Randolph County is one of the most Republican leaning counties in North Carolina. It should come as no surprise that our entire delegation to the General Assembly is Tea Party red through and through. They aren't just Republicans, these are partisan, hardcore Republicans.
You might recall that in this year's budget community colleges took a substantial cut in funding.
The President of Randolph Community College says he’s changing his tune when it comes to asking state legislators for money.
Dr. Bob Shackleford believes it’s time for leaders to recognize community colleges as an investment the state needs to fund instead of just another group asking for money.
“Every year we’re told there’s more budget cuts, more budget cuts. We’ve always been able to kind of suck it up and keep on,” explained Dr. Shackleford. “But we’re now past the point of just being able to tighten the belt. It’s at the point now that it’s going to impact jobs, programs, students.”
RCC will be cutting courses, eliminating at least one program and phasing out some full-time positions in order to meet nearly a million dollar budget reduction this year.
I can't speak to Dr. Shackleford's personal politics, but I have heard him speak a few times and found him to be sincere in his commitment to education at all levels. The cuts to RCC's budget will have a negative impact on the school, it's students, and our county for years to come.
Even popular programs, like nursing, are having difficulty filling two faculty positions.
“The State Board of Nursing said, well, until you get those positions filled, we do not want you taking any more students into your evening and weekend nursing program for the next year and a half,” said Dr. Shackleford.
That means many nursing students who want to work during the day won’t be able to take night and weekend classes.
“It’s a problem to recruit and retain qualified faculty and staff when your hands are tied behind you in terms of the budget,” he added. “We are not part of the problem, draining the state’s budget. We are part of the solution that needs funding to fix the problem and train North Carolina’s future workforce.”
It looks to me like, as Malcolm X once famously said, the chickens are beginning to come home to roost.
Comments
I wonder
I wonder how many students at this school either voted for, or had parents who voted for these buffoons.
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"...the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be."
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Brunswick County is also dark red. On the end of September....
DAK will close a chemical plant there and 600 workers will be laid off. SIX HUNDRED! My guess is that many voted for McCrory and tea-party legislators. Now, the chickens are indeed coming to roost...with significant cuts in unemployment benefits courtesy of the people they elected. I wish no one ill, but schadenfruede seems appropriate. We were in Ocean Isle before the last election for their annual oyster fest. The GOP had egregiously disgusting, racist, campaign materials at their booth across from the entrance to the festival. No sign of any Democratic party presence.
Some people are really going to suffer. I hope they remember who screwed them.
Stan Bozarth
Connect the dots
Is anyone going to make it clear to them that it was DAG McCrony and Tillisberger who did this to them? I can easily imagine people blaming Obama instead of the real perpetrators. Who's going to make sure that the dots get connected for these folks?
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"I will have a priority on building relationships with the minority caucus. I want to put substance behind those campaign speeches." -- Thom Tillis, Nov. 5, 2014
That's our job
The bigger problem will be getting them to listen to reason and accept facts that don't fit their fantasy narrative.
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"...the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be."
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
A Movement Not a Moment
I think the quote comes from last night's event in Sylva in Jackson County, along the lines that "this is not a moment, this is a movement."
Moral Monday has the public relations advantage of being a movement of North Carolinians of all walks of life, unlike the Occupy movement of the past. It appears to have some staying power, and will continue to grow as working class citizens like those at DAK in Brunswick County or nursing students at RCC or hospital employees at Mission Health in Asheville join the movement. It has momentum from reports of last night's raucous legislative town hall session in Charlotte, where the crowd vociferously spoke against voter ID and the NCGA takeover of CLT airport. It has momentum when the Superintendent and Board Chair of Mitchell County Schools show up, and have their photos taken, at the Moral Monday sendoff of a delegation from that county a few weeks ago.
I've also said that NCDP and progressive groups need to mount an aggressive 100-county strategy to take back the NCGA in 2014. Some say that is an impossible goal given gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation. I say that we can defeat Moffit and Ramsey and and Hise and Hager and Apodaca and Presnell right here in the mountains, and others are ripe for the picking as well.
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The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. - FDR
I agree
From the NCBOE: Voter Registration as of 08/29/2013 Democratic: 2,766,278 Republican: 1,989,105 Libertarian: 21,601 Unaffiliated: 1,686,439 Total: 6,463,423
In terms of party affiliation alone, we outnumber them. Add to that the number of unaffiliated voters, many who will almost certainly not be voting for GOP incumbents after the shenanigans this year, and the task begins to look anything but impossible.
There's a day of reckoning coming, and for Republicans in this state, it's going to be brutal.
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"...the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be."
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Unfortunately that figure for
Unfortunately that figure for registered Democrats is deceptive. While I am sure it isn't as true today as it was even ten years ago, there are significant numbers of Republican voters that continue to actually be registered as Democrats.
I'm a moderate Democrat.