Chuck Hughes, Seat 5 Representative, Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education
♦ The seven-member Board of Education (BOE) had long and deep discussions on the issue of who should or should not be on the plaque in the Central Office Building (COB). One option was to put only the 2014-2016 board members and County Commissioners (CCs) on the plaque. Another was to include members of the 2012-2014 board and CCs who were not reelected. This option came in two flavors – a single plaque containing the names of the current BOE and CCs followed by the names of the 2012-2014 board members and CCs in smaller lettering.
Since I felt strongly that Mrs. Kay Norman deserved recognition for her 20 plus years of service on the BOE, I made a motion to add a stand-alone plaque with her name and tenure. When my motion failed, I joined three others and voted for what I believed to be the next best thing – the multi-board-member option.
Media articles, as well as emails I received and conversations I had with the community, were critical of the board’s decision to add previous board members to the plaque. The argument was, “since there were so many others who ‘fought for the COB’, it would not be fair to exclude them. Therefore, only the names of the current board should be displayed.” I challenged this assertion. While it is true that previous boards, over many years, “discussed” the COB and its importance to downtown Salisbury, it was not until the members of the 2012-2016 board took action, despite my resistance, that shovels were finally put in the ground.
Since both the COB and the plaque are now history, let’s not quibble over whose names should be or not to be on a plaque. We now need to move on to more important school issues.
