Some reasons our members oppose unification —Leigh Touchton

Leigh Touchton, president of the Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP, responds to a comment by Jon Parris. I’ve appended a clarification. -jsq
I can describe some reasons our members oppose unification.
  1. We believe VBOE has discriminated against black students with alternative school referrals.
  2. We believe VBOE has discriminated against black teachers in hiring, firing, promotions and demotions. I can’t describe the details of personal cases, but last year when the RIF directive came down, nearly 60% of those fired were black, and black professionals only represent 20-25% of the employees.
  3. The VBOE system is over 70% black students, yet the black students are not given equal opportunities to achieve. I can describe issues we brought to the Department of Justice, as well as issues about the Alternative school, and a very serious issue about how the Alternative school was given a different school code, which we believe was a ploy to artificially inflate the test scores at the students’ home schools. We have evidence that we gave to the DOJ that students were sent to PLC based on minor infractions.
  4. Many of our members went through the consolidation in the sixties and don’t want to see their children put into a situation where they will be even more of a minority. Our children are in the majority at Valdosta City Schools, but yet we still fight serious issues of discrimination and inequality in education.
  5. Many of us attended the CUEE education session at Serenity Church, and did not hear anything that changed our minds.
  6. Many of us distrust an “education” initiative brought forth from the Chamber of Commerce. Our branch is a member of the Chamber, and we support Chamber events and some policies, but we don’t support this one. I can’t remember a time when “business” thought it knew what was best for education except when school privatization was going on, and the studies indicated that there was no benefit to that direction insofar as student achievement.
Mr. Parris and Mr. Rowell, come to some of our branch meetings and we’ll be glad to talk to you about it, so you can hear directly from us, I am unable to completely explain the many different opinions that were presented at the branch meeting when this came up for a vote. Also, a former teacher named Dr. Marilyn McCluskey has written about many of the issues we were involved in, and these descriptions can be found at her blog TheNakedTruth4U.

-Leigh Touchton

Note it was Alex Jones who commented on this blog today; I’m pretty sure Alex Rowell has a different opinion.

-jsq

2 thoughts on “Some reasons our members oppose unification —Leigh Touchton”

  1. Leigh Touchton

    Thank you, Mr. Quarterman, I caught my mistake on the original webpage (I’m sorry Mr. Rowell and Mr. Jones) and tried to apologize for the mix-up. It was unintentional.
    If people want to learn more about how our members feel and why our branch voted the way it did, we’d be happy to discuss with you at our meetings, currently we’re meeting the first Monday of the month at 7:00 at Southside Library. Many of our members also attend the SCLC meetings every Sunday night at 7:00 pm at Serenity Church. Dr. Mark George researched this issue in depth, and he presented at LCDP last night as he has at SCLC meetings.

  2. Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

    The order in which main blog items get posted doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the order in which comments get posted; I saw your correction about the Alexes after we posted your comment as a main blog item with my note.
    Videos of Rev. George Bennett speaking for CUEE and Dr. Mark George speaking against, both at LCDP last night, are posted now.
    -jsq

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