Cleveland County Schools and the Health Department:
Last years Cleveland County Schools budget was around $155 Million. And the Schools were shut down for most of the year, although no teachers were laid off-just reassigned to COVID Planning. Which consisted of pushing papers around and around in a wild abandonment of reality. Mostly waste as teachers have no training, education and experience in planning for healthcare disasters. (Habit-assigning personnel unqualified for the task at hand-is widely accepted at CCS). This year’s CCS budget is $206 Million. A $51 Million increase. I estimate that $100 Million worth of “education value was wasted last year and this year will probably be the same. Or more.
Last night’s news also reported that the Public Schools of Union County (PSUC) School Board recognized that Schools were supposed to educate children and the Health Department was supposed to take care of the county’s public health issues. And, the School Board voted to discontinue doing Health Department work and stick to educating children. Are the Union County School Board members geniuses or what?
In regard to that last thought, I would mention that I have embedded the notion several time in previous articles and statements that the Cleveland County Health Department be the lead in RECOMMENDING to the School Board the actions that should be taken regarding COVID in terms of the CCS educational operations. I still say that. No matter if the Health Department is still “reeling” over their scandals or what. Grow up or get out I would say.
Now we have travelled from the relatively minor issues to the major issue of our times. The failing education system of our children. From kindergarten through high school and all the way to Cleveland Community College, I am talking about what appears to be a total collapse of CCS as well as Cleveland Community College. A financial collapse too.
The School Board and the CCC Board of Trustees:
‘It goes like this:
For years I have attended School Board meetings and reported on the many, many scandals. The School P-Card fraud and cover-up scandal, teachers having sex with students and cover-up scandals, the Math Academy flim-flam, Communities in Schools sex-capades, the American Legion World Series-Title IX scandal. School Board scandals and cover-ups on a routine basis.
Then the sex scandals involving very high-level people on top of the alleged dumbing down of dual-enroll classes by Cleveland Community College and the CCC Board of Trustees coverups and conflicts of interest got my attention.
Then the years of back and forth. The School Board, then the CCC Board of trustees. Back and forth, back and forth. With a mix of the American Legion World Series and the commissioners secretly kicking in over $5 million scandals and shenanigans thrown into the mix for the “Hell” of it.
All these seemingly infinite pieces of a puzzle of corruption swirling around and around. The City of Shelby’s bad stuff mixed in too. The discrimination. The retaliation. All the lies and the corruption from every direction. It’s enough to make your head “swim.”
Then, the School Board meeting on Monday, September 13th, 2021 and Cleveland Community College Board of Trustees meeting the very next day brought some important things into sharp focus. The Educational System in Cleveland County, already known to be broken and failing, is about to collapse financially.
It goes like this.
I had already heard and seen information that the CCC dual enrollment programs were being dumbed-down so more high school students could qualify for the program. I had already heard and seen information that up to half of Cleveland Community College’s total enrollment was comprised of high school students in the dual enrollment program or were in CCC to pick up that part of their expected education that CCS had NOT provided them before they graduated from CCS. I had already seen so many empty classrooms at CCC to wonder why they were building a “New” Advanced Technology Center which mainly consists of even more classrooms that will end up being empty when finished.
So, when I received my notice of the September 13th 2021 School Board meeting and saw the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between CCS and CCC on the agenda, I smelled a RAT. A very big and stinking RAT. I opened the MOU and studied it closely. It was all about funding from Cleveland County Schools being funneled to Cleveland Community College for even more students. But that even more students were less educated than I would have thought. And the numbers of students involved in what the MOU called successes was surprisingly low. I immediately developed a plan to check out what is going on.
My plan was simple. In a previous walkthrough I personally conducted during lunchtime at the July CCC BoT meeting, while the BoTs were chowing down on their catered meal, I took a self-guided tour all around Cleveland Community College. On that tour, I was mostly alone. I wondered “where the heck are all the students??” As I pondered that thought, I realized it was lunchtime and in the middle of July. Perhaps I should not have expected to see many students.
Now, it was the middle of September and CCC is in full-swing. It was in the smack- dab middle of the first quarter and CCC should have been packed with students. So, my plan was to come way early to the CCC BoT Board Meeting, but not to go to the Board meeting. But to re-trace my July steps through the CCC Campus mid-morning, no lunchtime lull, and make an all out attempt to look for students. And that was exactly what I did.
When I arrived at CCC, I parked in the Student parking lot behind the school. Between the main buildings and the Fairgrounds. There were a moderate number of vehicles, but plenty of spaces were available. I noticed that some cars in the parking lot had CCC parking permit stickers, but large numbers did not have those stickers. I attribute some of that to the construction workers who were working on the Advanced Technology Center. There were a lot of cars with Permanent State Tags on them and law enforcement vehicles parked near the “Paksoy Building.”
Then I began my tour of the CCC Campus, starting in the main building, the Jack Hunt Building.
I went down one corridor and then another. Up one floor and down the other floor. The Classroom doors mostly all had small windows, probably required by Fire Codes intended to help protect human habitability. Many of the classrooms had their lights off. Many of those classrooms had their lights on, but nobody was inside. Occasionally I would see a big classroom with mostly empty seats and a teacher up front. In one corridor I could look down into what appeared to be an electrical controls lab. Only three students and one teacher. It was like that all through all the buildings I walked through. As it became lunchtime, the student’s cafeteria/Lunchroom only had two students inside. The Faculty Lounge in the Paksoy Building was entirely empty.