Editor, If you have a child, grandchild, nephew or niece enrolled in the Liberty County School System, or if you simply live and pay taxes in Liberty County, you are a stakeholder in the system.
Stakeholders play a critical role in our children’s education. We have the responsibility of holding our elected officials accountable. We must ensure that they are making sound decisions that will create and sustain a safe, stable and modernized learning environment. We must also ensure that they are not mismanaging stakeholders’ funds, funds that come from our tax dollars.
If you have been following the news regarding our school district, you as a stakeholder should be angry, offended and motivated to get involved. The current administration’s budget crisis has been well-documented. We should be asking questions and demanding answers – demanding accountability.
Why is the district over budget by more than $9 million? How did the school board and the central office not forecast this shortfall before the point of having a RIF (reduction-in-force)? How many central-office employees hold an “essential” position in comparison to school-level staff, where actual teachers have a day-to-day effect on our children’s education? What are we paying in salary from local funds for these high-level administrators? These are just a few of the questions we should be asking.
Just in case you haven’t been following the news and don’t understand what’s happening in LCSS, let me clarify: Our investment is failing at the hands of our current school leadership. We, as stakeholders – parents, relatives and taxpayers – have an obligation to speak up and hold these leaders accountable. We must speak up about the changes we want to see in our school system. We must ask the hard questions and demand true answers.
If you care about your child’s educational success, or even if you just care about how your tax dollars are being spent, now is the time to get off your front porch and come to the school board meetings, make your concerns known and voices heard! We must stand united or watch our school system crumble before our eyes.

-Karen Quinlan
Fleming