“Action Item B.“

In Bladen County Board of Education speak, that’s code for consideration of extending the contract of Superintendent Jason Atkinson, giving him a sizeable raise and continuing to pay for his schooling toward a second degree.

In taxpayers’ speak, it’s simply backroom, good ol’ boy, secretive governing and a pretty poor way to spend their money.

All of this took place during the school board’s April 11 meeting, but nobody except board members and a select few knew it was happening. How could they? “Action Item B” hardly tells anyone outside the board what board members were voting on.

The incident should have taken place 10 days earlier, when it at least could have been passed off as an April Fools prank.

Except it wasn’t a prank.

Instead, our elected school board members — with the exception of Chris Clark, who was absent — unanimously voted to extend Atkinson’s contract through June 30, 2025, at an annual salary of $141,111.67 and to delete a paragraph from that contract titled “Unilateral Termination by the Board.”

This school district hasn’t always had the best luck with choosing solid superintendents over the years, but this kind of stealth-like operation just isn’t ethical.

All of this for a superintendent with a master’s in music, whose credentials from the start have been iffy at best.

But he is a hometown guy who apparently knows how to play the part of school board puppet successfully, and getting not only a hefty salary but his continued education paid for to boot.

This board should be ashamed of itself. Perhaps not in approving Atkinson’s contract extension — that’s an argument obviously too late to have — but for the way it was gone about.

The public, the very people these board members serve and those who elected them deserve to know when decisions of this magnitude are going to be made. They deserve to hear the request, the motions made and the ensuing discussions (if any) — and maybe even be given the opportunity to weigh in themselves — before a vote is taken.

We can’t help think that this entire process, perhaps even going back to Atkinson’s initial hiring, smacks of … well, if not illegal, then something that pushes the ethics envelope up against it.

If nothing else, actions like this by our local school board on an issue of vast importance that was purposely hidden within a shroud of secrecy only serves to make us wonder what other issues are getting decided this way?

We wonder how our school board members can be proud of this?

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If these people were spending their own money and not the public’s money, I would suggest it would be done a whole lot differently.” (Gary Lunn)