MINUTES OF CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
26 JULY 2011
Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by ERIC BROYLES, Vice President
Pledge of Allegiance led by ERIC BROYLES
Invocation was given by RON MANNING
Number of Attendees – 23
ERIC reported that President BOB CAVANAUGH had called him to report he was under the weather and unable to attend tonight’s meeting.
NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, reported that we have $1,247.00 in the treasury.
OLD BUSINESS –
ERIC reported that he had attended the Carteret County Board of Commissioners meeting last night. The school budget that they approved was a little higher than what they had initially proposed – $18,257,000.00 and they went ahead and increased it to $19,257,000.00. This was partly due to the gas costs for the buses. They did do one other thing on this – allow a contingency fund of $500,000.00 which will be managed by the county commissioners and if the school board needs additional money they will have to put in an application for that money and it will be reviewed on a case by case basis. The board also asked the school to submit quarterly financial reports to them. It appears that some additional money has been found ($5.5 million) surplus from somewhere. ERIC said he did not know if this was a result from some stimulus money they had sitting somewhere, but that was the amount that came out in the meeting. More information will probably come out later. KEN said “Maybe that is what he (Novey) had left after he fired all those teachers.” (laughter) ERIC said you could not ask any questions. It was very brief. The other good news is they did not increase the county budget from last year. (applause) ERIC feels that all our letters to the editor, phone calls, etc. helped. The Board of Commissioners held their ground. HOWARD GARNER said “Now we need to thank them!” (agreement) ERIC said maybe we should have a letter written from the TEA Party thanking them for being fiscally responsible for their role in this. Someone asked about the C4 group and ERIC said we were not through with the C4 group yet; the head of C4 is now head of the group fighting the proposed sulfur plant. Someone asked, “What was the deal on the surplus money discovered from the schools?” ERIC said he really could not elaborate on that, since he did not understand the situation himself. He understands that the schools (school board) carry money over from year to year; however, he was unable to ask any questions there. The board presented their information and went immediately into closed session. Question was raised, “How can we find out more information about this?” ERIC said he thought we could call the school system or call the county commissioners, and say, “Look I heard something about a $5.5 million school surplus and I am just trying to understand what it is”. ERIC perceives it to be just money left over. The school board kept telling the commissioners that there was going to be an $8 million shortfall. Question was raised, “How was this surplus discovered?” ERIC said “They did not say.” All he heard was a little tidbit about it, so yes he thinks we should look into it; maybe even call the newspaper to find out what they know about it. KEN asked “Did the commissioners bring it up in the meeting or did the schools?” ERIC said the commissioners brought it up. He thinks the county’s accounting department some how got a hold of this budget and just tore it to shreds.
HOWARD asked if he meant the school systems budget. ERIC said “yes”. ERIC said he didn’t know how they found it; maybe it was money in this bank and that bank, here and there.
The reason everyone was so interested was some members had read in the paper that in Greensboro they also had found a surplus of $6 million. ERIC said it was more than that they had said they were $30 million in the hole, and ended up with a $10 million in surplus. It is the consensus that this is going on all over the state. ERIC said this is true but you always have to have some monies in reserve for emergencies. While part of the money may be that, he couldn’t swear to it, since they did not specify where it was from or what it had been for. Member said about 15 or 20 years ago Wake County was complaining about how they never had enough money in the coffers to even fuel the school buses, etc. Come to find out about a month or two before the dead line came and they had to do something about that deadline deficit, they found a $6 million surplus that they had set back for rainy days. So he is thinking this stuff goes on all the time, they just don’t want people to know about it. ERIC said the good news is our commissioners looked into it, said OK, maybe some expenses have gone up, like gas, so therefore the increase. And they did instill the emergency contingency fund, so that if the schools need additional funds, they have to come to the commissioners, which is good. Maybe we can have a better handle on school funds.
WAYNE WILLIS said someone was here at one of our meetings six months or so ago talking about the state budget and same problems with shortfalls, in the hole $3 billion. The guy (can’t remember who it was) said that out of some piece of money that Governor Bev Perdue had that wasn’t on the table, (in a drawer somewhere), several millions of dollars, and she could dip into that money and do whatever was wanted and didn’t have to go through all the legislature, etc. ERIC said ‘on top of that Robin Comer said Novey has been talking about laying off teachers. That was their argument. If you don’t give us the money, we lay off people. Commissioner Comer said if you review your budget, you’ll find you have more than enough money to pay these teachers; you will not have to lay even one off. ERIC said from what he had seen the schools have not been very responsible in handling their money. HOWARD said they haven’t for years; this is nothing new.
