Skip to content

City school idea now defunct

BY BRUCE BRANUM

The Greenville Standard

 

City of Greenville Mayor Dexter McLendon announced Thursday, Feb. 10, on radio station Q94 that he was abandoning the idea of forming a city school in a lengthy interview with Kyle Haynes.

McLendon stated the city had always helped the county school system in various ways both financially and physically and provided figures and examples.

He went on to state the importance of a good school system for bringing industry and jobs to the community.

He next spoke how he felt Greenville could support a city school system better with the revenues that are generated from taxes in Greenville.

McLendon added the process of studying a city school formation was to gather information and then better decisions could be made.

He noted a city school board would have had to been selected by the city council before the majority of information could be collected.

He went on to note his embarrassment during the city school forum held to discuss the process of creating a city school when several audience attendees posed pointed questions not related to the agenda of the forum.

After that meeting, McLendon said he talked with council members individually and gathered that there would not be enough support to continue the process of information collection, which would have been to appoint a board to accomplish the task.

He added he felt it was political and that finding a person who wanted to serve on the city school board would now be hard to find.

McLendon stated, “We just wanted to see what our options were.”

He went on to note that he would never bring up a city school again under his administration saying, “I will never do this again.”

He added that he will still have an open door policy and let Butler County School Superintendent Joe Eiland he would talk to him whenever he wanted.

Leave a Comment