A response to Leigh Touchton.
I’ve appended a couple of comments. -jsq

I said I wouldn’t reply… but I am! :-)

Ms. Touchton, your points 1-3 make plain what I mentioned witnessing
during my professional experiences. My feeling was that those facts
alone presented a strong case for dismantling the city system.

I do understand the desire for a disenfranchised group to avoid becoming
even more marginalized… my hope was that equally shared resources and
a uniform administrative/infrastructure system would create more parity
and greater accountability.

There’s a lot of info I don’t have, perspectives I need; I must say,
being a native Valdostan, I was BAFFLED

at some of the people I saw
publicly supporting the consolidation… my first thought was, “since
when do they care about African American kids???” So there must be some
hidden agenda or unseen hand (probably money/power related, of course).

I work out of town, so meeting attendance would be tough for me
(witness my sporadic attendance at Biomass demonstrations!); if you’d
have the time or inclination to discuss this matter further via email,
i’d be grateful! I have your email address from a prior correspondence,
so I’ll be in touch!

JP

-Jon Parris

Interesting how questions that get answered lead to reconsideration
in light of more information.

Speaking of dialog, probably there are other people who would like
to see more of this dialog in public.

Although I’ll probably direct people to the comments in future
rather than promoting all of them,
since we have a lot of material coming up.

-jsq