Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/241669
STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman bbowman@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Janice Burton editor@upandcomingweekly.com OPERATIONS OFFICER Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com EDITOR Stephanie Crider stephanie@upandcomingweekly.com ART DIRECTOR Alicia Miller art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS D.G. Martin, Pitt Dickey, Margaret Dickson, John Hood, Erinn Crider, Shanessa Fenner, Heather Griffiths DISTRIBUTION MANAGER/ OFFICE COORDINATOR Laurel Handforth laurel@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Cynthia Spears cynthia@upandcomingweekly.com Linda McAlister Brown linda@upandcomingweekly.com Kristy Sykes kristy@upandcomingweekly.com Beverly Pone beverlypone@upandcomingweekly.com ––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan Street P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publication with local features, news and information on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. Subscriptions can be purchased for $30 for six months or $60 for 12 months, delivered weekly by first class mail. ©2007 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. INSIDE Calendar. .......................................... 12 . Concert Connection......................... 16 Movie................................................ 17 TV...................................................... 17 PUBLISHER'S PEN Turmoil Over Tenure by BILL BOWMAN Personally, I think teaching is the most noble of professions. There's achievement and the growth of charter schools. Bonuses for the not a person out there who cannot recollect that special teacher who best teachers is a must. Raises for the best teachers is a must. personally transformed their life. No to tenure and to the subsidies to Here in Cumberland County I think our mediocrity. teachers are the best. Administratively, we Good teaching professionals do not have conscientious, competent, empathetic care about tenure and job security. They leadership. This is reflected in test scores, care about the children. They care about low drop-out rates and high graduation their profession and take pride in their rates. So, why are teachers not making talents and craft. To them, this is their more money? Should our teachers earn job security. Again, tenure has no place higher salaries? Absolutely. It's a mystery to in secondary public education. It protects me why our statewide teacher salaries are so the incompetent. It fosters mediocrity. It low — 46th in the nation. There are a lot of destroys intellectual treasures. States now excuses and finger pointing by the current spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in Republican administration in Raleigh, but, hearings, litigation and appeals just trying It's time to make teacher tenure a thing of the past. in their defense, the records show a 2008 to remove teachers from their positions. salary freeze for educators. It's a costly process to maintain and the To many North Carolinians, this indicates the education of our money spent on defending tenure could very well be reallocated to children is a low priority. In view of the abundance of waste, fraud and teachers' salaries. abuse at all levels of state government, you would think finding money It is my hope that as the months go by the residents of for the people who are responsible for the development of future Cumberland County and the State of North Carolina realize that generations would be a no-brainer. Well, it's time to give our teaching public education is vitally important to the growth of our state. profession the respect and priority it deserves in North Carolina. Educating our children in the public school system should reflect The first step in doing that is to make sure that our teachers are total commitment to our future generations. If we were doing respected and paid a decent salary. Having said this, it doesn't mean this adequately, there would be little need for charter and private paying all teachers the same salary, giving them the same amount schools. Their proliferation is an indication that we need to do a of raise or harboring the incompetent. In other words, there is no better job. place in secondary education for tenure. How would a business or If education and higher teacher salaries are truly high priorities organization survive if they could not fire incompetent employees? in North Carolina, then we should find the money to fund them How would a professional sports team compete if they were forced to adequately. Tenure distracts from the very best. The longer the play unskilled team members? This is not the way it works in real life. debate over tenure goes on, the longer we will have to wait on Hard work, success and competency are rewarded in real life. paying the professional, successful teachers in our school systems. In real life, there are no guarantees. Hence, tenure has no place in One final note on the matter: Raleigh should initiate a statewide secondary education. Actually, the concept of tenure was created in top-down assessment of education in North Carolina. I think the early 1900s designed to protect the jobs of college professors to what they will find is an abundant excess of resources and enough assure them academic freedom to teach and pursue extraordinary "waste and abuse" of taxpayer money that, if reallocated, would ideas and theories that college and university administrators may make our teachers the highest paid in the nation. find objectionable. Prior to that time, only federal judges had such And why not? We entrust them with the futures of protections. Tenure was never meant to serve has an automatic safe our children. BILL BOWMAN, Publisher, Up & Comport for the protection of lazy and incompetent educators. Thank you for ing Weekly. COMMENTS? Perhaps the perception that children cannot get a good education reading Up & bbowman@upandcomingweekly.com. in North Carolina is at the heart of low morale, lagging academic Coming Weekly. Fayetteville's Weather Forecast Thursday January 16 Friday January 17 4 JANUARY 15-21, 2014 High 53° Low 30° Cloudy Saturday January 18 High 45° Low 26° Sunny Call 910.354.1679 Sunday January 19 24 / High 48° Low 32° Mostly Cloudy Free Wheelin' Feelin'........................ 18 Horoscopes/Advice Goddess.......... 19 Classifieds......................................... 20 Games............................................... 22 Monday January 20 Tuesday January 21 High 47° Low 26° Sunny High 43º Low 30º Sunny High 42º Low 30º Showers 7 Forecast available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM