Say what you will about the Guilford County Board of Education, but it’s certainly a positive that they’re rarely divided along racial lines. Until the last few weeks, that is, when the school system’s facilities department introduced a ‘free-for all’ plan to increase the number of minority contractors on school construction projects.
As the Rhino’s Paul Clark notes, any plan that breaks the board down along racial lines “can’t be a good thing.” Not so much that, either, just that it’s the wrong plan at the wrong time. The policy would affect construction projects that need to be completed by the time school starts in August —- therefore June is not the best time to alter the bidding process.
Never mind the fact that eliminating the formal bidding process on projects up to $500,000 could could invite corruption, given the problems GCS’ facilities department has had over the years.
Mind you half a million isn’t a lot of money given the almost half a billion voters approved back in ’08 for school construction projects. But it’s still a lot of money and shouldn’t be at the discretion of a five-person committee.
