In one of many all too typical agenda-driven examples of journalistic malpractice, The Pilot newspaper is warning that outspoken conservatives are infiltrating the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees.
Career educator and transparency champion BethAnn Pratt was appointed June 6 to the board of trustees by the Moore County Board of Commissioners on a 4-1 vote.
Pratt has not been seated, and thus has not attended a meeting, but already is being challenged as a potentially controversial choice. In May, the Moore County Board of Education appointed as a trustee conservative writer and Republican volunteer Steve Woodward, who was the subject of a Pilot editorial expressing concern that he is an unworthy appointee.
A gallery of exploding heads in the aftermath of these appointments seems fixated on radical ideas expressed by the new appointees during the 2020-22 Wuhan Virus lockdowns. Such as: Masks are ineffective and dangerous when worn by children. Virtual learning is a fallacy and will fuel depression and despair in children. Jabbing kids (and adults, for that matter) with experimental serums (that are not vaccines) poses an unimaginable threat to their long-term health and immunity.
Of equal concern is that Pratt and Woodward have been vocal advocates for education reform, parental rights within the education system, teacher accountability amid dreadful math and reading performances across all grades, and school accountability on spending and declining student discipline.
Verbal shots aimed at Pratt were swift in coming. Commissioner Frank Quis, who voted to re-elect Catherine Graham as a trustee, said his choice "would be a far better board member for the college" without elaborating.
Board of Trustees vice chair Larry Caddell told The Pilot he had no input on trustee appointments and is "praying" that the incoming trustees have the "best interest of the students in mind and this thing will not get political."
Caddell said trustees historically have held "the best interests of students" as a priority, as if to infer that reforming or re-thinking policy, budgeting and campus culture are mutually exclusive aims.
Ahead of the recent appointments, Moore County school board vice chair David Hensley reviewed minutes posted by the SCC trustees going back two years, and posted his findings on a Facebook page. The trustees often have not posted notice of meetings, and have met behind the gates of a private club, Forest Creek Golf Club. He also noted that newly hired SCC president Sandy Stewart resigned from the board of trustees one month before the college launched its search to replace retiring president John Dempsey.
Hensley also reported that an unpublished meeting in September 2022 resulted in a vote to hire an existing staff member who has assumed the title of Dean of Diversity and Campus Programs -- a position that did not heretofore exist.
Perhaps that explains vice chair Caddell's worry that new trustees will impose renewed scrutiny on the board's activities deemed to be "political".
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