Erin speaking at the organizational meeting today:It is time to Occupy Valdosta!
Friday October 14, 2011 BE AT DREXEL PARK @ 11:45am AND MARCH WITH YOUR FELLOW NEIGHBORS, CLASSMATES, COWORKERS, BROTHERS AND SISTERS!!!
We are the 99% and it is time to be heard!!!
Y’all come!
-jsq
It is my belief and its also been demonstrated that if we provide early childhood education to Latino children it would take less than a decade to reap the benefits since investment in early education is proven to generate the fastest returns to the state.
With more ECD programs there will be less Latino students being held back, less dropouts and less crime involving school-age children; and they will be more productive individuals to society.
Continue readingWe would like to think that our community “leaders” are not full of pride and greed, but please listen closely:
Greed is an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods with the intention to keep it for one’s self. Greed is inappropriate expectation. However, greed is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. —Wikipedia
- The CUEE Board did NOT meet with both school boards prior to sending the petition around town.
- Troup County Schools have not met AYP in 8 years.
- Tennessee’s Hamilton County system, the entire district, is currently high priority. This means they have had two years of bad results. This is the school used in CUEE’s original study.
- CUEE’s expert Steve Prigohzy said,
"If you believe in the end that running one system is cheaper than running two school systems. If in the end you are going to cast a vote for a single system because you think it would save money, I wouldn’t cast my vote I do not think it will save money."- If consolidation passes, there will be only 7 Board Members representing almost 20,000 students.
But he doesn’t. Because that theory and those ideas did not hold up.The whole idea was could it help us with economic development in our community. At the same time could we increase student achievement. And could we save the taxpayers money.
Well, I’m here to tell you tonight that I was one of the board members… that if that theory and those ideas had held up after research and study, I would be supporting this idea.
He might have settled for something less than that: Continue reading
Current Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE) member
Philip Poole said various members of both school boards have met
with consolidation proponents, and had asked them to involve the
whole community in any decisions.
Since that didn’t happen, there’s been less involvement lately.
And the referendum is solely about dissolving the Valdosta School System,
which would trigger the Lowndes system having to take over.
Which would result in losing federal and state funding due to
the resulting school system being larger.
Here’s the video:
Referendum is to dissolve Valdosta School District —Philip Poole @ LCBOE 4 Oct 2011
Why we oppose consolidation,
Community Forum, Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
-jsq
Dan Davis suggested letting professional educators deal with education
and let the Chamber attend cocktail parties.
That got a big round of applause.
First he established his credentials in business and education: 20 year veteran of CPIE and of the Chamber of Commerce; has businesses in many countries, but chooses to live here. Having seen the world and many educational systems, he thinks:
This consolidation is really a bad issue; very very bad.He thinks consolidation proponents are
very misinformed and very misguided.He invited CUEE and Chamber members to join him and Jerome Tucker in Community Partners in Education (CPIE).
Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading
He took CUEE’s own figures for how much more consolidation would require
to be spent per each Valdosta City school student, and demonstrated that
not only would that require raising taxes for both Valdosta and Lowndes
County residents to near the state-capped maximum of 21 mils, but even
then there is no way enough tax revenue would be generated to pay for all
the things CUEE proposes to do after consolidation, and probably not even
enough taxes to continue employing all the teachers currently employed
by the two school systems. Oh, plus consolidation would lose state and
federal grant money by increasing the composite school system size, so the
local taxpayers would have to make up that slack, too.
Here are his slides.
Here is a playlist.
-jsq
Lowndes Superintendent Steve Smith explained what the Forum was about:
Here are his slides.
Here’s Part 1 of 3:
Telling the truth —Supt. Steve Smith @ LCBOE 4 Oct 2011 Part 1 of 3:
Why we oppose consolidation,
Community Forum, Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
He pointed out
consolidation would raise taxes,
would reduce school services,
and would not address the basic issue facing local education,
which is poverty.
Here’s Part 2 of 3: Continue reading
Back
in 2009 we installed solar panels on our farm workshop.
At the time the closest certified solar installer I could find was in Marietta.
Four years ago there were 4 in the state.
now there are forty.
And that’s in a state that’s trailing
North Carolina
and even
New Jersey
in solar installations.
Also, I applied some weeks back for a USDA REAP grant for solar
for Okra Paradise Farms.
photograph) that appeared in the Valdosta Daily Times in response to my
earlier piece on
“Solar: Infinite and Clean”. The Valdosta Daily Times
seems to enforce a quota of sorts at this time, so they won’t publish
my additional information for Mr. Blankenship and other “skeptics”.
At the state level you can contact the “Georgia Solar Energy
Association” (www.gasolar.org/)
to learn more about the viability
of solar power in 2011, which is quite different from the situation
in 2001. A larger solar firm our community
Continue reading