Category Archives: History

Marching for rights —Mario Bartoletti @ MLK Monument Occupy Valdosta

Mario Bartoletti stood up at the Martin Luther King Jr. Monument in Valdosta and said to Occupy Valdosta:

I’m just shy of 79 and I’ve been out here marching all the way today, and I’ll tell you why.

When I was your age, we were marching for civil rights. We made it. Now we’re marching for another kind of rights, and I guarantee we’re going to make it! I want you to promise, when you’re my age, you’re going to be leading a demonstration for those who march for those kinds of rights.

Here’s the video:

Marching for rights —Mario Bartoletti @ MLK Monument Occupy Valdosta
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation

Received yesterday, The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation: The Truth About Unification/Consolidation of the Valdosta/Lowndes School Systems By David E. Mullis, J.D., LL.M., October 12, 2011. It’s a 43 page exhaustive compendium of all the statements against consolidation by both school boards, the Valdosta City Council, etc., together with detailed debunking of every argument CUEE has made.

I think this passage on page 3 sums it up:

In other words, we can offer a great education, provide incentives for students to perform, make modifications to education to help students succeed, and provide technical help, but if the child is homeless, left home alone for long periods of time, living in a high crime area, living in a home with substance abuse, or just downright defiant, there is only so much the school can accomplish in helping these students succeed. Good parental, home and community environments are critical to the success of underprivileged children.
Therefore, CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts are focused on the wrong methods of improving our school statistics. Unification will not accomplish any of their stated goals, but will create an enormous financial burden on the community and its families during this time of recession and high unemployment. The business community and volunteer organizations should instead focus on providing educational awareness and success clinics in low income areas. They should organize efforts to reduce poverty by bringing in industry with good wages and sponsoring basic community literacy and vocational training and tutoring. They should focus on programs to promote the value of education. They should organize drug awareness and rehabilitation programs in low income areas. They should focus their efforts in decreasing poverty. They should focus on encouraging community diversity. If they will do this, the educational problems will take care of themselves in good systems like Valdosta and Lowndes.
However, CUEE and the Chamber have insisted on pushing forward with their unification agenda despite the certain negative effect it will have on the community and the education of our children. They deny there will be any negative effect, but they have no personal accountability if they are wrong. They ignore all relevant studies and dismiss the results as being misleading. Then they state their own misleading and false assertions and claim them to be FACTS.

Indeed, what qualifies the Chamber of CUEE to talk about education? Judging by their track record, nothing does.

This Handbook is a great resource, and I applaud David Mullis for producing it.

-jsq

To the people of Valdosta and South Georgia —Occupy Valdosta

Posted today in Occupy Valdosta’s facebook page:

To the people of Valdosta and South Georgia
We, the local citizens occupying Valdosta, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; to nonviolently occupy public space; to create an open process to address the problems we face, and to generate solutions accessible to everyone.
Our issues are varied, yet related.
We seek

Continue reading →

Neighborhoods matter more than schools?

Where you live makes more difference to your education than where you go to school, says a news study, backed up by an older study.

Maureen Downey blogged for AJC 5 October 2011, Forget school vouchers. The route to improving education may be housing vouchers.

School voucher proponents argue that kids need a way out of failing schools, but research increasingly suggests that it would be more effective to provide them a way out of failing neighborhoods.
Should we consider giving poor families in low-performing school zones housing vouchers that they could use to relocate in the zone of a school performing above the area median?

I’d say that’s a bad solution to the problem the study identifies, and we already know better solutions. But first, from the abstract of the the study Continue reading →

Reinstating Glass-Steagall

Reinstating Glass-Steagall appears to be a very popular possibility, although all I can find is an unscientific online poll (87% for). You may wonder: what is Glass-Steagall?

Here are extracts from a timeline by PBS’s Frontline, The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall,

“In 1933, Senator Carter Glass (D-Va.) and Congressman Henry Steagall (D-Ala.) introduce the historic legislation that bears their name, seeking to limit the conflicts of interest created when commercial banks are permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds. In the early part of the century, individual investors were seriously hurt by banks whose overriding interest was promoting stocks of interest and benefit to the banks, rather than to individual investors. The new law bans commercial banks from underwriting securities, forcing banks to choose between being a simple lender or an underwriter (brokerage). The act also establishes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), insuring bank deposits, and strengthens the Federal Reserve’s control over credit.”

66 years later, after numerous weakenings: Continue reading →

Do we want a Gladiator School prison in Lowndes County?

Remember FBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”, the CCA-run private prison in Idaho the FBI was investigating last year? Well, it hasn’t improved much. Cutting corners for private profit endangers prisoner safety and public safety. Is that what we want in Lowndes County, Georgia?

The same reporter, Rebecca Boone, wrote again for AP Sunday, almost a year later, CCA-run prison remains Idaho’s most violent lockup

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In the last four years, Idaho’s largest privately run prison has faced federal lawsuits, widespread public scrutiny, increased state oversight, changes in upper management and even an ongoing FBI investigation.
Yet the Corrections Corp. of America-run Idaho Correctional Center remains the most violent lockup in Idaho.
Records obtained by The Associated Press show that while the assault rate improved somewhat in the four-year period examined, ICC inmates are still more than twice as likely to be assaulted as those at other Idaho prisons.
Between September 2007 and September 2008, both ICC and the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution were medium-security prisons with roughly 1,500 inmates each. But during that 12-month span, ICC had 132 inmate-on-inmate assaults, compared to just 42 at ISCI. In 2008, ICC had more assaults than all other Idaho prisons combined.
By 2010, both prisons had grown with 2,080 inmates at ICC and 1,688 inmates at ISCI. Records collected by the AP showed that there were 118 inmate-on-inmate assaults at ICC compared to 38 at ISCI. And again last year, ICC had more assaults than all the other prisons combined.

