Category Archives: Community

Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175



J.C. Cunningham, running for state representative district 175,
reminded us all that the basic purpose of the Georgia state government
is to provide public education, according to its constitution,
and that local school boards already can and do approve charter schools.
He gave five reasons for voting No on Amendment 1:

  1. Because out-of-state corporations are paying for this campaign….
  2. It creates a new Atlanta-based government bureaucracy.
  3. The new commission will be filled by appointments done by politicians,
    not the citizens.
  4. Georgia already has 200 charter schools, and we’ve already proven the
    process works.
  5. A Yes vote would… cost us an additional $430 million
    while most of our schools are not open a full year as it is….

The only reasoning that I can tell you that proponents have been giving us
is school choice, and again,
they already have school choice;
we have school choice.
The only new things about Amendment 1 are higher cost
and unnecessary state bureaucracy….

Here’s

the video,
followed by a partial transcript.


Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175

Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

Partial transcript:

Continue reading →

Two more charter school polls: Amendment 1 still losing support

Two more polls about the charter school amendment show conflicting
results, but even the most optimistic still shows decreased support
since September.
Opponents of the Amendment 1 power grab are winning.


Charter school Amendment 1 polls through 25 October 2012

Wayne Washington wrote for the AJC 12 October 2012,

Poll shows tight race for charter schools amendment,

Continue reading →

Support plummeting for charter school amendment

Support for the charter school amendment,
previously falling, is now dropping like a rock.
Saba Long wrote the Saporta Report 15 October 2012,

Latest polls show the Charter School Amendment vote will be close,
but the actual poll results, when compared to previous polls,
including those before T-SPLOST lost by a landslide,
say Amendment 1 is going down in flames.


Georgia Charter School Polls 2012-10

That poll conducted 4 and 5 October showed 34.2% saying they would definitely
vote no and 18.06% saying probably no.
That’s 52.26% No, which is far higher than

26.2% only a month before.

The pollsters, HEG-GPS, say,

Re: October 4-5 Charter School Amendment Survey,
15.35% responded Probably Yes and only 9.30% said Definitely Yes.
That’s 24.62% Yes,
far down from the 48.3% Yes of a month before.

Yet only 23.12% responded Unsure,
which is hardly changed from 25.5% a month before.
It sure looks to me like this is not just undecideds switching to No.
It looks like a lot of formerly Yes votes are switching to No.

It looks even worse compared to T-SPLOST.
Two weeks before the 31 July Primary election,

Continue reading →

Valdosta: 3rd poorest city

Valdosta #3! Followed by Albany #4! In poorest cities in the country.
What can we do about that?

Michael B. Sauter, Alexander E.M. Hess and Samuel Weigley, 24/7 Wall St.,
wrote for NBC News 14 October 2012,

America’s richest and poorest cities,



3. Valdosta, Ga.

  • Median household income: $32,446
  • Population: 140,599 (87th lowest)
  • Unemployment rate: 9.2 percent(140th highest)
  • Percent households below poverty line: 27.6 percent (ninth highest)

From 2007 to 2011, the unemployment rate in Valdosta increased by
130 percent, from 4 percent of workers to 9.2 percent. The number of
employed workers declined by more than 6,000 during that time. Those
jobs remaining often pay a lower salary. Last year, nearly 17
percent of the work force was employed in the generally low-paying
retail industry, the sixth highest percentage of all metro areas. In
2007, just 11.3 percent of the labor force worked in retail.
Valdosta, however, has an improving and active housing market. Home
prices rose nearly 12 percent between 2007 and 2011. Despite these
positives, 14.4 percent of housing units were vacant last year,
higher than the national vacancy rate of 13.1 percent. Also, 15.3
percent of homes were worth less than $50,000 versus 8.8 percent
nationwide.

The study is actually for “U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs”
and this population is not just for Valdosta, it’s for the

Valdosta MSA,
which includes Brooks, Echols, Lanier, and Lowndes Counties.

Look who’s next on the list:

Continue reading →

See Gretchen Quarterman on the radio


Gretchen Quarterman on Chris Beckham's radio show 11 October 2012
“I think people would be more interested in government if they could see it going on,”
said

Gretchen Quarterman,
candidate for Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission,
on the Chris Beckham drive-time radio show
11 October 2012,

105.9, WVGA.
Here’s

video of that interview,
followed by some excerpts.

A few excerpts:

Our county government does a lot of stuff really great…
but one of the things they don’t do very well
don’t advertise themselves;
not very transparent;
they don’t say what a great job they’re doing;
so I thought we could improve in that area.

The County Commission a couple of years ago had

two different studies commissioned
about growth and planning, and one of them was…

Sprawl to ruin, by Prof. Dorfman

growth close to existing services.
The county already has an urban service area, like how far the
water line goes, how far the sewer line goes.
And that growth should be infilled, and not expand outside of that area,
because that saves resources in terms of how far you have to send the
sheriff, how far the school bus has to go.
And they also gave an average house price, what it costs in terms of
property taxes to support the services that are sent to them, to a development.

So I would say close in to existing services is the way to go.

We need to actively seek out manufacturing jobs,

Continue reading →

Adding another charter school authorizer reduces academic learning —Karen Noll

Received today on
Georgia charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. -jsq

The Stanford study,

Multiple Choice: Charter school performance in 16 states (p. 4),
also found that multiple authorizers:


Figure 15: Charter School Effect of Policy Variables

States that empower multiple entities to act as charter school
authorizers realize significantly lower growth in academic learning
in their students, on the order of -.08 standard deviations.

