Category Archives: Community

Who will be deciding where our little girls go to school? –Sam Worthington @ LCBOE 4 October 2011



A local dentist asked the Lowndes County School Board and staff:

Two little girls, one is ten and in the county,
another is three and will be going to the county.
When me and my wife moved into this area,
we spent a lot of time
deciding where we wanted to live mainly based upon
based on schools, and the schools’ records; where we wanted our girls to go.

If consolidation goes through, who will be deciding where our little girls
go to school?

Supt. Smith said the Lowndes County Board of Education would make the
initial decision, but it would have to be approved by the Department of
Justice,

and we all know what that might be.
I’d rather control it locally.

[applause]

We know because

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Open record requests and jail deaths —George Boston Rhynes



George Rhynes complimented Ashley Paulk for having provided
information about people in jail when Paulk was Sheriff,
and noted that unfortunately that had not been the case since.
He asked if someone could point him to where he could get such
information.
Chairman Paulk reminded him that the Sheriff is a constitutional
officer, and the Commission did not direct him.
George Rhynes responded:

Everywhere I go, I hear that.
I go to Brooks County, and they inform me of the same thing.

Chairman Paulk noted:

… by state law.

They agreed on that, and George said he thought nonetheless:

Seems like somebody in the state of Georgia would know how to get that information,
if it is open.

George also said:

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And I feel like there’s somebody meddling in their affairs; I wish they wouldn’t have. —Ashley Paulk @ LCC 7 November 2011



As

previously noted,
Chairman Ashley Paulk last night told Matt Portwood
he didn’t think the Lowndes
County Commission should be meddling in school affairs.
Here’s the part the VDT didn’t quote:

And I feel like there’s somebody meddling in their affairs;
I wish they wouldn’t have.

That’s pretty interesting considering that
Brittany D. McClure reported for the VDT
4 November 2011 that

FVCS makes campaign contributions public:

Ashley Paulk, Lowndes County Commission chairman contributed $200

So it’s not like the public doesn’t already know Ashley Paulk’s opinion
on this subject, and it seems he was reminding us of it: he contributed money to FVCS, a group actively lobbying to prevent the school consolidation promoted by CUEE.

Chairman Paulk also noted:

We do have county residents who live in the city.

Seems like he’s confusing two excuses for the Commissioners not speaking about school consolidation:

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Bussing is a natural consequence of consolidation —Warren Turner to Roy Copeland @ LCBOE 4 Oct 2011

Two attorneys brought a point into the light that CUEE doesn’t like to talk about:
bussing is a natural consequence of consolidation.
That was stated by the attorney for the Lowndes County School System,
Warren Turner, 4 October 2011.

Roy Copeland brought up some names from the past: Mrs. Copeland
or Mrs. Adams, and the newscasters Huntley and Brinkley.
He then asked about the consent decree on desegregation from back in that era:



Has anyone given any thoughts to the issues relative to the consentdecreee,
desegregation, and the realignment of school districts relative to
the Voting Rights Act 1965 preclearance, and all those other issues.

Lowndes County Schools Attorney Warren Turner answered the question,
after Roy Copeland mentioned they were neighbors.
The answer was basically that there would be a hearing before November 8th.
Hm, I wonder what happened with that?
As far as what happens if consolidation is approved by the Valdosta voters,
he said, among other things:



So the concept of a neighborhood school, where everybody stays where they are,
is not going to happen in my opinion, because the federal government is
not going to allow that to happen.

Finally, Roy Copeland asked:

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Are you gonna get the parents involved? —Roy Taylor @ LCBOE 4 October 2011

Roy Taylor said his grandson graduated from Lowndes County High.


He must be a lot older than he seems, since LCHS closed about
1968 when it was combined with Hahira High School to create
Lowndes High School.

He did have a good point, though (paraphrasing):
80% of prisoners are less than 30 years old.

  • $60,000 a year to keep a person in prison.
  • $30,000 a year to keep them in college.

His question:

Are you gonna get the parents involved?

Lowndes County Schools Supt. Smith responded that they are working
diligently through Community Partners in Education to do that.
He also talked about Valdosta and Lowndes schools already improving
their graduation rates.
And school, home, and community as three legs of a stool.

