Editor, The Smithfield Times:

So now, after they have sent the School Board tens of millions of dollars, built a new school for Hardy Elementary and funded the schools almost double what is required by law, the Isle of Wight County Board of Supervisors is being accused of underfunding schools (“Supervisors shirk schools,” Aug. 9). That is so untrue, it is almost laughable.

The schools spend 49% of the entire county budget, as much as all of the other county services combined. I would also like to clarify another misleading statement that many believe “the schools should be the county’s number one priority.” I disagree. Emergency services, which includes law enforcement, had better be the county’s number one priority. Without them, there will be no safe place to live and certainly no schools. Law Enforcement gets a miniscule 11.47% of the county budget and makes it work.

At Thursday night’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the schools are asking for additional funds over what they were given in their normal budget, which included almost all they requested. This is because they received what they knew were one-time COVID relief funds and used the funds for things they should have known would have to be continued. 

Why would any intelligent organization use money they know they are getting one time for anything that must continue? These mistakes were made by the previous School Board, not all of the members on the current one, who have tried to curtail the absolute waste of taxpayer dollars perpetrated by the majority on the former board. They wasted tens of thousands of dollars on a Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that taught kids nothing and that is just one example of their mismanagement. 

Turn the School Board back over to the liberals and see what your real estate taxes go up to. If you want to keep first-class schools and do not want your county taxes to equal your mortgage, you had better keep Jason Maresh and Mark Wooster on the School Board and also elect Brandi Perkins. For the Board of Supervisors, William McCarty has always shown himself to be a good steward of taxpayer money. 

Federal, state and county governments have shown that simply throwing money at problems is no fix; having intelligent people to manage money is.

 

Volpe Boykin

Carrsville