New School Board has a Mandate for CHANGE!!! –Report, evaluation and arguendo by Robert A. Williams

When the final 2020 Election numbers for the Cleveland County School Board were first read off to me, I realized that four of the five Republican winners advocated a change of priorities and the overall M.O. of Cleveland County Schools. Those four, plus incumbent Board Member Danny Blanton represent a new majority on the School Board. And perhaps that fifth Republican 2020 winner might see the light and make a super majority. And perhaps another incumbent that has been minimized previously might join in to make up a super-duper majority for change at CCS.

And a change is necessary. For too long problems and issues have been-covered up and lied about. Failing Schools, a lack of transparency, wasteful spending, no respect for the public and taxpayers and the list goes on and on.

But, when I pulled up the official vote tallies for the local elections, including the School Board elections, I saw that the winning margins were HUGE. Incumbents Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris, with around 100 years of total experience on the School Board and related CCS, were solidly and totally embarrassingly thrashed by the voters of Cleveland County. Even the first-time black democrat with an openly alternative lifestyle running for the County Commissioners garnered more votes than n the School Board incumbent candidates Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris. These dummy incumbents, running on their records were totally rejected by the vast majority of Cleveland County Voters. There were no close races for any of the incumbents. The thrashing they took was real, total and complete. No mistaken identities. No last minute scandals. Just years of a steady stream of scandals ranging from sex crimes involving students, bullying complaints that were never resolved, and a widespread and fraudulent misuse of school credit cards, just to name a few come to mind.

This huge rejection by the citizens of Cleveland County for the incumbent school board members and their years of running roughshod over people also introduced something new in Cleveland County politics. It represents a HUGE and total MANDATE for the winners to immediately begin making changes at CCS. An Expectation, no a DEMAND, to make changes and make changes NOW!!

However, NOW is not today or tomorrow. NOW is at the School Board meeting of December 14, 2020 when the new majority of School Board members will be sworn in.

Let me explain what is about to happen between election day and December 14, 2020.

First, there is a scheduled school board meeting this coming Monday, November 9, 2020. The old school board will still be fully in charge at this meeting. It is likely that the New School Board members may attend.

At this November 9, 2020 Sc the COVID-19 and school re-opening issues will certainly be on the agenda as the Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker and Roger Harris incumbents have been playing Democrat dirty-trick politics by closing down the economy for so long. A strategy that backfired on them. Among other things. You can bet the regular staff that attends school Board meetings will be all smiles to the new majority. Hey, they might even be nice to me. Of course, I will be all smiles too. But who knows what this old school board will do to start schools? Especially if the Health Depart Director continues to refuse to give them any recommendations to start schools or NOT to start schools. If I were the new school board majority, I would make it known to the County Commissioners that I expected better information and a recommendation from the Health Department

The old school board may still try some dirty tricks. Like vote to give out golden parachutes to their sycophant staff members who were promoted because of family or Church ties instead of qualifications for their high paying jobs.

Also, you can bet on one sure thing. Lots of people that wouldn’t give the new school board majority the time of day, will be calling the new majority, or, better yet, have others call them. Buttering them up, hoping to dodge a staff reorganization that is surely coming to finally reduce duplication of staff that is still left over from the school merger 20 years ago.

The December 14, 2020 school Board meeting will likely be another matter. The New School Board Majority will be sworn in and take over. This meeting was purposely set by the Old board to start at 5:00 PM. The new board members would all be sworn in and then adjourned early so they could go party-down at Shearra Miller’s Arts Council building on the Court Square. I suspect that will be the first “tradition” that gets thrown out the window. Once the New Board Majority gets sworn in, my prediction is they will make and pass a motion to agenda the agenda to do some School Board business. Right off the bat they will be changing things. Like doing CCS business instead of partying.

I would not hazard a guess at what this new school board majority will do first. But many of them have attended the same school board meetings that I have attended and we are all smart enough to have a list of things to do. I have a list myself, but I didn’t run as a candidate for the school Board and they did-and won! They are smart people and saw what I saw. Some things are totally obvious. But I will not say anything about what I would do, but will report on what they do. Or don’t do.

I suspect Danny Blanton will now be allowed to speak as a duly elected School Board member and Phillip “Bully” Glover, or whoever, will not be instigating any more frivolous lawsuits against Sheriff Alan Norman without telling anybody else. I suspect the high dollar Raleigh lawyer that drew up that infamous lawsuit against the Sheriff will soon get some “walking papers.”

Folks, All-in-all there are plenty of things that need to be done about failing schools, strategic planning for new schools and plenty to do on keeping all the old schools operating safely until new schools are built in the future. Too many things to magically get done at the very first meeting. But I believe this new school board majority will not waste any time getting starting. So, folks, come on out to school board meetings, or watch the videos to see democracy in action. And, Hey, if this new school Board majority turns out to be bums, we will throw them out of office too. It’s called “checks and balances.” Note that I just had to throw that last part in. I expect this new school board majority will do us proud. It has been a long time coming.