Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / Aug. 4, 1994, edition 1 / Page 4
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Opinion Page THE BRUNSWKXftttACON Edward M. Swrntt and Carolyn H. Sweatt Publishers Edward M. Sweatt .Eklttor Lynn S. Carlson Managing Editor Susan Usher ? .. Jiews Editor Doug Rutter Sports Editor Eric Carlson Staff Writer Mary Potts & Peggy Earwood Office Managers Carolyn H. Sweatt Advertising Director Timber ley Adams. Cecelia Gore and Linda Cheers Advertising Representatives Dorothy Brennan and Brenda Clemmons Moore . .Graphic Artists William Manning.. Pressman Lonnle Sprinkle Assistant Pressman PAGE 4 -A. THURSDAY, AUGUST 4. 1994 Taxpayers Are Certain To Demand Accountability For 'Whole Ball Of Dough' The children deserve it. That argument apparently led to a ju ry's swift decision to hand the Brunswick County Board of Education the whole ball of dough in iLs court battle with the county commissioners last week. Speaking generally, there's no question that the youth of Brunswick County deserve more than they've been getting from the experience of attending public school. The blame for that lies many places, including the lap of a local population which sim ply has not valued and demanded top-quality education as it should have. Even in rural Brunswick, it's a new brave new world where fishin' and farmin' by themselves will neither sup port the economy nor keep the best and brightest young people here when they're grown. Until that undercurrent of apathy is history, the federal, state and county governments can pump all the dollars in the world into the system and still have too little to show for it. Without solid support from parents and the whole communi ty ? not the monetary kind of sustenance, but the being-there kind ? no school system can be more functional than a three legged chair. To borrow an idea from elsewhere on this page, if money alone could solve problems, the IRS would be compas sionate, the postal service would be efficient and the Pentagon would be thrifty. Contrary to lofty ruminations in daily newspaper editorials, the problems of poor test scores, run-down buildings and obso lete equipment ? though they all exist ? cannot be blamed on mean, miserly old county commissioners who hate children and whose favorite sports are saying no and hanging out in court. That's a simplistic point of view no one could have who's really been paying attention to events on this side of the river. This and previous boards of commissioners have resisted raining unchecked tax dollars on the public schools, not just in deference to the annual feud tradition. There is a genuine doubt in the minds of more than a few Brunswick Countians about how their education tax dollars have been spent in the past, and there's evidence to justify those feelings. When they hear educators de fending the system s needs, they don't get plain English ? they get "Eduspeak," a maze of jaigon that sounds suspiciously like all bureaucratic song-and-dance designed to separate you from your money. They are skeptical about Superintendent Johnston's "bottoms-up" budget plan, not because of any ill feelings toward the superintendent, but because they've been made promises be fore about how just this much more money will solve some prob lem or another. But it worked on the jury, and that's all that counts. There's not much reason to believe the decision or award will be changed. And most Brunswick Countians ? with and without kids in the public school system ? probably agree that if paying 10 cents more on the hundred gives the community's children a better future, it will have been worth it. Those whose doubts linger will be watching closely and ex pecting profound changes, not just in their tax statements but throughout the Brunswick County Schools. The children deserve it, and the people paying the tab do, too. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Learn From Misfortune , Capsized Boaters Advise To the editor: Our gratitude goes out to the Shallotte Volunteer Rescue Squad who responded to our boat accident in the Intracoasta! Waterway at Long Beach July 4. In light of our devas tating total loss of the boat and a lot of personal items, God was a pas senger on our boat that evening, and no one had major injuries. The Shallotte Volunteer Rescue Squad ambulance boat was in front of us and a smaller rescue boat was behind us when we went down. The young people on these rescue boats were going to Southport to enjoy the fireworks, as we were, when a pon toon broke off our boat and all seven people aboard ended up in the water. TTie volunteers on both rescue squad boats immediately responded to our dilemma and assisted each of us out of the water and onto unt of their boats. They were extremely helpful, sympathetic and profession al in their handling of this situation. After helping the people out of the water, they took the time to gather our belongings, at least the ones that were floating in the water. They then took us to a nearby dock and called the U.S. Coast Guard for us. Our thanks to each of them for their con cern. We urge each person who has a pontoon boat to check with the man ufacturer to make sure it is salt wa ter approved. According to the man ufacturer of our boat, it was not salt water approved, but we had no way of knowing this because there was nothing on the boat to indicate it was not for use in salt water. Apparently cadmium bolts were used to attach the pontoons to the deck, and these bolts failed due to a chcmical reaction with salt water, re sulting in a pontoon coming off and tbe boat sinking in a matter of about 30 seconds. Please, wc urge you to check your boat