The proposed $1.7 billion school bond is too much money for the schools to spend responsibly in a 10-year period, and that is the maximum amount of time the schools would have to spend the bond money.
The schools have barely touched the $300 million bond that was passed in 2020. If the schools were spending money on construction at the same rate as they will have to spend it if the $1.7 billion bond passes, the $300 million would already be gone and, one would hope, a lot of critical repairs to schools would have already been made.
Many of those promoting the $1.7 billion school bond speak of specific projects that will be completed if the bond passes. As many past bond supporters have discovered, if the bond passes, the Guilford County school board is not required to spend it on any project – regardless of promises made. The school board will only be limited by the short paragraph on the ballot that states that the money will be for school capital needs, including acquiring property.
The schools have already announced the plan to spend $21 million of COVID-19 relief money to build a facility for administrators and teachers to hold meetings. If schools are in such terrible shape, why isn’t that money being spent on repairing schools for the children?
Finally, although the money is reportedly lacking to do even the most basic repairs to schools, the school administration recently found the money to make renovations to the central office on North Eugene Street.
If the $1.7 billion bond doesn’t pass, another more reasonable bond can be placed on a future ballot and the schools can use the time to spend the $300 million in bond money they already have.
Yes!!! Thank you!!
https://www.takebackourschools-gcs.com/gcs-esser-funds
Thanks Stephanie. I checked out your link, and it’a an eye opener. Taking just one example, the previously approved bond of $300,000,000 appropriated $24 Million for “Project Management”. I don’t even know what that means, but I sure would like to be a “Project Manager”!
The Government School system is a slush fund for incompetent “educators” and bureaucrats.
The US education system is an international joke.
You are about self, not children. You are posing as a community grassroots organization, but you have a very national agenda…to dismantle public schools however you can. Shame.
Ah, so it’s not enough that you imply we’re uneducated, now you suggest that opponents of the bond are selfish and callous towards our children.
You won’t get anywhere with groundless smears and character assassination, dear. It’s you who should have some shame.
What part of the Government School system do you work in?
Great article .
I am not about to vote for giving the School Board $1.7B!. I don’t trust them to manage that kind of funding. As they are showing us all these schools that are in need of repairs, etc., i have to ask what have you been doing for the past 20 years? Yes, I know it take money to maintain these facilities but still what have you been doing? What are the board’s priorities? Not way i want to give them $1.7B, unless i can be the project manager!
What have they been doing?? Educating children! Buildings belong to the county, their maintenance is the responsibility of the county, NOT GCS. GCS has repeatedly dipped into the coffers that are supposed to be used to educate children, to fix buildings that aren’t their responsibility to fix. Become educated, please, before voting NO.
You might look down your nose at us uneducated oafs, but we reckon $1,700,000,000 is rather too much for a middling school system to borrow, so they can continue to spend money like a boatload of drunken sailors.
It’s not as if you do a good job educating the kids, is it?
More like a boatload of drunken liberals. Oh wait…
I thought that the state’s lottery was supposed to take care of schools. What has Guilford county been doing with all that money for all these years.
The Guilford County Schools budget for 2020-2021 is over $1 billion and $33 million of that was from the state’s lottery.
Use the money from the state’s lottery to fund the schools, that is why its called the education lottery. Correct that is a fact.
They lost me at solariums in a couple of the newer Guilford County high schools. What’s next-gold plated toilets?
Or as Oregon just passed, menstrual products in all boys restrooms with instructions from kindergarten thru High School. Yes that’s the state law pushed thru by the school systems. I would hope NC would not be as ignorant as other mostly Dem states but we did raise hell on bathrooms causing great loss of income and prestige to our state.
uh … “no”.
Count many of us out, as long as enormous sums of “education” money are being spent on advisors, managers, specialists, seminars, hand holders, ad infinitum. Invariably these tagalongs are cronies of the superintendent and crew, who follow them from system to system. How about getting your ship in order and educate the kids in the classical sense, giving them tools that lead to productive citizenhood. Leave the moralizing and philosophizing to the parental figures. Teachers have enough on their plate doing job #1 and many are still having to cough up their own dough to buy supplies last I heard.