Stories from Saturday, June 2, 2018

No action has been taken yet against Gosnell head baseball coach Blake Burnside, according to Gosnell Superintendent Bonard Mace. When asked Thursday if Burnside is staying with the district, Mace said, “At this point we are where we are at with him, which is nothing. That’s all that I can say because it’s personnel. But the bottom line is there is no action whatsoever.”...

A camera crew recently followed Matthew Jones, O.D. as he went through his daily routine. The Blytheville optometrist is the first Arkansan to win the American Optometric Association’s Young Optometrist of the Year Award, which recognizes an individual who been in practice less than 10 years and demonstrates remarkable leadership when serving the profession, patients and community...

At the last Blytheville City Council meeting, Mayor James Sanders presented two audits to the council concerning the Sewer Department and Waterworks Department. Sanders said he was pleased that both audits were determined to be “clean audits,” meaning no major violations were found in either department. Both audits were reviews of 2017...

It seems like no matter what organization, board, council or committee I come across while doing my job, an instance comes where the group wants to stop acting like a citizen-elected governing organization and start acting like a secret society. I’m embellishing a little but the point is I simply get dumbfounded whenever these governing bodies try to mysteriously hide details that they know they shouldn’t be...

Dear Editor, At a recent school board meeting, as reported in the Courier News, a board member asked what seemed to be a rather innocuous, yet probative question of the district school superintendent. Her question, which concerned job duty assignments for district employees, almost instantly triggered what seemed to be thinly veiled calumnies to be hurled about by some of the more doctrinaire board members, who obviously opposed her asking the question...

Dear Blytheville School Board Members, Thank you for taking on the important charge of ensuring our schools are run as effectively and efficiently as possible. We know that the most important asset of any community is the people, and the most important people in our community are our children...