so that you might prevent an accident like this from happening to you. Bill and Frances Cierpiot Long Reach (More Letters, Following Page) Write Us >*fc welcome your letters to the editor. Letters must have an origi nal signature and must indude your address and telephone num ber. (This information is for veri fication purposes only; we will not publish your street/mailing address or phone number.) Letters must be typed or written legibly. Address letters to: The Brunswick Beacon P.O. Box 2558 ShaOette N? 28459 Anonymous letters will not be published. One Parent Screams Into The Void As I write this, a jury is deliberat ing the case between the Brunswick County Commissioners and Board of Education. By the time you read this, the school system v~" have re ceived cither a nice piece of change or a good comeuppance. I don't fully understand the rela tionship between tax dollars and academic achievement. Nor, I sus pect. do you or the judge or the cadre of assistant superintendents whose names are engraved on the schools' administration's letterhead. But I know one important thing. I know what it's like to be a frustrated parent who can't seem to get an an swer. Here's my story: My son transferred into the Brunswick County school system this pas: January, having attended kindergarten through half the tenth grade in the Henderson and Dare County public schools. In all those years, I had exactly two beefs, both minor, with those school systems ? one involving lunch money and the other a problem on the bus. I made phone calls and wrote let ten, as any concerned parent would, and both times got a response ? not necessarily what 1 wanted or thought was fair, but a response, and a prompt one. Lynn Carlson This year the problem was more serious. I had two concerns about one of my son's classes ? the first being that after five months, he had received no grades in it. The second was that he did not appear to be learning anything about the subject. I was assured by my son, his friends, parents of other students, and even by two teachers, that this was because he wasn"' being taught anything in that particular class. I should have listened to the stu dent who showed us around on the day my son enrolled in Brunswick County. He warned, "Don't let them put him in (her) class ? he won't leam a thing. It's a zoo in there." But I advised my son not to ask for a schedule change on his first day, that it wouldn't be right to pre judge a teacher on the basis of one student's allegations. My son immediately liked his new school, even though it was vast ly larger and more culturally diverse than the small, nurturing Cape Hat teras School and the bucolic Edney ville School, surrounded by apple orchards at the foot of Bcarwallow Mountain. I was pleased not only by his ease of transition, but by the con cern and professionalism of his school's guidance staff and all his teachers except the aforementioned. On May II I expressed my con cerns about that one class, in writ ing. to the assistant principal, bal ancing my complaint by telling him how impressive the other teachers had been. Never heard back from him. A couple of weeks later. I spoke with one of the assistant superinten dents who saiJ he'd look into the matter and get back to me. He didVt bother. Then I wrote the Superintendent Himself, the head guy, eiiclosing a copy of my letter to the assistant principal. Again no reply, not even an acknowledgement that he got the letter. My son finally got a grade, a passing one. It came on that last re port card, the one they send by mai! after school adjourns for the year. I'm still convinced he didn't learn anything in the class, but even that's not the end of the world. He'll just have to double up somewhere else down the line to make up for a se mester lost in "the 7.00." The point is this: As I told superintendent, way down here in the private sector, we don't have the luxury of ignoring our public. If a reader comes in with a grievance. I'm expected to hear it. and I do. If there appears to be a le gitimate goof. I'm expected to make it right, and to let the reader knew I have done so. If there's nothing I can do. I'm expected to explain why. Period. No excuses accepted. I've asked people with close ties to the schools how it could be that three administrators up the chain of command would deliberately ignore any parent's sincere verbal and writ ten concerns. Some have speculated that because the teacher has tenure (for reasons I'd love to hear justi fied), there's nothing they can do and prefer not to admit to that. Others have said it's because ad ministrator? assign a higher priority to scrapping for bucks than they do to the parents and other taxpayers who cough up those bucks. Either way. I'd call it a truly sorry state of affairs. Either way. I'd say if you or I operated our businesses that way, we'd sink like a stone. *4 Oo\ here b ihe courfru, f+ 's okay fo haul kWs fn ihe back of a pi'N? frvekll % Wi ?