• Superintendent says fundraiser is a Food Lion, not school project

By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

Commissioner Bill Memory made it clear Last week that he wasn’t happy with a school collection cup sitting at the register of a grocery store.

He said at each register in the store were collection cups that asked for donations for school materials and named Whiteville Primary School. According to Memory there was no contact number or name on the cups.

“I think that our boards of education –we give them enough money that they don’t have to put out collection cups,” Memory said. “They should be able to buy the necessary tools.”

Memory added that no contact information on the cup was a problem. “It didn’t look good,” Memory said. “The school system needs to put some controls on it. They struggle but putting cups at cash registers looked awful bad.”

Whiteville City Schools Superintendent Randall Shaver said Wednesday the cups at Food Lion are not a city schools project but a Food Lion community project.

“That’s a Food Lion school project, not something we asked for,” Shaver said, pointing out the schools certainly appreciate the fundraiser.

Shaver explained that Food Lion adopted Whiteville Primary and the money collected helps provide just what the cups say: “school supplies.”

He added that the city schools must approve school-sponsored fundraisers and they must go through the principal, superintendent and school board for approval. This case is different, he said, pointing out if businesses are making the donation they certainly will accept it and “appreciate it.”

Memory said the school board needed to look at their funding and move money around if there was not enough to buy teacher supplies. “There again our school board needs to make sure the money is going to the children.”

Shaver took a different view.

“I do disagree with him (Memory) that we have enough funding for supplies – that’s why we have to send home supply lists,”
Shaver said, pointing out that is the case in every school district he has worked for and common across the state.

Register of Deed’s Kandance Whitehead pointed out at the commissioner’s meeting that children come home from school with wish lists of supplies that teachers don’t have money appropriated to buy, such as tissue, hand sanitizer and other supplies.

Memory said his wife, a schoolteacher, often buys things for her classroom with her own money and it shouldn’t be that way.