Perhaps in the oppressive heat I missed the part where it is law that elected officials are supposed to do everything you want them to do.
Perhaps with a 90-some degree sun shining on my balding head I missed the part where a logical defense for school merger was presented today.
All I heard was the same old song and dance, that merger will be a good thing for Halifax County.
I still don’t see it. What I saw today was a school system with little self-confidence, lacking in or not having the ability to hoist up the bootstraps and gain the trust of the Halifax County commissioners with its own resources.
There is nothing particularly wrong with the education students are getting there. One of the speakers, Trequan McGee, has been accepted to North Carolina A&T State University this fall and should not worry that he graduated from a high school in the county school system but know he could be on his way to great things.
Two of my favorites attorneys in the area are products of the Halifax County school system and it hasn’t thwarted their goals and objectives in any way.
Perhaps because I didn’t wear my ultra-cool Sam Snead straw hat in the heat today, I thought I heard that Weldon City Schools is being used by the Roanoke Rapids Graded School District like chess pawns and that Roanoke Rapids simply hides behind closed doors, afraid to show their faces like members of the KKK.
The last I remember, Roanoke Rapids Superintendent Dennis Sawyer and Weldon Superintendent Elie Bracy III stood together before commissioners in September of 2011 and issued a joint statement against school merger.
If Bracy was an unwilling participant, it sure didn’t look like it and it sure didn’t look like Sawyer was hiding behind any mask when he and his Weldon counterpart shared the spotlight that day.
The one thing that bothers me in this debate is the most important thing that is merely broached in these discussions — that there are children who live in the Becker Farms area that can’t go to school in Roanoke Rapids. That’s the major thing that needs to be addressed in this merger debate. There’s no good reason in this day and time why that can’t and shouldn’t happen.
Perhaps it’s the oppressive heat making my brain bake, but Vernon Bryant and Rives Manning aren’t the problems here. Manning is an astute commissioner who asks the tough questions and steps on toes regardless of who’s doing the talking and saying Bryant owes a debt to Roanoke Rapids is like saying I should report on just stuff you want to hear.
The problem is simply that the Halifax County school system has yet to gain the trust of the board of commissioners and the public or perhaps that’s just the heat frying my good senses to ashes — Lance Martin