PCS –
ERIC said if you haven’t read the newspaper in the last 2 or 3 weeks, you have missed out on a lot of good articles about the PCS situation. EULA PARKIN said how did we like PCS’s nice insert in Sunday’s paper. That must have cost a bundle. ERIC said the General Manager of PCS (the one that runs the plant and oversees all operations) called him and he had a nice little conversation with him. ERIC told him, ‘What he was telling him was a lot different from what the local scientists, doctors, etc., had been saying’. The Manager said he would be willing to come and talk to our group; so, if we have an interest, we can do that. He did not accept the invitation, because he (the Manager) will be speaking to the crowd Friday. KEN said he had heard from Pat McElraft about the meeting, and that PCS did not have to have this meeting. They really should have already had the meeting early-on while they were doing the environmental assessment, but they didn’t. A public meeting is not required under an environmental assessment. Somebody in the state had to make the decision and say, ‘well all you got to do is an environmental assessment, you don’t need to do a whole environmental impact statement’, which would have required a public hearing. Question was raised ‘did anyone know why the decision was made to bring this to Morehead City rather than keep it in Aurora. It would appear that it would be more costly to ship the phosphate to Morehead, process it and then return it to Aurora.’ ERIC said he had asked the Manager that question, but he had not really answered it. ERIC said he had flat out asked him why they wanted to build here, why not in Aurora right near their facility already in operation. With no actual response, ERIC concluded that they were having a lot of problems in Aurora, and the reason they don’t want to do it there, is because they are coming close to wearing out their welcome there. The meeting, previously referred to, is this Friday, July 29, 6:00 pm, in the West Carteret school auditorium. But ERIC thinks the turnout might be so great that they may have to have it in the gym and move the bleachers, which will then accommodate about 2,000 people. Someone asked why not the Civic Center? ERIC said the Civic Center is not available and that is why they are doing it at West Carteret High. Remember 6:00 pm, Friday, July 29, if anyone is interested in attending.
SCHOOL STANDARDS –
ERIC said for several weeks he has been investigating and writing articles to the newspaper about the quality of education our children is getting. Since 2005 seven schools have dropped in their ratings. In an article published in the last ten days in the Carteret Times, they also pointed out that only six of our eighteen schools made the AYP (annual year performance) ratings set by the federal government. The year before, they made them all. Something to be said here folks, I don’t think we are getting the bang for our bucks. I don’t know if you noticed but we are the number 12 county in the state, in how much citizens pay per child. We are paying almost a $1,000 bucks more than most counties per child. The state is still something like 47 out of 50. I don’t think we are getting our monies worth, I’m sorry. I think our educational standards are slipping. I think teachers are more interested in passing the kids on the tests than really teaching the fundamentals of math, reading and writing. Someone at a recent meeting said that the schools were now letting the children take the tests several times until he or she passes. After one of the meetings he, ERIC, had spoken to, the principal of a county school came up to talk with him; since he had mentioned that that school was substandard, and she didn’t like that too much. She asked ‘where are you getting your numbers from?’ So I pulled out a stack of printouts, handed them to her and told her that her school web site says so. When she started looking at it, she said well you know they changed the test in 2007. ERIC said ‘Welllll’, if you had been teaching the basics of principles of reading, writing and arithmetic, the kid should have been prepared, it shouldn’t make any difference in which test you use as long as you teach the principles. So tell the truth, you are teaching the test, right; you are teaching the test aren’t you? She finally admitted he was right.’ (Where- upon someone in the TEA Party group spoke up about the scandal in Georgia where the teachers have even changed the students’answers. Others said ‘don’t bet on it not happening here in Carteret. ERIC said he had demanded they post the overall scores per teacher. So, if you were a first grade teacher they post your scores on reading, writing, and arithmetic. ABC’s as they are called. Not each student’s performance but the overall class performance. The response he got back was they could not do that, because it violates the confidentiality of the teacher. Question? How are we supposed to find out what the kids are doing if we can not find out what the teacher is doing. How can we evaluate each teacher as to the job he/she is doing. We can’t do it. If they are just teaching the test and every kid taking the test makes a good grade, the teacher could still be the lousiest teacher in the world and still we wouldn’t know. That is the reason ERIC wants the grades posted. If you are doing your job, you should have nothing to hide. EULA, said as a former teacher, she finds it depends on the students and their parents. The best year she ever had, the majority of the kids had a mother and a father who had higher than a grade school or middle school education. The kids would come in with reports that would boggle her mind because they had the support of their parents. Without the parents behind the students, the teacher can only do so much. ERIC said true, the parents are somewhat to blame. ERNIE