What improvement there has been is because multiple inmates filed lawsuits.

Even so, Idaho renewed and even increased its contract with CCA. With one small improvement: Continue reading →

School consolidation as disaster capitalism

School consolidation would set up an artificial fiscal disaster that could force the “unified” public school system to turn to private foundations for funding, at the price of control of public education by private entities. This is disaster capitalism, or the shock doctrine, right here in Valdosta and Lowndes County.

What’s the Shock Doctrine? It’s been around for a long time, but Naomi Klein researched it for her book of the same name. It’s

“the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock”

She was writing mostly about wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. Locally here we haven’t had any of those. But we may be about to create a disaster, a shock, at the ballot box in November, if voters fall for the school “unification” snake oil.

What’s the next step after CUEE has accidentally revealed that Continue reading →

The promises that are impossible —Barbara Stratton

Received 6 October 2011 on LCBOE did its homework about consolidation. -jsq

CUEE has staked their efforts on catch phrases & false promises that look & sound good. All of their info is at best a half truth. The promises that are imposible to keep are lies. I was raised believing a promise broken is a truth untold, which is a lie.
Unfortunately this tactic will work for today’s lazy voters who won’t even take the time to go to a website where the true facts are posted much less do their own research. Surely don’t ask them to leave the comfort of their homes & entertainment & personal addictions to attend any public meetings on either side when they should be visiting both sides at least once. They are part of the convenient idiot masses that facilitate take overs by the clever greedy for money & power few.
Both school boards [VBOE, LCBOE] and their supporters have done a great job of researching to produce true evidence that dissolves all the CUEE false rhetoric & print.
We cannot assume that truth will prevail because it is much easier to believe the fast sell that requires no personal effort. CUEE is banking on this. Most of the school consolidations that have occurred had many that were shocked when they passed because they did not account for the money/power ruses of the facilitators working so well with the lazy voter public. Many will not even show up claiming they have no stake since they have no children in either system. They are too lazy to check the researched facts to see they will be paying higher taxes for a handicapped unified system.
-Barbara Stratton

Valdosta City Council voted to oppose school consolidation

Mayor Sonny Vickers said he thought it was important for children and grandchildren and proper for the City Council to take a stand against school consolidation, and City Manager Larry Hanson read the statement (transcript appended).

For: James Wright District 1 Hoke Hampton District 3 Alvin Payton District 4 Ben Norton At Large Didn’t Have to Vote: Sonny Vickers Mayor

Against: Robert Yost District 6 Tim Carroll District 5 Missing: Deidra White District 2

After very brief discussion, the vote was 4 for (James Wright of District 1, Hoke Hampton of District 3, Alvin Payton of District 4, and Ben Norton At Large) and 2 against (Robert Yost of District 6 and Tim Carroll of District 5).

That means Ben Norton changed his vote since since their last non-binding vote related to school consolidation. (Nonbinding because they didn’t have any authority to decide whether the referendum went on the ballot or not.) Council Deidra White of District 2 was absent throughout the meeting, which I find rather odd since she seemed quite aware when I spoke to her the previous day that this vote was going to occur. Back in August she voted against putting the referendum on the ballot. Yes, I know the motion was not exactly the same, so the votes are not exactly comparable. In any case, this time there was no tie and thus no need for the (new) mayor to break a tie.

Here’s the video:

Valdosta City Council voted to oppose school consolidationo
education, consolidation, resolution,
Regular Session, Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 6 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Here’s the statement transcribed as accurately as I could from the video: Continue reading →

Chattanooga deja vu —Karen Noll

Received yesterday on How did we get here? apparently referring to Barbara Stratton’s comment since reposted as Hauntingly familiar Tennessee Waltz. -jsq

After reading the Ed Weekly article, [slightly earlier version quoted here, referred to here. -jsq] I was struck by a very strong dejavu feeling. I checked the date twice and only to realize ( twice) that this consolidation went on more than 15 years ago.
The city schools were in bad shape financially and educationally in Chatnooga city. That is the major difference with our situation here. As much as some want you to believe that Valdosta city schools are not doing well, there are many that can point to the school improvement plan and it being recognized as one of the best in the state, or other notable achievements that differ front the view of VCS propagated by the folks on CUEE.
Other than that we are looking at the same issues; racial segregation, neighborhood schools, professional development monies in the different district, curriculum changes, busing to attain integration requirements, and the concerns about redistricting and moving kids to other schools.
Again this was 15 years ago, yet we are now faced with the same issues. At the time of the article consolidation had passed (19k to 21k). Teachers and parents Interviewed expressed concern about the poor kids of the city not getting a fair shake because the county (largely white) schools had little connection to the issues of the city kids. We would be faced with that just on a smaller scale.
The other strange likeness to this 15 year old consolidation is that Steve Prigozhy seems to have some very vague notions of school reform today that he did back then. These notions have been found to be less than successful in the ensuing 15 years.
Distancing himself from his failures does not make him a success at anything but manipulation of facts. The education of my children is not going to be reformed by a man that spins the truth and panders to the wealthy.
Thank you for sharing the Edweekly article.
-Karen Noll

On the LAKE front

Citizen dialog for transparent process by the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange