E.C. Huey is a better man than I am. Long after I was in dreamland, Huey sat up and watched the Guilford County Board of Education emerge from a lengthy two-hour session, after which board chairman Alan Duncan “went into a 10-minute diatribe blasting and bad-mouthing the county commissioners, nearly calling them liars.”
OK, I didn’t see it myself, so I don’t know the context surrounding Duncan’s statements. I realize the school board and county commissioners have had a testy relationship for quite some time now, but I’m not quite how this recent squabble over the separate $45 million bond for Eastern Guilford High School has become so heated. Looking back at the meeting discussing the school bonds, the only confrontational commissioner was Skip Alston, who made a motion to reduce the balance of the bond to $250 million, adding “enough is enough for this yellow-dog Democrat.”
If anyone else was confrontational, it was outgoing Superintendent Terry Grier, who, mustering a grimace as much as he can, challenged commissioners to put the bonds on the ballot and “let the people decide. Let them vote it up or down.”
Fine, that’s what Grier and the school board got. Now the board needs to let it go and rally support behind the bonds instead of pointing fingers at the county commissioners. And while we’re on subjects that can’t be emphasized enough, the school board has some nerve playing politics with Eastern Guilford while a new Jamestwown Middle School lingers on a $412 million bond that has a good chance of being voted down.
