Andrew T. Overby
I am making a statement before the Board today for several reasons, the primary of which is to state my support for the Patrick County High School JROTC program. As a former Cadet Lieutenant Colonel and Battalion Commander of the PCHS Cougar Battalion, I obviously have a deep appreciation and connection to the program because I not only invested 4 years of my high school career in it, but I have also taken what I learned in this program and have applied it throughout my life in many different ways. It concerns me that part of the reasoning for terminating the program was due to the low number of students deciding to pursue military enlistment immediately after graduation. Contrary to popular belief, military enlistment is not the purpose of the JROTC program. The mission of the JROTC program is “to motivate young people to be better citizens.” I know that in my experience with the program, I have seen the program completely transform students in a positive way and I believe that the loss of this program is detrimental to the school and community as a whole. I am not only deeply saddened by the sudden termination of the program but I am also troubled by the way in which it was terminated. Through the research that I have conducted, it has been made apparent to me that the JROTC program has been on the chopping block for quite some time.
There have been statements made that have been misleading to the public and unfortunately as I have begun to dig deeper into this and other matters, I am seeing that these misleading statements seem to be more of a norm than an isolated incident. One specific instance was on June 7th during the School Board meeting, it was stated that the program “may go away, but we are looking at alternatives to continue it.” However at that time, it appeared school officials knew that the program was going to be terminated as he had been planning for it for at least the last 6 months. In addition, they should have known at that time that there is no after-school JROTC program as I was able to find out that information in one email to the local Chief of JROTC Operations. I would love to be able to point out more references, but I can only fit so much into my three minute allotment.
In speaking with the public, it is imperative that the Board as well as any representatives of it, be open and honest. When that does not happen, it is perceived that something shady is going on and quite frankly this Board as well as this Superintendent is being perceived in that exact manner. Perception is reality and the only way to correct that is to stop hiding your actions, whether purposely or inadvertently, and to be more transparent.
In speaking of transparency, I have reviewed the minutes of previous Board meetings and it is frustrating to see the lack of information contained within them. Apparently this Board believes that the minutes need to only cover the most basic information, but again the lack of transparency does not lend itself to showing the that the Board is trying to be open and honest with their constituents. The purpose of meeting minutes is not only to document the formal actions of the Board, they are also to inform others of the actions discussed if they were unable to attend. You cannot tell me that the minutes that you currently provide do that as it is little more than an agenda list with the voting record added to it. I would also like to note that the most recent meeting minutes posted on the website are from April 26th, which is five meetings prior to this one. I highly encourage this Board to revise their policy on the recording of meeting minutes and to produce a document that actually informs the reader of specifically what was discussed during the meeting and by whom. In addition, I would encourage the Board to record the meetings and post those recordings online so that every taxpayer that would like to review them has the information available to them.