GUTHRIE said the primary, elementary and middle school students are falling behind and by the time they get into high school they just get pushed on. And that is what is happening. He’s not blaming it on the teachers in the lower grades, but in a way he is. ERIC said the only way he could come up with anything is to test the kids. He has been before the county commissioners and asked that they do independent testing on kids in the 4th in reading and writing. Those are the two most important (math is important, don’t get him wrong) but if they can’t read and they can’t write, they’re ruined. A member recommended that when a kid comes into school they be tested on their reading, writing and math skills, and then you can judge what they have learned at the end of the year. Then you know if Susie over here and Johnny over there are slow or have a learning problem, and you know where to place the emphasis. PAT said she understands they do have this type of testing in the schools. They do it at the beginning of the year to determine where they are. And then they take the test again in the middle of the year. If you have a slow student, it shows up, then you can pull teachers in and you can have certain classes just for those students. PAT said they already do that. They have teachers who work with those type of students. When we went to school, we did not have a music teacher, art, PE, guidance counselors, or any other specialized teachers. Our home room teacher was it. Look at the school day today. It is totally interrupted and broken up. A teacher told her that just as you get started with something, the students have to go leave for another subject. It is all about making kids feel better about themselves, and we don’t want them to feel different. It’s all this PC (political correctness) out there, so what they do is put these kids, with all kinds of problems, into a class together and the teacher has to deal with it. Instead of taking these kids with problems (including students who have English for a second language), put them into another classroom. ERIC said he understands that all kids are different; some really excel, others are average, and some just get by. PAT said they are afraid to “tag ‘em”. KEN said PAT is right, it is the PC stuff that comes from the top down, (federal, state, etc). You have requirements being passed down from the federal government to the state government to the local schools. They should let the local schools run their local schools, because as you start getting further and further up they start worrying about all this ‘touchy/feely’ that screws the whole system up. PAT said if you have a day that is not interrupted, a teacher can teach a lot more in a shorter amount of time. They currently have so many interruptions in a day, it is hard to maintain consistency of subjects. EULA said she knew of a student that graduated from West Carteret High School that could not read. ERIC said this was his fear. I see the slope going down like this – It’s been going down for years, but the merging of slow students with higher level of learning students has really destroyed the class. The smarter students get bored and lose interest, while the teacher is forced to spend more time with the slower student. PEGGY said “we are dumbing them down”. ERNIE said one of the reasons for the PC is called the Columbine Scare. Because if we stigmatize students with being slow or a problem, then they may turn around and one day bring a gun to school and shoot everyone in sight. PC was another reason for integration. It was thought that the whites had better teachers and so therefore the schools became integrated giving all students access to the ‘better’ teachers. PAT said even Thomas Sole felt this was a bad idea. It put more pressure on the black children to have to try to at least keep up. Today, we find more and more the blacks are moving back to wanting their own schools, communities, etc. They are more comfortable that way. You put a bunch of people with different cultures, different ways, etc., they do not understand each others differences and therefore are uncomfortable and desire to return to their own. ERNIE said ‘the ruling class’s’ idea is if they can get everyone; all races, ethnicity, etc., crammed together and make them all alike, then we come closer to their idea of one world. ERIC said the thing we need to remember is to keep the pressure on our schools, and make sure our kids get a good education. If we are going to have to pay for it, we should demand it. It had been mentioned about someone going to the school board and get an agenda of what the schools were teaching. You will have a hard time doing that. ERIC said they have a lot of pressure on them now and know that people are watching their every move. KEN said the curriculum is made out and given to the kids. Unless you have a kid in school, you can not just automatically get a copy. KEN said the school has a very extensive web site and maybe it is posted there. The web site is hard to navigate, which has been one of his objections to it. PAT said the agendas are posted there. KEN said he thought we could find a lot of the stuff we were looking for there. He said he does know if you pick up the phone and call Tabbie Nance’; that she will send you whatever you want. Everything he has asked for from her she has complied except on one occasion. Why she couldn’t that one time, he did not know. Doesn’t even remember what the topic was now. ERIC said one time when he had called for information (not Tabbie) he had been informed that the system they had was very archaic and hard to get the info from. The system might be at least 15 years old, at least. ERIC said the responses he had gotten would be posted on our web site, so take a look at it. Personally he thinks we should get more involved in our school system.
