The Cleveland County School Board has called a Special Meeting Thursday, January 7, 2021 at 6:00 PM and the Central Offices Staff Development Center 400 W Marion Street Shelby, NC. The only thing presently on the agenda is a discussion of the school limited reopening scheduled for January 19, 2021 for grades K-4. This follows the latest COVID-19 News Release and potential Order from Governor Roy Cooper on Wednesday January 6, 2021. Public Participation is NOT on the agenda. Cleveland County Public Health Officials would be expected to participate in the School Board discussion of the Governor’s Orders, if any. Up to now, the Cleveland County Health Department Director Tiffany Hansen has refused to provide direct COVID-19 recommendations to the CCS School Board.
My last several articles about the NEW School Board Majority may have seemed to be a scathing rebuke toward the newly elected Cleveland County School Board members. That was not my purpose. My purpose was to point out what appeared to be a tactical error in the way the School Board Attorney RFP turned out. Of course, I realized, at a strategic level, the RFP debacle could turn out to be a smart move if the lessons are taken to heart. My criticism, and it was criticism, was intended to be constructive. Point out a problem so it can be fixed. I even suggested a smart and necessary fix for that problem. A fix that will eventually have to be made to turn CCS around from its previous corrupt and wasteful ways. But other things are brewing too. Like the “weaponizing” of the COVID-19 Pandemic for political purposes. Sources now report that School Board member Phillip “Poodle” Glover and Dena Green have joined with disgraced and defeated former School Board Members Shearra Miller, Richard Hooker, Roger Harris and others in signing a Petition to keep CCS closed down until further notice. Such an act is in clear violation of Cleveland County Schools Board Policy 1000-Role of Board Members in Informal Meetings. This Policy states that:
Individual board members should inform any citizen or group of citizens with whom they meet that, in such meetings, they act only as individuals and not for or on behalf of the board unless they have been so authorized by official board action. In addition, board members should attempt to avoid situations in which their presence could be inferred as being officially representative of the board.
Individual members of the board shall refrain from meeting with groups of school employees to discuss matters relating to employment or conditions of work without specific authorization by official board action.
Note that School Board ethics call for School Board Members to publicly support decisions of the School Board whether or not they, individually, actually voted to approve that decision. Violations, in military terms, would be called sedition or treason.
I am sure every working person (outside of CCS) who had children in school and were laid-off from their jobs or otherwise were rendered unemployed by the pandemic realizes that Governor Roy Cooper and the OLD Cleveland County School Board shut down CCS last March when there were ZERO cases of COVID in Cleveland County. When there were ZERO deaths from COVID. Laws were passed to prevent foreclosures on people’s homes during the pandemic. And other such consequences. People began to survive by going to their credit cards and other forms of debt. Debt that will eventually come due. It will be bankruptcy for many. Maybe the whole of North Carolina and the USA too before this pandemic is over.
So, starting CCS back up in particular and all schools in general has been a political football ever since March of 2020. Dumping millions of kids (14,000 from CCS) out of school and requiring working parents to stay at home to look after them, basically shut down the economy. From booming to busted. Paychecks to credit cards for many as a way to survive.
When it became known that children were not very susceptible to the dangers of COVID, the official Democrat cry became, “keeping schools shut down would keep the children from picking up COVID at school and bringing it home to grandma or grandpa.” That propaganda lasted for a while. But you don’t hear that too much anymore.
