By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

-Bruno Sammartino

I swear, if I thought it would do any good, I'd mail a dead rat to almost every member of that idiotic, incompetent school board. The only reason I don't do it is because they just wouldn't understand the significance of tearing open a blood-stained package and seeing the remains of a decaying rodent inside. It would never occur to them that the gift was a comment on their treatment of school children in Wilson County.

And it's no picnic to have to continue listing the moronic accomplishments of this pack of clowns, but they bring it on themselves. Each week, when I sit down to write this column and I look over the news from the past week, the school board crops up like a case of zits on a teenager working at McDonald's.

This thing with the radios on buses is driving me nuts.

The Wilson County Schools Classified Employees' Association, Inc., is going to hold a breakfast at City Café in Lebanon to try and raise enough money to buy two-way radios for every school bus they've got. The radios are going to cost around $50,000. They've got Mayor Jewell from Lebanon, Mayor Binkley from Mt. Juliet, and Mayor Jennings from Watertown to agree to help them serve the breakfast and they've also got the High Sheriff to lend a hand. Tickets are twenty bucks and they need $50,000; that's one-tenth of what the school board approved for their newest pork barrel project--a shrine to a pathetic, self-serving band of rouges we know as the school system central staff.

By the way, if any of the school system administration shows up at the City Café for breakfast the morning of December 10^th, we'll hear more bullshit than we can stand about how tight the budget is and how the state might cut funding, etc., etc., etc., but that doesn't change a thing.

Somewhere, priorities are messed up.

The county needs ninety-four new classrooms in grades K through 8 to meet state requirements. Half the kids at Tuckers Crossroads attend school in portable classrooms. Mt. Juliet Junior High has 1,500 kids attending classes in a school built for 1,000. Southside Elementary has six "non-traditional" classrooms, Oakland has four. "Non-traditional", by the way, means anything with a roof.

There are classes in the county where kids don't have enough books to go around and there are teachers in the county who don't even have a classroom. I checked on this with teachers--not principals, not the school system central office, and certainly not the school board. These facts come from people out there where, as the saying goes, "the rubber meets the road."

But the school board wants to build Kip and his Klowns a $500,000 office building because that's more important. Classrooms, books, and radios would be for students and evidently nobody gives a damn.

What is going on here? Are voters in Wilson County really that unconcerned about morons spending their tax money for things nobody in their right mind cares about? Isn't a new office building for the central staff kind of like a guy living in a tent and driving a new Mercedes?

This is puzzling.

And if I really had any balls, I'd throw this typewriter into the car, drive by the Central Office, hurl the damned thing through the front door, and move to Mexico. But I can't do that. Typewriters cost money and I can't stand the taste of tequila.

Before long, there'll be a statue of a kid hanging at the end of a rope in front of the County Courthouse because that's exactly what Wilson County is becoming known for.

Most of us used to think that Wilson County was getting a bad rap in the Nashville media. Every time they'd show up here it had something to do with either a murder or the school system. But it looks like they were right all along. If we can't kill somebody during the week, the school board makes damn sure they screw something up so Channel 4 has an excuse to cruise into town and make the rest of Middle Tennessee think we're as stupid as the people we elected to represent us in school matters.

It's difficult to say whether this school board is inexperienced, getting bad information, or is just plain stupid, but until they realize that people are watching every move they make, you've got to opt for the latter. It's time for them to think that what they're doing is really important. It isn't a joke and it isn't a popularity contest. That's not why they were elected.

Something's got to be done pretty quickly, too. Two years ago, there was a plan to build 22 additional classrooms at Mt. Juliet High School. It would have cost $2.2 million. The new plan, calling for 25 additional classrooms is estimated at $3.3 million. It's just like gasoline, you idiots, it doesn't get cheaper every year.

One brief spark of sense came out of last week's school board meeting: Member John Clemmons suggested the board take a look at buying and remodeling the old administration building on the Castle Heights property. Finally. Could Clemmons be bringing a glimmer of hope to what is otherwise a deep well of glaring despair? Maybe. The final vote ain't in on him yet, but at least one member's using his brain instead of looking around and leaning back in a chair only long enough to say "Duh" when something's brought up for discussion.

He did, however, manage to screw up once: he said the conditions at the old central office building on Market Street were an embarrassment to him as a life-long Wilson Countian.

See? It happens all the time. You can just about make book on it. As soon as you think somebody's got their head on straight and might be capable of doing a good job, they open their mouth and jam their foot so far inside it's take a rectal probe to see their toes.

Reality check: What's more embarrassing, a piece of ceiling tile landing on the floor or a kid in school who can't find a place to sit down? Wake the hell up.

The new employees at the central office may be doing a hell of a job, but one of them is going to have their hands full when the taxpayers find out what's happening--the public relations person.

After this, no amount of public relations in the world will keep the wolves from breaking down the door to the next school board meeting and ripping out the throats of those who will not serve and obey.

And we all love the smell of blood.

No one here gets out alive.

XXX