WAYNE WILLIS said when he was working on the beginnings of the history game he has designed, one of his biggest questions was “what is going on now?” in the school system; so he went and talked to the Asst. Superintendent Matt Bottoms. Mr. Bottoms asked him to hurry and get that thing on DVD so they can use it for history testing in the class rooms. WAYNE asked him what was in the book that they were teaching history from now. Mr. Bottoms called the Principal at East Carteret and told them to give Wayne anything he wanted/needed to help with developing the program. WAYNE didn’t want them to give him the books, just loan them to him. They gave him three books that were essentially what he thought of as Atlas type books, and the Encyclopedia Britannica; which is basically what they were. There was very little of the most important things that should be taught to be found in the thousand or so pages in each. No wonder they are not teaching history if this is what they are using to teach. It was boring and not worth even having. The books probably cost fifty or seventy-five dollars apiece and it was obvious none of the kids were going to read 3000 pages of that. They only take the subject once a semester during their junior year of high school. Bottom line is if you want to know what is being taught in the schools, then go to the school and request to borrow a copy of the text books they are using. If you talk nice to them and just say you want to see what is going on they might loan you a copy or say they don’t have them, but they do. They always have a few extras of the books they are using whether it is a math, science, or whatever. He thinks it is a good idea for anyone who has the time to do it. Then we can see what is supposedly being taught and the quality of information available. ERNIE said when he went to school, they did not go through the whole book, usually only about a third of the information and material. Just the basic stuff. In doing further study after he graduated he found a statement by Thomas Jefferson that he definitely had not heard in school…’That two equal races can not live under the same government and that government last for any length of time.’ You will not see this in any text book being used. It has been left out.
VETTING THE CANDIDATES –
ERIC said on August 2, 2011, Mayor Jerry Jones will be speaking to us, presenting his platform as to why he should be re-elected at Mayor of Morehead City.
On August 16, 2011, Councilman David Horton will be presenting his platform as to why he should be elected Mayor of Morehead City.
CONSTITUTION WEEK –
NANCY BOCK said in 2004 Congress passed a law that required the public schools to teach the Constitution. Last year in 2010 someone in Florida went to their school board and asked them about the law and wanted to know what that school’s plan was for teaching the Constitution and the school did not have any plans, nor did they even know about the law. The TEA Party Patriots have come up with a plan that involves three letters. She has written the first letter on June 7. She did not do it as a TEA Party Patriot, although she did mention what the TEA Party had found out in Florida last year. On July 6 she got an email from Tabbie Nance that said she had brought this to Dr. Novey’s attention and would share with Matt Bottoms. The next step will be the second letter. She wants to know how we want to pursue this. If we are interested we can go to the TEA Party Patriots page and there is a link to US History Constitution. You can go there and see about the letter she wrote and read more about it. Constitution week is September 17. They have some leeway; they can either teach it the week before or the week after. The program can be broken down according to age group. She would like some input as to how we should pursue this; go to the central office to determine if they are going to order this material; if they are going to give it to their teachers; and give the teachers time to review it. She wants to know if there is anyone who is passionate enough to join Kenny and her in pursuing this project. WAYNE said the superintendent of schools has the option of what books to buy. In other words you do not have to go to the State Board of Education and let it filter down through the many layers of bureaucracy. You can go right to the schools and they have a budget for that. ERIC wanted to know if the second letter should come from the TEA Party. NANCY said she had had no response from any one except Tabbie. If we don’t hear from them soon, we need to go down and tell them we sent them information on Constitution Week and have not heard from them and would like to know where they stand. NANCY said if they already have something in play then they should be able to answer that letter right now. NANCY said maybe we could give it another week or two. KEN said he thought she should at least call Tabbie and let her know we have not heard from anyone else. ERIC said he could call as Vice President of the TEA Party and let them know that this is one of our core values and teaching our children about the Constitution is important to us. He could back NANCY up that way and he didn’t mind doing that. ERIC told NANCY, why don’t you give them a call and he also will call sometime this week. NANCY said she would call and then let the TEA Party know what she had found out.