We’re striving to do better every day.

Here’s

the video:

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School Consolidation: Chairman Ashley Paulk responds to Matt Portwood

The VDT this morning left out all the best parts of last night’s


exchange between Matt Portwood and Lowndes County Commission Chairman
Ashley Paulk.
We’ll have the video up shortly so you can see for yourself.

The question:

“Reading the news, I found that both school boards and the City Council
have come out with either a statement or a resoultion with their stance
on school consolidation.
I’m just curious why there hasn’t been a statement or resolution from you,”
said Portwood.

The VDT’s version of the answer:

“Look at your tax notes.
It says county taxes and school taxes,” replied Paulk.
We’re two totally different entities than the county school system.
I don’t feel like we should be meddling in their affairs.
I don’t think the County Commission should be weighing in on the city issue.
Commissioners agreed that this was their stance on the matter.”

More in a bit.

-jsq

CUEE Campaign Disclosure Report Completed

Received yesterday.



From: Sam Allen

Date: November 6, 2011 5:26:15 PM EST

Subject: CUEE Campaign Disclosure Report Completed

Friends,

Attached is

a copy of the CUEE Disclosure Report.


How many children
could this have help!!!!! How many teachers and support staff could we
have saved? Are we in still in a recession?

Thanks,

Sam Allen

—

Samuel Allen, Superintendent Emeritus

Double Lowndes County Commission tonight: Work 4:30 PM Regular 5:30 PM

Alcohol, rezoning, hospital, debt, and an election!
Because Tuesday is Election Day, the Lowndes County Commission
changed its regular meeting to Monday.
Work sessions are usually Monday in the morning; today the Work Session
is at 4:30 PM, just before the Regular Session at 5:30 PM.
It’s a busy agenda, including two alcohol licenses, two rezonings, and
an appointment to the
Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County (VLCHA);
that’s the body that authorized

South Georgia Medical Center (SGMC) buying Smith Northview Hospital,
after which SGMC got the County Commission

to have we the taxpayers guarantee $100 million in bonds for expansion.
Hm, and “SGMC Revenue Certificates” is on this agenda, too.

Here’s

the agenda:




LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED AGENDA

WORK SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2011, 4:30 p.m.

REGULAR SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2011, 5:30 p.m.

327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor

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We don’t need consolidation to change anything that needs to be changed —Barbara Stratton

Received today on

Tracking can help all distributions of students —new research” of the blog “On the LAKE Front. -jsq

I’m definitely against consolidation, but I don’t like tracking


either. When I was self employed breeding & training race horses in
the 80’s I worked part time as a substitute teacher. The county system
used a form of tracking that grouped students into slow, medium &
fast learners. My children were in the top group so it worked well for
them. However, I did not like the system because I observed a lot of
students who lost the desire to try because they were classified in the
slow learner group.

I finished the last month for one 7th grade class & had to sit in on the
end of year decisions to pass or fail. One student was

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Tracking can help all distributions of students —new research

It turns out tracking students can help all students if done properly.
CUEE’s

invited speaker Terry Jenkins
co-authored a paper
back in 1997 about
Detracking Troup County: Providing an Exemplary Curriculum for All Students.
He appeared to be saying de-tracking was an advantge of school consolidation.
Back then tracking was apparently considered a bad thing.
Recent research shows that actually tracking students can help all
levels of students.
So yet another supposed reason or benefit of consolidation turns out
not to be true.



Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer wrote for American Economic Review, 101(5): 1739–74, DOI:10.1257/aer.101.5.1739,

Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya

To the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking
will help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may
benefit if tracking allows teachers to better tailor their instruction
level. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from
tracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the
distribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects and test
its implications in a randomized tracking experiment conducted with
121 primary schools in Kenya. While the direct effect of high-achieving
peers is positive, tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly
by allowing teachers to teach to their level. (JEL I21, J45, O15)

The first sentence is the standard “diversity” argument that CUEE
keeps making.
The authors state it so as to poing out that their study finds
that it’s far from the whole story.


I find this part especially interesting:

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