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