REPORT ASSIGNMENTS –
JIM NALITZ said he had gone on line to every web page of every school in the county, and had accumulated information on number of teachers (counted by name and what they taught). Of the 727 teachers reported he had found only 550 teachers who were actually teaching kids. When they did this study they excluded principals, vice principals, assistants, social workers, directors, technology, guidance councilors, that sort of thing, and that is how they came up with 550 teachers. With the 720, they break down their staff into certified and non-certified. Non-certified is custodians, cafeteria workers, and that sort. Every body else is certified. That is how they come up with 720 teachers. The difference is if you’re looking at 720 teachers then they come up with 1 to 12 (1 teacher to 12 students). If you look at 550 you come up with 1 to 15 or 16 (closer to 16). It is not that big of a difference, so as ERIC pointed out it doesn’t matter when you are comparing Carteret to 99 other counties because they are also counting it the same way. JIM said someone had mentioned about teachers teaching in different schools. Down east we have 4 teachers who have to switch between Harkers Island and Smyrna, and they are art, music, band, and that sort of thing. They have PE teachers, EC teachers (which are ‘exceptional children’) IG (gifted children) and then they have Title One (schools that have low reading scores). These are the pull out teachers; the ones that when you are teaching a class, these teachers come in and pull out 3 or 4 of your kids. Teachers have to arrange their schedules around all of this. It is not a good way to run a class room.
MISC. –
KEN reported that he had received an email from Pastor Montague and he is thinking about returning to Carteret County. He is looking for property for a church probably in the Morehead City/Newport area. If anyone knows of anything, please let KEN know so he can pass it on to Pastor Montague.
STEVE BEST reported he had another video and would show it after the meeting for anyone interested.
Discussed how we are going to handle these city council and mayoral elections. There are 8 areas but only three have positions contested with multiple candidates running and a small number of TEA Party Patriot members in those areas who might be interested.
KEN said while we are talking about this, he wanted to report that he had been looking into having a TEA Party meeting in the Cape Carteret area. He has secured the first and third Tuesdays for August and September at the Western Carteret Community Center to have a TEA Party type meeting to see if we can draw any people from down there. If it doesn’t do anything in that time frame then we may have to rethink it, but he is going to try to put something on the web site and try to get an editorial in the newspaper, just to let the people know about it. Thinking about 7:00pm. It is not a restaurant so you may want to eat beforehand.
Back to candidates debating. ERIC thinks since we have several city council positions in the running, he would like to have them all there for questioning. Only problem is we have 38 candidates (city council – 6 different towns that have more candidates than positions available. That is a lot of candidates. Several said that they are not interested in any other town’s election but their own. KEN said every jurisdiction has their own local issues that people are concerned with. To him that rules out a big ‘league of women type debate’. The people of Cape Carteret aren’t going to debate those from Morehead City. If they were running for state office, it would be different. It is up to our members from the various towns to go to any meetings of the candidates, determine which candidate most likely fits the TEA Party core values and report back to the group. ERIC said the reason he was looking into this situation was the last election. We were a little late in vetting the candidates and there were some we knew nothing about. KEN said yes, but there were also state, federal, and judges; they weren’t local positions. His feeling is we have enough to deal with at the state and federal level, to be dealing with townships within Carteret County is wasted time. It is perfectly normal to get involved in county politics cause all of us live in the same county, but all of us do not live in Emerald Isle or Morehead City so therefore there is a lack of interest in local township elections, other than our own. To conduct a debate of all the county candidates will be too time consuming and involve an awful lot of time and work. Look at all that went into the July 4th parade float. ERIC said he thought we had done great on getting the float together. KEN said, maybe, but, look how long it took to just determine what trailer we were going to use. ERIC said he has found out that the mayors determine on what the city councilmen are informed about. They control the paperwork that goes to them. Took a vote and decided not to hold a debate for city councilmen or mayors. Mayor Jones and David Horton have already been invited to attend our meetings so we will just go with them. How much time do we want to give them? ERIC thinks 15 minutes to explain his platform and 15 minutes of questions and answers equating to one half hour of our time. WAYNE said whatever we do it is going to be overshadowed by this sulfur deal. It is not over yet. HOWARD said he did not think we should solicit the other Mayoral candidates but if one of them were to come to us and ask to speak to us, we should not refuse. Let’s don’t go after them, but if they come to us, don’t tell them no. ERIC said the main reason we are vetting Morehead candidates is because of the sulfur situation. HOWARD said it is not just Morehead, it is a concern of all of Carteret County. KEN said, the way he was understanding our position was, there would be no debates, either mayors or councilmen. Only the two already invited and we are going to stay out of the little local kind of things unless some come to us and asks to speak to our group. Then we can decide on that.
