E.C, Huey calls the Guilford County Board of Education’s surprise vote on the school bond pathetic.
Yes, Chairman Alan Duncan was pointing fingers at county commissioners for playing politics with Eastern High School, but he did not vote for this measure and has been consistent in pushing for separate bond for Eastern. It’s true, too, that commissioners have done their best to mess this up. They were set to pass COPs to pay for Eastern, with the support (if memory serves me correct) of Republicans Billy Yow and Steve Arnold when Skip Alston stepped in and insisted Eastern could be built with “existing funds,” which anyone who’s been following GCS in recent years knows is a nebulous concept. (Note here that Alston voted to place Eastern on a separate bond.) Linda Shaw didn’t look too good either ovehears a conversation between her husband and Insurance Commissioner Jim Long suggesting tha the insurance settlement would be way more than it really was and nobody knew what she was talking about.
So this deal’s been messed up from the start, but all said and done, it’s the best deal the school board could get because the Eastern bond stands a good chance of passing. Why couldn’t the school board just leave it alone? Because they had to have the moral high ground. Moves like these are exactly why concern about over-politicizing local government, especially the school board, is a joke. This was a purely political move, and the board knew exactly what it was doing.
I think they’re afraid the $45 million Eastern bond will pass while the leftover $412 million won’t. Which in turn wouldn’t be good for Jamestown Middle School, and the board would have no one but themsleves to blame. I don’t understand why Jamestown is being held hostage to the big bond when the public’s passed this project once before. In my mind, that’s the bigger issue beneath the politics being played over Eastern.
