussion are as follows:
The obvious problem is CCS and CCC calendars DO NOT MATCH. This means that such things as the so-called dual enrollment programs, programs where high school students take college level courses include up to 30-day gaps because of this mis-matched calendar situation. Same with the Career Promise Program. And even the so-called Early College Program where high school students actually go to the LeGrand Center to take both high school AND College courses that are actually located on CCC property. Could this Early College program just be a scam to justify building the high dollar money losing LeGrand Center in the first place. With the mismatched calendar situation just being covered up.
No matter about all of that. This new CCS-CCC partnership program CCS’s Fisher conjured up would take kids from their various high schools to CCC. 30-day gap in operational schedule or not. Now exposed as a half-baked idea. But it exposed much more than that.
The item added to the Feb 11, 2019 School Board Meeting agenda was titled; 7.06 School Calendar Flexibility Resolution. A benign sounding title obviously intended to deceive casual observers. Obviously also intended to hide the foul-up from any commissioners that happen to attend the meeting. (As did Commissioner Doug Bridges and Deb Hardin. Perhaps more commissioners will be showing up to future CCS board meetings to see for themselves what is going on.)
But I am not a casual observer. When I see such as this, I see a Red Flag that indicates there is much more than meets the eye. And, in this case, there is. More on that a little later.
Folks, at this point I would suggest readers also go the CCS website and pull up the video of this meeting. Fast forward to about the 57-minute mark, The CCS Board always puts its most controversial items at the end of the meeting, hoping those in attendance would have already gone home.
Now, the Calendar gap between CCS and CCC discussion.
