The Morehead City faction of the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots held their regular weekly meeting Tuesday evening.  The agenda was packed, and the meeting room was near full with a couple of dozen members in attendance, all of whom were attentive to each of the scheduled speakers.  Since there was considerable interlocution with all three candidates for office during the meeting, this recapitulation will be broken into three posts, one each to address the policies and performance of each candidate.  

Second up was Blake Beadle, one of the three Republican candidates for the Carteret County Board of Education seat given up by Vice Chairwoman Cathy Neagle.  (We have heard already from fellow Republican candidate Randy Steele, and we are scheduled to have the third Republican candidate, Janiece Wall, return to our meeting next week on April 8th.)  Mr. Beadle grew up in Hubert, just west of Swansboro, and attended school there.  He graduated from high school in Maryland, then furthered his education at Cape Fear Community College and UNC-Wilmington.  He graduated from UNC-W after meeting his future wife, Millie Grady, who is a native of Carteret County.  He later worked in Washington, DC, for a time before moving back to Carteret County.

Mr. Beadle began his prepared remarks by noting that North Carolina ranks 46th in the nation in teacher pay, from which I infer that he believes some redress is in order.  He went on to talk about some of his special interests as regards the county’s BOE fiscal policies, including his interest in leasing rather than purchasing of some durable equipment, and the development of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to enable cost savings in the portion of the system budget that is not allocated to teacher remuneration.

He supports the eventual elimination of teacher tenure, but thinks that greater financial incentives should be offered to teachers in order to compensate them for giving it up.  He supports vouchers, charter schools, and home schooling as alternatives to the status quo.  He describes himself as being conflicted on the issue of Common Core, as he thinks the adoption of national standards will help students, now and in the future, by enabling them to better cope with the increased mobility that our population is experiencing.  He notes, however, that there are drawbacks to Common Core, and in his view the undesirable curriculum controls and dictates for the Math and Language Arts subjects are foremost among them.

Mr. Beadle also promised that, if elected, some portion of his compensation for serving on the Board would be devoted to establishing three High School level scholarships in the County for the promotion of learning in the vocational, educational, and culinary fields.  For further information, readers are encouraged to visit Mr. Beadle’s “Blake For Education” website, HERE.