Attack on Dixon Conceals CCPS Budgetary Shenanigans

By Anthony J. Yetzer

The Cecil County Board of Education likes to pretend that they are a nonpolitical, impartial entity that only seeks to fulfill its mission of caring for all the children.  Simply attending a school board meeting is enough to reveal this to be an artful fiction.  This became apparent to me when I attended last Thursday’s meeting at the Rising Sun High School. 

I came to speak in support of Renee Dixon, the sole conservative on the board.  For those unaware, she ran afoul of the woke lunatics by posting something critical of “Pride Month” on social media.  For this sin, she received her fellow board members’ censure in the form of a press release condemning her post.  Rumor has it they also staged an emergency intervention to encourage her resignation from the board replete with lawyers and representatives from both the Democratic Party and Cecil Solidarity, a radical organization hellbent on implementing Cultural Marxism in the county.  Her post and the hysterics that followed resulted in a larger than normal turnout at the monthly meeting with a total of forty-six speakers coming to weigh-in on the situation, the majority of whom came to support Dixon.

Before the public comment section of the meeting took place, a brief exchange ensued between Dixon and some of the other board members on a budgetary issue.  While virtually drowned out by the invented controversy over Dixon’s exercise of her First Amendment rights, the exchange is revelatory in that it reveals outright that, despite their claims to the contrary, the board has a political agenda.  Before the CCPS budget was approved, Dixon asked the board chair, Diane Hawley, why a certain sum promised by the county council did not appear in the final draft of the budget.  Her question was dismissed as if she was an Alzheimer’s patient escaped from the nursing home.  Hawley acted incredulous: No such sum existed.  In response, Dixon stated that, according to her understanding, such a sum had been promised upon the condition that the BOE publicly acknowledge the county council’s provision of the funds.  Hawley purposely refused to address Dixon’s point that the board had refused the money for political reasons and moved the meeting along.

Given that the rest of the board seeks to have her removed on grounds that she is a right-wing partisan incapable of representing all the students, Dixon’s question masterfully revealed to those in attendance that her accusers are ethically bankrupt.  These are the same people who, just a month ago, were at fevered pitch crying that the children would suffer if County Executive Danielle Hornberger did not increase the CCPS budget beyond “maintenance of effort,” the minimum allocation required by the state.  Then when they were offered funds in a way which did not comport with their broader political agenda, they rejected the funds and publicly pretended they were never offered.  The children are just another bargaining chip in a political game for these quislings.  Behind their fake smiles lie dispositions of the most knavish and conniving sort.