"Closing is Last Resort"
School Board Meets
Oct 10, 2022
  The Pentagon's dog and pony shows continued during the Oct 10th Sch Bd meeting held at H E White Grade School. Parents, guardians, and supporters of our smallest rural school showed up in force for the public meeting.
  Unfortunately, maybe intentionally, with the meeting held in the echo prone gym and with the presenters up front, well away from the peanut gallery, it was hard to hear much of anything in the way of business dealings.  The only exceptions came when the speaker actually held the PA system mic close to their mouth.
  With the Nov 8th Excess Levy vote nearing, the whole point of this meeting was to have a captivated audience on hand to hear the plea. The plea was, is, we really really need for taxpayers to open their wallets further so the Pentagon can have even more green stuff while test scores are in the tank. Looking straight in the eyes of those in the gallery, Superintendent Paxton made the ask: we are already getting 70% of every property tax dollar coming from the county and we want more. He almost said the famous line, Greed is good!
  This time around (they lost their last Excess Levy vote in Jan 2022) there is a new approach.
  Instead of direct arm twisting, it's much more reserved. You won't hear, if you support our wasteful Excess, we will hire your relative nor has it been said, if you vote against the thang we will come after the no voters.
  Team Paxton has been caught in such rotten things in the past.
  Something was said that may have slipped under the radar of many.
  During Pretty Boy Paxton's 15 minute spiel in support of the fleecing, one person asked, will you keep H E White open???
  That's a sore subject for the attending parents who remember when the Pentagon did close the school not once but twice. It took a  costly Court battle to get it reopened. People have memories, strong memories.
  In response to the question, Paxton at first said, no school will be closed. Then came, the Levy gives us some wiggle room. And then and then, trying to cover his own butt and prevent getting lynched when the school is actually closed, Paxton, "closing is a last resort."
  For the 90 or so that attended this meeting and still reading these chicken scratchings, did you get that closing is a last resort part?
  For us, the getting some wiggle room is the cute part. The translation amounts to: with Levy $$$ we can do all kinds of stuff we want to do and there would be a few morsels dangled in front of the commoners.
   While at this poorly performing school, the Local School Improvement Council (LSIC) made their wishes known. They had four. The much need improvements were: they want new door handles with matching keys; they want an outdoor canopy to stand under; they want new bathrooms, and changes made to the front entrance to accommodate the school administration.
  There was not a peep on needing certified teachers, a library full of modern books, not a nary on advanced disciplines to raise the interest of the rug rats; and, well, anything else you can think of to improve education, there was no mention made.
  Guess they're happy with sucking hind teat.
  As the meeting was ending, a group of what looked like three delegations, headed off into secret time as did the entire Board.
  As best we can tell, the parents were upset over one bus driver's Hitler like discipline policy while kids are being transported. One parent objected to the driver telling kids they could not look out the windows. Another lady was peeed big time over the driver telling yard apes, they could not wear hoodies on those cold Winter mornings.
  Their solution, we want a new driver or this one retrained into something more attuned to the real world.
  How does the Pentagon handle such parents? About 99% of the time, they support the employee and tell parents to go back into their huts.
  But but but, with the Levy vote just three weeks away, the bosses would have been wiser to say something along the lines of, Oh Gee folks, we hear you loud and clear and YES we are investigating the allegations and YES, as soon as the investigation is complete we will tell ya.
  Of course that investigation would be completed the day after the Nov 8th election.
  Problem solved!
AW