School District Woes
Oct 22, 2010 Updates
This past week, the Bibb County School Board received another jolt of bad news. A handgun was found in a child’s backpack at a middle school. In addition, a school bus driver for the Howard High School was caught pimping out female students, and encouraging them to have sex on the back of his school bus with male students at the Hutchings Career center. This was happening while he was driving on a bus route that deviated from the route he was supposed to be driving.
It seems that a female student from Howard High School went to her mother, and she complained about all of the illicit happenings on the bus. Her mother then complained to school officials, who pulled the security tapes from the bus camera, and who also reviewed GPS data which showed that the driver had been deviating from his assigned route. Some questions concerning this incident should be raised here. How long has this type of conduct been happening with this school bus driver? Why haven’t school officials been reviewing these security tapes and GPS tracking data on their own anyway? If they had been doing their jobs, why did it take a complaint from a student and her mother for this miscreant bus driver to be found out? It seems that the one thing that Bibb County school officials can do is cover up wrongdoing in their system. This type of institutional behavior needs to be changed, and in a hurry.
The school bus driver was immediately terminated. However, he should also be prosecuted and charged with the felony offenses of enticing a child for indecent purposes. The Macon Telegraph recently ran a series of articles that outlined many of the problems with violence and discipline in the Bibb County public schools. Some students say that they bring weapons to school for protection, because they do not feel safe. Some students bring weapons to school to intimidate other students.
The Bibb County Board of Education can and should adopt a zero tolerance policy for weapons in the schools. The school district can and should make student safety a top priority for all students in the county. If schools are not safe, then a proper atmosphere cannot be created to allow students to get any type of decent education. What can be done to make the schools safer? I believe that the school system should install metal detectors in every school building, no matter what it will cost. If the Board of Education needs to put a SPLOST on the ballot for a referendum to get the funding to place metal detectors into the schools, then they need to make that happen. If you catch a child at the door at a metal detector while trying to enter school with a loaded weapon, that metal detector just paid for itself in that once instance.
School security officials should also use drug dogs and random searches in the schools as well. When it comes to school and student safety, there really is little interest in protecting privacy rights, as opposed to the interest of safety for the students and the faculty members.
The Bibb Board of Education should hire a strong School Superintendent that will not tolerate some of the institutional behavior that allowed wrong doing to happen there. That person should accept nothing less than the best of behavior from all students and from all school officials. Wrongdoers should be caught and prosecuted, if their behavior violates the criminal laws. A new approach should be taken for student offenders. Once students are caught bring weapons to school, they should be expelled from the regular school system, but should be allowed the opportunity to learn a trade such as carpentry or HVAC installation, for example. A student that has engaged in conduct serious enough to warrant expulsion from regular classes, should be put into a more closely supervised and structured environment. Those students should not be allowed to reenter the regular campus with the law abiding students, where they can generate additional trouble.
If the Bibb County school officials fail to correct these type of problems within their system, potential employers and industries will eliminate Macon and Bibb County from their lists of places to expand. This problem is not just a social and a school problem, it is an economic problem when criminal behavior in the schools is reported in the state wide news outlets. Macon is declining for many reasons, but a leading reason that affluent citizens are leaving the county is the school system. A leading reason why some businesses will not expand or relocate there is the school system. If these problems are not addressed and resolved in a through and efficient way, Macon and Bibb County will continue to decline. These issues will be on the plate when the Board of Education hires a new superintendent this coming month.
Steven Harrell has practiced law in Perry, Georgia since 1989.
He is the author of The Unionist, A Novel of the Civil War and The Rifle Captain, A Novel of World War I. Both are available at Amazon.com, and Barnes&Noble.com. You may email him at sharrell@comsouth.net.
Bankruptcy News
Oct 8, 2010 Updates
This past week, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta approved a settlement between former Georgia Department of Education head Kathy Cox, and her Chapter 7 Trustee. She had previously won over $1 million on a TV game show, “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”. The problem was that she and her husband had filed a petition for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code around the time that she won the $1 million prize. She had planned to donate that money to three different schools, but the Chapter 7 Interim Trustee had other plans for the funds. He filed an adversary proceeding against her, which alleged that the winnings should go to her creditors. A settlement was reached which will allow the Trustee in bankruptcy to receive $500,000, and for three Georgia schools to divide the sum of $500,000. This is great news for each of the schools, one of which is the Georgia Academy For The Blind in Macon.
On other fronts, a U.S. Bankruptcy judge in Gainesville has signed an order reopening the Chapter 7 case filed by Nathan Deal’s daughter and son-in-law last year. Clint Wilder had previously filed a petition for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code in 2001, and he received a discharge in that case. He and his wife, Carrie Deal Wilder, filed a petition for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code last year. On their new filing, they did not disclose that Clint had filed a previous Chapter 7 petition in 2001. Federal bankruptcy law requires disclosure of a previous filing on a debtor’s petition. That was not done in this case.
In addition, the Wilders did not list Nathan Deal and his wife as creditors and guarantors of their debts on their Chapter 7 petition, even though the law required them to do so. Nathan Deal and his wife were guarantors and co-signers on millions of dollars worth of bank loans made to the Wilders for the financing of an outfitting business in Habersham County that later failed.
After the Wilders received a discharge in their Chapter 7 case, the U.S. Trustee in Atlanta found out that Clint Wilder was not eligible for a discharge under 11 U.S.C. § 727, because he had received a discharge in a prior Chapter 7 that was filed less than eights years prior to the 2009 filing. A motion to reopen the 2009 Chapter 7 case was fled by the U.S. Trustee, and Judge Robert Brizendine ordered the case reopened this past week.
What does this mean? Well, first, Clint Wilder’s discharge from 2009 will be revoked, because he was not eligible for a discharge last year. Carrie Deal Wilder’s discharge may be reentered, because she has not filed a previous Chapter 7 case. However, new issues have arisen concerning the bank loans that Nathan Deal and his wife co-signed and guaranteed before the Wilder filing. When these substantial bank loans were being made to fund the outfitting business several years ago, Clint Wilder had already filed a Chapter 7 case. What banker in his right mind would loan money to a person that has already sought relief under Chapter 7? In my estimation, Mr. Wilder should not have been able to obtain any type of business loan anywhere, much less the multimillion dollar loans that he ended up obtaining.
Did the bankers involved loan the Wilders money for their business just because Nathan Deal was co-signing their loans with them? Were the loans made because a U.S. Congressman was guaranteeing their payment? If a non Congressman wanted such a loan made to his son-in-law, would the banks have made them? I don’t think so.
Was Clint Wilder’s previous Chapter 7 filing properly disclosed on his loan applications that he completed with the various banks? If it was not listed, then the banks could file an adversary proceeding in the pending Chapter 7 case under 11 U.S.C. § 523, and have their debts excepted from discharge by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Brizendine. This means that both Carrie Wilder and Clint Wilder could both be required to pay these bank loans, regardless of the Chapter 7 filing. This would be under some type of fraud theory, on the grounds that Clint’s prior Chapter 7 filing should have been disclosed on his loan applications.
In any event, Nathan Deal and his wife remain jointly liable to pay these debts, totaling over $2 million, while the U.S. Bankruptcy Court sorts out the relief that can be obtained by their daughter and son-in-law.
Steven Harrell has practiced law in Perry, Georgia since 1989.
He is the author of The Unionist, A Novel of the Civil War and The Rifle Captain, A Novel of World War I. Both are available at Amazon.com, and Barnes&Noble.com. You may email him at sharrell@comsouth.net.