Currently we have
the local boards of education that authorize charter schools at a
very high rate, 94%. If the charter is not approved by the local
board then they can appeal to the Dept of Ed. For approval. So, by
adding another authorizer in the form of the UNCONSTITUTIONAL
charter school commission you simply reduce the academic learning of
the students! This is not about education this amendment is about
the money earned by some to keep power! Our constitution states that
we have an obligation to provide free quality education to all
Georgians. We have no obligation to line the pockets of the rich
with our tax dollars!

-Karen Noll

Video Playlist @ LCC 2012-10-09



The big item at Tuesday’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session
was, same as

at Monday’s Work Session,
the waste management railroad,

terminating in a decision.
Other topics included citizen Karen Noll speaking

against the charter school amendment.

Here’s

the agenda
with links to the videos and a few notes, or links to separate posts.
Apologies for the poor sound on the first videos;
we didn’t have the usual camera.
Of course, if the Commission did its own videoing and posting, that problem
would be unlikely to occur.




  1. Call to Order
  2. Invocation
  3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag

  4. Minutes for Approval

    1. Work Session — September 24, 2012
    2. Regular Session — September 25, 2012



  5. Public Hearing — REZ-2012-15 Glenn O’Neal,     Pecan Plantation Rd. & US Hwy 84 W E-A to C-H, County
    Water & Septic, ~4.5 acres
  6. For Consideration


    1. Bevel Creek Lift Station Pump Repair
    2. Alapaha Waterline size Increase

    3. Beer License — Naylor’s Pantry — 8777 E. Hwy 135
    4. Refunding Revenue Bonds

    5. Solid Waste Management Request for Proposal
  7. Reports




    1. Community Planning Month Proclamation


      Plus recognition of two planners from Moody AFB.

    2. Employee Health Fair



    Chairman Ashley Paulk interjected not on the agenda




    • some comments about recently deceased former VSU president Hugh C. Bailey,

    • and noted the fire chief had a new fire truck, which was parked outside.
  8. Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address





    • Karen Noll spoke against the charter school amendment,
      saying it would implement taxation without representation Karen Noll @ LCC 2012-10-09 and would take more tax dollars from our public schools to give twice as much money to special charter school students.


    • Ken Klanicki never actually even approached the podium.
      After being asked by the chairman to come to the podium or leave the room,
      he wandered to the back of the room and was escorted out by a deputy sheriff.
      He called me by name as he left, but I have no idea what he was trying to
      accomplish.
      He called me later, but when I asked him that, he had no explanation.

Here’s

a video playlist.
It shifts from the first camera (good video, poor sound) to the second camera (video with no closeups, good sound) in the middle, when I arrived with the second camera.
The rest of the first camera videos are tacked onto the end.
Next time we’ll attempt to have the good camera.


Video Playlist

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 9 October 2012.

-jsq

 

Charter school amendment: taxation without representation —Karen Noll @ LCC 2012-10-09

Karen Noll spoke to the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday
about the charter school amendment,
saying it would implement taxation without representation

Karen Noll @ LCC 2012-10-09
and would take more tax dollars from our public schools
to give twice as much money to special charter school students.

When you’re talking about my kids in the schools
and you’re going to take their money
and ship it to somebody else’s family and then there’s no accountability,
that’s just unacceptable.

Here’s

the video.

-jsq

“I don’t think it could get any easier” –Richard Raines on solid waste @ LCC 2012-10-09 @ LCC 2012-10-09

Tuesday the Lowndes County Commission voted to abolish
the current rural waste collection centers and to contract with Veolia
for waste pickup like in urban areas.
This decision on an essentially rural matter
was made by three urban Commissioners without any public
hearing on their current RFP.

Before deciding,

County Manager Joe Pritchard gave the history of the county's
waste management railroad.
A curiously redacted history.



As y'all know, in FY 04 and 05,
operating costs of the solid waste program was approximately
$1.1 million increasing at a rate of approximately 10% a year.
As a result the at-that-time recently passed service delivery
[…] act of General Assembly, the county and the cities of Lowndes County
were forced to come to an agreement on the delivery of the vasrious services.
As a result of that, solid waste came to be funded strictly on a user fee basis.

I'm guessing he's referring to HB 489, the

Local government service delivery strategy agreement of 1997.
As we learned from Richard Raines Monday,

it's not clear HB 489 precluded a special tax district for waste disposal
similar to the special tax lighting districts the county often sets up
for streetlights in subdivisions.
I've seen no indication the county ever seriously looked into that.

In April and May of 2008 the county advertised and conducted a series
of eight public meetings in which we were asked by Commission
to gather input from the public regarding the various options that
were available.
During those meetings it was obvious that there was not one clear
option that was chosen by the public.

Obvious to whom?
For that matter,

Continue reading →

Georgia charter schools do no better than traditional public schools

Let's look at Georgia's non-unionized public schools.
So far as I know, Georgia does not have teachers' unions.
But there's still no reason to believe charter schools in Georgia
would be any more magic

than in Chicago.

According to CREDO at Stanford University,
which has done

CREDO at Stanford University

state-by-state charter school studies,
they find

CHARTER SCHOOLS IN GEORGIA PERFORM
SIGNIFICANTLY BELOW THEIR TRADITIONAL
PUBLIC SCHOOL PEERS IN MATH:
No Difference Found in Reading Performance.
That's their press release.
Here's
the detailed study.

So if someone has a charter school idea that they think will perform

Vote No on Amendment 1
better than public schools,
they can talk to their local school board about that, and maybe
that local board will agree.
There's no need to authorize an unelected Atlanta board to force that charter
school on us.

Vote No on the charter school amendment in November.

-jsq