HomeMy WebLinkAboutC.054.93009_0991 (2)(9)
Haire: Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would like to express our appreciation for the
committee's many hours they have spent on this study. We realize that all of you are very
busy, professional, qualified people.
McCall: Again, I commend the committee. I cannot accept the total report, because there
was a rush to develop it.
Stewart: I don't want to open this meeting back up; however, I would like to put in my two
cents worth. I have sat here trying to find space to make my comments without rudely
interrupting someone else. It's obvious that some have had more time to say things than
others. I do have a comment about your section called Local Control Finding, specifically it
reads, "Section 22, Public Education, of Coup v Government in North Carolina, Third
Edition, states that the State assumed primary responsibility for financing the systems of
elementary and secondary schools in the 1930's. The General Assembly has delegated
financial responsibility for certain areas of public education to the counties in the years that
followed. Along with the State funds and Federal funds have come burdensome mandates,
time consuming reporting, expanded non-academic staff requirements, social
experimentation, and a revisionist and politically correct and rigidly aligned curriculum.
Each of these elements support the status quo and deter the efforts to reform the local
educational process. Fortunately, emerging State and Federal legislative intiatives call for
the dismantling of the educational bureaucracy and a rapidly increasing emphasis upon local
control." Your recommendation is that every potential means should be undertaken to gain
and exercise the maximum amount of local control over public education. I'd like some
interpretation. When you say maximum amount of local control, do you mean by this
board? Do you mean by your committee? Do you mean by a set-up board or somebody that
supersedes this board or that board?
Miller: The statement is pretty straightforward. I am sure everyone has been reading that
the Dept. of Public Instruction has increased local control.
Stewart: You don't see any legal ramifications?
Miller: This is the direction that our state is proceeding towards, and I think if it was
researched you would find this is going on nationally. I am not an attorney, but this is
clearly the direction.
Long: On a funding level this is the direction, but there are still some mandated funds that
we have to get waivers on.
Adjournment: At 8:55 p.m., Mr. Long recessed the meeting for a short break for the I -S
School Board and dismissed the Education Study Committee and the Iredell County Board of
Commissioners.
ean Moore
Clerk to the Board
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