Robby Robbins held a town-hall type meeting at Coeburn Middle School last night. I attended and I'll tell you I believe it was definitely positive. When I say positive, I mean the atmosphere, it was very civil and quiet, no clapping and yelling out at all...there were a few comments made by a couple, half of them you could hear from Betty, but nothing disruptive and the meeting went on without a hitch. And there were definitely a few regulars there from both sides. It was on two issues, redistricting and of course Consolidation. Everyone was really for redistricting, including myself, but definitely division when it came to consolidation - no surprise. But it was very encouraging to me, there were quite a bit of pro-consolidation people there and POSSIBLY more spoke in favor than opposed - though I got there late and missed some speaking, but from my time there, it leaned pro-consolidation.

A few regulars spoke, but a lot of people that I had never heard from did, on both sides but esp. on the pro-side which I loved - there's a lot more than people realize, the showings at the SB/BOS meetings are such a poor sample of the ratio. I don't know how much Robby listened to the pro side, but I give him props for the idea all together, maybe other board members could do it? Though I didn't like that everytime someone who didn't live in coeburn spoke, he made it clear he wasn't really going to listen unless they lived in coeburn even though they lived in district 4.

Several officials were there - Mr. Kilgore, Greear, Luntsford, Betty and Dr. Perry. I got the chance to talk Mr. Greear, very nice man. I also seen something a little funny, maybe not so much, but still. There was a sign in sheet, which also had several boxes you could check - one was for the redistricting issue, yes/no if you wanted it. And the other was for consolidation, whether you supported keeping 'all six open' or 'closing three'. I noticed Betty grabbed the sheets and was writing down the names on the list, I don't know which ones or if it were all, just a little odd. I see no reason for her to do that, I could see maybe someone writing them down(such as greear or jesse) so they could speak to these people, but why was that any of her business? May just be reading into it too much, but it seemed odd to me, but then again Betty is very odd.

I'm curious to see what will happen at the workshop meeting tonight, hopefully some from the meeting last night will speak there. Kudos to elp again for that site on student/teacher ratio, I used that last night when I spoke and will use it tonight - that's some really good info that I think people need to hear, because I know that notion of "more students = bad ratio" gets passed around a lot.