A small few with the goal of maintaining a power grip on D5 would have you believe where a school board member lives is important.
The truth is … it’s not about where a school board member lives but rather who are the BEST & MOST QUALIFIED CANDIDATES with the skillsets to oversee a $200+ million dollar annual budget , look out for our students and teachers as well as our tax dollars !
The hard fact is 3 long sitting IRMO board members have failed Irmo & D5 as a whole … Gantt, White & Hutchison .
When people in Irmo, Dutch Fork & Chapin open their tax bills any day now they need to be mad at those Core4 board members who are the cause of this mess that everyone in D5 is paying for.
Buying more land & building more new buildings (while some of the Irmo schools are in disrepair) has not fixed anything under their tenure. Many families are not going to be able to afford the bill about to arrive in their mailbox. My understanding is they are already viewable online at Lexington County. I’ve had a few neighbors tell me their taxes went up $600 compared to last year. There was a Lexington County reassessment on property values this year, but people need to know all of D5 is still paying for that bond from 12 years ago ( w/ many broken promises & useless land purchases) and the new 8% tax money the board took without a public vote to build the school on Amick‘s Ferry in CHAPIN.
We have a new elementary school going in an area of CHAPIN where the relief was not needed & other parts of Chapin are still crowded.
This is all the result of very poor planning and leadership.
Neither of the incumbents, Gantt & Cates or Ed White deserve a seat back at this table. Beth Hutchison got out while the getting was good with the problems she helped create.
Dr. Melton has inherited a mess and the Core4 has hung her out to dry. She is a smart lady and deserves to have a smart board that can help guide D5 past this.
Change is long overdue and this is the year it we can vote to make it happen. People in D5 are smarter than falling for the spin of the Core4 camp. Robert Gant, Ed White, Michael Cates and Beth Hutchinson should be ashamed of the mess they have created in D5.
The best qualified candidates to fill the 3 open seats are:
- Catherine Huddle ( Lex Co ) – Financial analyst
- Rebecca Blackburn Hines ( Lex Co) Business coordinator, married to an educator and has small children in the district and
- Matt Hogan ( Rich Co ) -A business person that is a product of D5 and also raising his young family in the area he grew up in.
It’s time to hit the reset button and have a fresh start. All 3 of these candidates are committed to having a more transparent, financially responsible and open dialogue with the taxpayers.
Andrea Christiansen
CHAPIN, SC
