We grandfathered the seventh and eighth grade students themselves but not any siblings. The number of siblings would have made the overages even greater and would have left the need for two more classrooms .

As to the members not knowing what has transpired, I can only say I believe Holly and Kathie did know the overall plans because the maps and dialog had been shared all the way through the process. When Ms. McManus made her comments to stop the process and continue the status quo after I made the motion to honor the hard work of the committee,
each of us were surprised. I maybe more than the others because Ms. McManus had voted at the only committee meeting she attended to approve scenario D. Holly and Kathie probably wanted to confirm the committee’s work by again looking at the maps. I know Holly and Kathie took this redistricting matter as seriously as did Norman and I so their review of Ms. McManus’ unexpected, off the wall comments was reasonable.

To think neither of those two are unprepared for our meetings is not what I think. Holly for her two years in office has been the best prepared of all of the board members. She studies the issues and makes intelligent comments and questions when needed. Kathie also has proven herself to do her homework before the meetings since she has been on the board.

Please observe those two in action and I believe you will agree with what I have stated.

Thanks for your comments. I welcome them.

Personnally, I was surprised at what appeared to be a lack of knowledge of a couple of Board members regarding the criteria used by the redistricting committee to determine the 3 proposed maps. These maps, and the criteria used to develop them, have been available to the public since mid-January, yet some Board members appeared to be studying them carefully for the first time last night. It scares me that some members of our Board of Education appeared to cast a vote last night without being fully prepared and completely educated before attending a meeting at which a vote is going to take place. Unacceptable.

The majority at our meeting at Siler City Elementary favored the “D” map as did I. Ms. McManus voted that way too I believe. My opinion has not changed nor have I heard from Norman Clark who was on the committee but could not be at the last meeting.

Thank you for your kind words about my support of Silk Hope - I hope folks from all over the county will feel that way too.

Silk Hope is a proud community. There is alot of history as generations of residents have attended the school. You understand this history and we appreciate it. We are all concerned about the upcoming Board of Education meeting. With Deborah McManus’s reaction on the 6th many are wondering if the Board members are going to reject the proposals and redraw the lines themselves. It is my hope you will not let this happen. We are all anxious for this redistricting process to come to an end.

I didn’t want to address funding (I wanted to stick to the site on this post) but since you want to insert it into every discussion and apparently are using it as an excuse to not do anything (i.e. “wait for the money to flow) I am forced to.

3 County Commissioners now are on record, as of today, with us as saying your statements on funding like “we have no money” are consistenly incomplete, innaccurrate and misleading. They are on the record with us refuting pretty much everything you have said about funding. The only reason why we don’t have all 5 on record as refuting your statements is that we haven’t heard directly from the other 2 yet (but we have been assurred that they feel the same way).

Your assertion that the county’s debt ceiling is tapped out, for example (which you have repeated over and over again), and therefore cannot build a school, is false, as our current debt ceiling includes the 44m for the high school.

You have made statements that the only viable option is waiting for a bond when in reality the BOC is planning to fund the school with COPs. Your assumptions are again, false.

If you don’t believe me on any of this - pick up the phone and call members of the BOC yourself right now. For the sake of the community I think you need to do this before Monday’s meeting. It seems there is a critical failure of communication. You say you don’t heed a chain of command, ok good - so just call Bob, Mike, Patrick, Carl or Tom (we did!). I believe they can all tell you the same thing in about 5 minutes and end this mass confusion once and for all.

The statement you made of “that’s news to me” unfortunately underscores the issue that you seem to be out of the loop in terms of understanding the BOC’s committment to funding, how much $ is available and even how the whole process works (BOC needs an actual, completed proposal to fund, they don’t give you a pile of money to then spend as you want). Coupled with your prolific public discourse it is causing a lot of confusion in the community - all of it really unnecessary.

I would suggest that you independently verify statements you make and also refrain from discussing funding, as it’s not your job, nor do you have anything do to with it, nor are particularly well informed on the subject.

Once this false presupposition of lack of funding is eliminated - the rest of your arguments are essentially made moot, since they all seem to be predicated on the “fact” that you have no funding. Once the reality is shown that funding does exist and the BOC is waiting for an actual proposal from BOE TO fund - it becomes apparent that the ball is in the BOE’s court - where it has been for a long time and where it remains to this day, efforts to point the finger in other directions not withstanding.

A good answer to the period of time for finding an alternate site would have been 6 mos. (you just essentially passed the buck again with your answer) this is what one BOC member is proposing. No matter what happens (what excuse, problem, unforseen incident) - the community needs to sense that there is a finite end game here and we aren’t stuck in a process that never completes (or what we’re in now). Equivocation on this drop dead date just isn’t going to be acceptable to people. We need a site approved in 6 mos. MAX. If you guys in the BOE can’t accomplish that you should collectively resign and allow new people to come in to get the job done. I’ve spoken to some that can say they can get the job done. - if you or others can’t do it, for whatever reason, you should give them a chance. At the meeting I would like a pledge to this timeframe. We won’t accept equivocation, vaccilliation and paralysis by analysis - which seems to pass for BOE workings now.