> IW crtoum crmws Something Funny Going On In There If you have any teenage children, or can still remember being one yourself, imagine the familiar sce nario of parents pulling into the dri veway an hour earlier than the youthful inhabitants expect. As you walk toward the front door you hear a mad scurrying in side. like roaches fleeing a late-night kitchen visitor: running footsteps, doors slamming, furniture being moved about. Then you enter and find ? to your amazement and satisfaction ? that your young cherubs are all studious ly engaged in some worthwhile, nur turing endeavor, like reading Shake speare or watching Masterpiece Theater. It's not until weeks later that you discover one of your antique end ta bles balanced on a broken leg, a fa vorite porcelain pitcher with a han dle clumsily glued back on, a strange stain on the carpet under a throw rug. When you ask your young ones about these curiosities, they simply shrug innocently and say. "Gee. I guoss that must have happened a long time ago." I have a hunch our United States Senators and Congressfolks are be having a lot like those teenagers these days. And in few years, we are going to experience the same sink ing feeling about what they've really been up to. Take thr nuch-touted crime bill, for example. The one that Attorney General Janet Reno claims "will make our streets and neighborhoods safer" by encouraging urban gang members and crack dealers to play late-night basketball instead of get ting rich by robbing people and sell ing drugs. The crime bill is supposed to do some good things, like build more prisons and hire more police. But 1 have a sinking feeling that the first priority will be to make sure the S7.4 billion designated for "crime prevention" gets into the hands of big-city politicians who need some dough to line up more patronage jobs (i.e. votes) for re-clection cam paigns. This legislation also includes the first phase of a carefully orchestral Eric Carlson cd effort to outlaw private firearms ownership. The so-called "assault weapons" ban is described time and time again by the President, the tele vision news networks and every newspaper on earth as a prohibition against "19 types" of military style weapons. This is a lie. One they love to tell. At one time or another, all those news services have reported that the legislation actually outlaws hun dreds of currently legal firearms de signs and millions of ammunition magazines. Yet after once acknowl edging the truth, they continually ig nore it and propagate the falsehood. Which gives me a sinking feeling there may be other unpleasant things in the crime bill that we won't dis cover until it's too late. Now, like lemmings to the sea, the honorable* are falling over each other to adopt some kind (any kind!) of health care legislation before the next election. As if life as we know it will cease to exist if their efforts are thwarted by those who take a go slow approach. Why is that? Could there be bro ken table legs and carpet stains they don't want us to discover until we are forced to pay for them? For that matter, what does anyone REALLY KNOW about the count less ever-changing versions of pend ing health care legislation? The only thing we can be sure of is that the front -running proposals would cre ate the largest tax -funded bureaucra cy the world has ever seen. Another thing is certain. The most powerful political action committees in the country ? representing hospi tals (a $4<W billion industry), doc tors ($195 billion), pharmaceutical manufacturers ($HX> billion) and in surance companies ($62 billion) ? aren't throwing big buckets of mon ey at legislators for nothing. I have a sinking feeling they wi!' want something in retu.-n. Call it a piece of the pie. A tas<y dessert pur chased with our money, whctlic; through taxes, employer mandate.: or perhaps a health-care lottery. It seems every person 1 talk t j has a problem with what little th^y un derstand about health care reform as currently conceived. So do 1. Take employer mandates, for x ample. This might sound like a great idea to anyone who has never been an employer: "Oh boy! I get free health insurance while the mean old boss pays for it." Sorry, folks, it ain't gonna wc-k that way. We will all pay for it, one way or another. Lynn and I had the misfortune of running a small business once. One that barely kept its head above water (on good months). We employed a handful of people we struggled to keep on the payroll while seeking someone (anyone) to buy us out. If we had been required to pro vide health i'.isurance to all employ ees, we would have been forced to lo-.k the door immediately. Period. No doubt about. Our employees m rvuld still have to find some way to pay for their own health care ? while at the same time looking for another job. Let's face it. The only reason Congress is in such an all-fired hur ry to pass health care legislation is to prevent you and me from express ing an opinion about their efforts at the next election. Powerful incumbents who stand to profit most from doling out (he proceeds of a bloated nationalized health care system ? like a certain N.C. Representative who wants to be Speaker of the House ? are justi fiably afraid that not enough voting allies will return to assure them the keys to the cupboard. Hence the scurrying behind closed doors. Worth Repeating "Fame, " OJ. said, walking along, "is a vapor, popularity is an accident and money lakes wings. The only thing that endures is character. " " Where 'd you get that from ? " Cowlings asked. "Heard it one night on TV in Buffalo, " OJ. said. "I was watching a late hockey game on Canadian TV and all of a sudden a guy just said it. Brought me right up out of my chair. I never forgot it. " ? Paul Zimmerman Sports Illustrated, Nov. 26, 1979 The compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service at Pentagon prices: that 's health care reform. ? bumper sticker / have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it ? a l~w trade and a hahit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world fidl of misfits and drunkards and failures. A group photo of the top ten journalists of America on any given day would he a monument to human ugliness. ? Hunter S. Thompson
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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Aug. 4, 1994, edition 1
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