This Is Not Iran

Thank you Caroline Avery!

BCPSS School Board Meeting - June 30, 2009

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. The law requires that you give me this opportunity …. but – recognize this – I never take this right for granted.

Maybe, that is something that this school board has done for this community ---- you have woken us up and forced us to recognize how fragile our rights as US citizens really are when elected officials choose to abuse their power.

I have watched you deny public comment, limit public comment and intentionally shut down public comment by creating “new rules” and holding meetings at inappropriate times for working families.

As most of you know, I have watched this school board since December of 2007. I started off this quest looking for the good, the true and the noble. I have been sorely disappointed. I also underestimated the amount of damage that a new majority could do to our schools in such a short amount of time.

I have watched this community hushed as a member of this school board had the school district map lines re-drawn with no authorization from the majority of this board. I still question how that happened.

I have watched this school board try to prevent our AP students from reading Pulitzer Prize winning novelists … and try to silence the students and their parents when they publicly spoke out against the actions of this board.

I have seen members of this school board treat some of the best and brightest in our system with disdain and disrespect … it has caused me to wonder if there are members of this school board who lack respect for higher education?

I have watched as an administration is cleaned out … and a new and bigger administration is hired. All of this, during tough economic times …

Burke County has an unemployment rate of about 15% … this community is hurting … our nonprofits are hurting … we are working together to try and help one another.

Everyone is making sacrifices.

What is this board doing? What sacrifices are you modeling to this community?

Hiring more administrators? Firing much needed teachers and teacher assistants? And now …. considering buying out the contract of the evil and wicked David Burleson? Evil and wicked??? – this is a man who just won almost $6 million in federal grants for our schools over the next 4 years, a man who is a hero to many students and parents in our schools, a man who has devoted most of his adult life to the BCPSS.

Not exactly a villain.

Yet, you have an extra $170,000 to pay 2 Superintendents for another year???? Tell that to our school employees who lost their job. Tell that to the parents who have children in bigger classes now.

Maybe $170,000 is not a lot of money to you … well, it is to me … and I’ll bet it is to many people in this room … and I know it is to many in our community.

I ask you – PLEASE take your time. Be intentional, be careful and be very deliberate with what you do with OUR money. You have been entrusted with the funds of Burke County taxpayers. Please take that responsibility SERIOUSLY.

Do not forget - you asked for this responsibility.

To whom much has been given much is expected.

Thank you.

Caroline Avery