If you don’t believe members of this community are concerned, as you inferred in your opening line of your response, I welcome you to come to our next PTA meeting and you can tell them yourself you have no idea when next site will be approved. I believe you will see some concern expressed.

In terms of just “waiting for money to flow”. I believe the BOC is actually waiting for you/BOE to submit a school proposal for them (which still languishes in “committee”). Until they get this and a decision on the site there is not much they can do but hope, along with the rest of us, that the BOE can get it’s act together.

Has the BOE submitted a final proposal, made a decision on site, decided on a budget/cost? If not, what exactly is the BOC supposed to do - give you the money anyway? is that what you are really waiting for?

You are ignoring the information sent to your blog about funding limitations forced on the county by the Local Government Commission. Until that commission raises the county’s debt limit or until the county reduces the amount of debt, no school will be built.

The next point which needs to be considered is the handling of waste. Westfall (Booth Mountain) is not yet approved to handle more waste than its own development. That entire process will have to jump started as to state approvals. It makes no difference what the conditions were when the development was approved. If the state will not approve the waste handling upgrade of 15 gallons per student per day that is the end of it!
Governors Club as of today cannot handle their own waste on site on their golf courses and is seeking additional spray irrigation sites. The old agreement with Governors Club is as I wrote you earlier.

From your post: “Mike Cross and the other Commissioners walked the site again on Tuesday, and it is their opinion that any additional expenses associated with drainage, soil suitability etc… that you refer to will be far outweighed by the increased cost of acreage if they were to buy an alternative site. Patrick Barnes, one of the Commissioners, owns a construction company, and this is his professional opinion too.”

This is news but since they write the checks, it seems all of the other comments and efforts are reduntant and all we need do is wait for the money to flow, doesn’t it?

let me be the first to congratulate you on the grand opening of your blog. If more BOE/BOC members like yourself and Mike Cross used community outreach techniques like this, individual citizens like myself wouldn’t have to create our own http://www.wheresmyschool.com and could go about our lives.

Let me also thank you for your service on the BOE and to our country. I appreciate both as many of us do.

I will be contacting you privately to see if we can find some common ground - I think problem of no bid and also proposed costs is an area where we seem to agree. We will serve the community better by working together (at least on some issues) to push some shared agendas.

Anyway …

This is actually an excellent summary of the Jack Bennet site. It seems free of any prejudicial comments about this site I have seen in other places.

Essentially the community has only a few simple questions that need direct and unequivocal answers.

1) is this site build able. you have answered this “At this point there is agreement the site can be built”.

2) Having established the minimum threshold for acceptability, is this site the best one we have NOW? yes or no?

3b) If no, where is the better site that we could buy for anything close to $1,000 an acre? Is this even close to plausible?

3a) If yes, but we also want to consider alternatives that is fair. But what is the drop dead date for finding an alternative site before we decide we go with JB? Is it years? If so, the public needs to know this and understand that this site selection process is a de facto school rejection, at least for the foreseeable future. We don’t want any open ended commitments to site searches.

If we wait, what is the likelihood that a BETTER site can be found? if it’s close to 0% the public needs to know that too before we embark on what could be a multi year wild goose chase. if it’s 50/50, for example, that would be better but we would have to see some proof of these alternative sites.

This question boils down to one of relativity. We can’t afford to give an UP or DOWN on absolute terms on each site. “We like it”, “we don’t like it” etc. The county has wasted so much time we no longer have this luxury. We must approach this from a relative stand point - is this the best alternative (compared to realistic alternatives not visions of school site nirvana that simply doesn’t exist).

Perfection is the enemy of good. Striving for the perfect site can very well leave us with nothing (again) - which is my major concern.

I walked the site this week myself. I have read so many ominous inferences like “if you walked the site you’d know”, “you obviously haven’t walked the site” etc. Well I walked it up and down and back again. I was amazed that not only did I survive (vs falling into treacherous ravines or off the edges of cliffs) I had to walk off hundreds of meters even before hitting *any* slope. But I’m no site assessment expert and neither are most other people publicly commenting on the site viability. Let’s leave it to professionals like Patrick Barnes, who is in the construction business to render knowledgeable assessments.

Mike Cross and the other Commissioners walked the site again on Tuesday, and it is their opinion that any additional expenses associated with drainage, soil suitability etc… that you refer to will be far outweighed by the increased cost of acreage if they were to buy an alternative site. Patrick Barnes, one of the Commissioners, owns a construction company, and this is his professional opinion too.

The waste water is probably going to be treated by Booth Mountain, as this was a condition of the development’s approval, and they will do it at a cheaper cost than Gov. Club would.