What people are seeing from this Cleveland County School Board is not anything new at all. The same transparency or lack of has been a practice as far back as 2013 when the meetings were first being recorded independently outside the system. The superintendent at the time was Dr. Bruce Boyles, who resigned on January 27, 2014, and stated he would retire on June 30, 2014.
9. Announcements
Information: 9.01 Announcements for January 27, 2014
Dr. Bruce Boyles announced his retirement on June 30, 2014, after 34 years of service to the public schools of North Carolina. He read a letter to the Board of Education in which he stated, “Per the terms of my contract, please accept this correspondence as notice of my intention to retire on June 30, 2014. While I will miss the daily interaction with my colleagues, I believe it is time for me to move in another direction and for others to lead the important initiatives that are ahead for our school district.” Dr. Boyles has served as Superintendent of Cleveland County Schools for seven years.
Dr. Boyles was trying to clean up the previous P-Card/Credit Card mess that he had gotten himself into and seemed to realize that the heat was still on. It was also discovered that the people who were contacting the honchos at NCDPI were also running interference for CCS by aiding and abetting the cover-up.
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Former finance director Price kept the folks at NCDPI in the loop.
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More people were being made aware of it, plus a local political TV show airing on C19 from Cleveland Community College talked about these issues for a few shows and picked up even more transactions. Finally, Boyles resigned, even though claiming he retired, and was hired by Gardner-Webb University, where he is employed today.
Fast forward to the CCBOE election in 2020. This changed the board layout tremendously, as these 5 who promised full transparency, working for the people, and the kids… are all Republicans. (on paper) They have worked feverishly to silence the other board members, especially Danny Blanton.
The election in 2022 gave the board another Republican majority, again, on paper, and rendered the other 3 elected members as rogues and outcasts. This attitude from the 6 board members also reflected their feelings toward the parents and others in attendance. This board majority became what they had claimed to despise.
As for their transparency, so far as I have seen or heard, this board will not even acknowledge the bullying issues that have been and are going on within the schools. The chairman, along with a couple of other members will reply by talking down to the public participation speakers while striking the gavel and threatening to have them removed. “Out of order” the chairman shouts. Most think he’s talking to himself again.
The co-chair is as bad. Many times whining about “of all the boards I’ve been on, I’ve never “fill in the blank”. Or “I never gave a ticket to all the people I stopped. You have to use common sense”.
Well, by all means, have some common sense and stop whining and listen to the people for a change.
Of course, many people aren’t aware that the present board Chairman Robert Queen, stood in the trenches with a few of us back in the day, from at least 2014-2015, fighting against what many of us continue to fight against with this board. A lack of transparency, with constant lying and covering up scandals. He is now an advocate for all the things he was fighting against. The majority of the board is a caricature of what they want the public to think of the other 3 board members whom they appear to despise.
Here is an example below, of how Chairman Queen behaved before he was elected to the board and became chairman. Back then, he had plenty of questions and demanded answers. Today, he doesn’t care for questions and seldom has answers!
And how about that line about “My purpose is not to influence an election”…
He is doing that now, as he tries to rid the board of two members who received the highest number of votes in the 2022 election.
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Below is a review of some of the issues that “bothered” Queen before he became a “parrot” for the system and the superintendent.
[table “22” not found /]On our YouTube Channel, there are numerous videos that were recorded at the school board meetings from late 2013 through 2014. Queen appeared in quite a few, as he waged his war on a campaign against this less-than-transparent board. Why did he change, once he was elected and became chair? He changed because there was now an agenda. Get Danny Blanton off that board. And then, Ronnie Grigg and Aaron Bridges were elected, which meant more trouble for the Chair+5.
I heard someone aptly name the 6 real enemies of the people who sit on this board:
the Terminator, the Educator, the Agitator, the Dictator, the Imitator, and the Simulator. Sounds about right to me.
At the very least, maybe the Cleveland County Board of Education could talk to the board from Lincoln County for some tips on how to handle “pranks”.