LOU KUKULINSKI reminded us that Sam Sanford will be packing boxes to be mailed to our troops overseas and needs help. He will be at the strip mall across from Trucker’s Toy Store at 9:00 tomorrow (Wednesday). Go around to the back alley. He hopes to have 100 boxes ready for mailing to our troops in Afghanistan and will be at the Morehead City Post Office at 8:00 the next day (Thursday morning). Boxes cost $12.95 to mail. Requests that everyone interested in helping with postage please stop by; pick up a box and customs form, take it into the post office and mail. They will be there until all the boxes are mailed.
EULA PARKIN asked if anyone knew who Robert Spencer was. She checked the Wikipedia and found out that he was born in 1962. He is a practicing Greek Catholic. His grandparents were forced to migrate from the area that is now Turkey, because they were Christians. He graduated from UNC, Chapel Hill in 1986 with an MA in religious studies. He rejects that all Muslims are violent people and his writings have been condemned as hate speech. The Truth about Mohammad is one of his books. Today it came out in the Times that he was supposedly the one that inspired the Oslo murders and is being sued and will be taken to trial. Robert Horowitz is going to defend Robert Spencer. The most this nut, that committed the murders, will be able to get is 21 years, regardless of how many people he killed. In Oslo he can do the 21 years and then come back and be tried again and get another 5 years, over and over. The Jihadish actually took credit for the killings in the beginning and then backed off and said no they were not responsible.
ERIC asked if anyone else had anything to report. ROY MUSSER said Obama called our bluff yesterday and asked everyone to call in to their representatives and let them know how we feel. From what has been reported, there were a tremendous amount of calls made, but most were telling our representatives to “hold their ground”, “no increased taxes”. Not exactly what Obama was thinking, Roy didn’t believe. Obama is still spouting the scare tactic that the seniors are not going to get their Social Security check, and the troops will not be paid if Congress does not lift the debt ceiling. ROY said a lawyer came on the program he was listening to and said that was illegal; that according to the Constitution, he was not supposed to incite fear into the American public. There’s also a law on the books right now that they can’t have these meetings behind closed doors; everything is to be out in the open. KEN said he has been emailing Beynor that he should be holding these meetings in the open and would thereby have more supporting him. KEN said he did not understand the rational of having these meetings behind closed doors. He asked if anyone had watched Hannity last night. He had the (in)famous Bob Beckel on who called us (the TEA Party) ignorant and anarchists. NANCY said she had read a letter to the editor discussing this stoppage of payments and she had read somewhere that said the only person who could stop social security payments is the President. Everyone at the meeting said that was their understanding also. NANCY said if this is true, someone needs to write a letter and inform these seniors of how they are being duped. Steps have already been taken to make sure these payments are met, regardless of what happens to our debt ceiling. All agreed that NANCY should write this letter. ROY said you write it, we’ll sign it. ERIC said he was expecting to be arrested any day for all the stands he has taken. PEGGY asked if anyone had noticed Obama’s campaign ads which show him in the white house. This is illegal also. That’s not going to stop him though, nothing else has.
ERIC adjourned the meeting at 7:10pm and advised that STEVE BEST had a video, if anyone wanted to stay and watch it.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.
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