COVID-19 Pushes Lauderdale Schools Closer to Consolidation?

A Real Test for Lauderdale County Education

It will be interesting to watch the Lauderdale County Board of Education and its executive management scramble to cope with the economic impact of an extended COVID-19 quarantine. Obviously, sales tax revenues are going to decline precipitously as many stores, shops, and restaurants close their doors in an effort to slow the contagion. The layoffs that will continue as economic activity contracts will doubtless have a significant impact on state income tax revenues as well. The bottom line - significantly less sales tax collected locally and deep proration of state education budgets.


As challenging as it would have been to navigate this situation under ideal conditions, the task will now be exponentially more difficult because the school system's leadership has lately chosen to squander huge sums of public funds on highly speculative ventures. Most notable among these blunders being a completely unnecessary $610,000 expansion of the Board's administrative office campus, but at least that was a one-time, lump sum waste. Compounding the looming financial adversity, Senator Tim Melson's favorite hand maiden, board member Ronnie Owens, continues to be the chief proponent of draining $250,000 annually from school system revenues to help fund the Ag-Center boondoggle, a project whose viability was already highly dubious under the best of economic conditions.


Lauderdale's citizens should not be surprised when layoffs cut even into the ranks of tenured staff, and school consolidation will become far more likely than ever before, a virtual certainty I believe. But as I have always said, the segment of the Lauderdale citizenry that continues to elect these glad-handing, duplicitous sphincters richly deserves these adverse outcomes. Unfortunately, the fully literate among us must suffer alongside the morons, because they apparently outnumber us. The dumbassery against which we contend is profound and pervasive indeed.


Humbly submitted for you considerations by,

Justitia Adventus, Sic Semper Mendaces