Category Archives: History

Results of PEF’s plans for Chattanooga/Hamilton Co. schools?

The partnership between Public Education Foundation, headed by Steven H. Prigohzy, and the consolidated public schools in Chattanooga and Hamilton County, Tennessee continues. So, how have all those great plans for improving education worked out?

First, let’s look at PEF’s own History webpage,

In 1994 Chattanooga city voters voted to turn responsibility for education over to the county, requiring the two systems to merge. At the request of the Hamilton County School Board, PEF surveyed 3,300 area residents and convened 135 community members – educators, civic and government leaders, residents, parents and students – to help shape the vision for the new school system. When the newly consolidated system emerged in 1997, the partnership with PEF continued.
Interestingly, Prigohzy is no longer listed as board or staff with PEF. Maybe we should ask them why….

So, what came of all this consolidation in Chattanooga? It must be great, considering PEF’s Board Approved 2005-2010 Strategic Plan for Great Public Schools,

In the years 2005 – 2010, Hamilton County Public Schools will meet or exceed national benchmarks for excellence with continuous, measurable improvement in reading, mathematics, and in the numbers of students who progress smoothly from grade to grade, graduate from high school and go on to college or career-path jobs. Because of this sustained progress, Hamilton County will be recognized among the very best mid-sized public school systems in America. The community will be justifiably proud and more and more people will understand and support the investment necessary for great public schools. The Public Education Foundation will be instrumental in these achievements as a champion of school transformation and will devote its expertise and fundraising capabilities to the Hamilton County Public Schools as a catalyst for bold ideas that create real and positive change.
Sounds great!

But an outside study shows a different result. Kontji Anthony wrote for WMCTV, 23 January 2011, Study offers glimpse at possible impact of school consolidation, Continue reading →

Steve Prigohzy, guru of Chattanooga-Hamilton Co. school consolidation

We’ve seen that Steve Prigohzy’s magnet school, CSAS, was started in 1986. Chattanooga school consolidation with Hamilton County, Tennessee was in 1995. And look who was waiting to tell them what to do: Chattanooga, 1995: City Referendum on Consolidating Schools, and No Legislative Interference, by Smart City Memphis, 1 January 2011, quoting Education Week 2 August 1995,
A month after the election, the board voted to ask the Public Education Foundation to help frame the new system. The move was partly on the advice of educators in Knoxville, who faced a raft of problems after consolidating rapidly with Knox County eight years ago.

The foundation, one of the wealthiest local education foundations in the country, has worked closely with educators in both the city and county. Its president, Steven H. Prigohzy, is a dynamo with a clear vision of where he’d like to take education in the new system.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a county

Continue reading →

Steve Prigohzy’s magnet school

CUEE’s paid expert from Chattanooga, Steve Prigohzy, started and ran a magnet school in Chattanooga, much like the one in Troup County that is still causing extra costs and consternation eighteen years after unification. Prigohzy’s school also used prison labor to avoid spending on local labor.

After reading Barbara Stratton’s piece about Steve Prigohzy screening a movie about magnet schools, I wondered, who is this Steve Prigohzy, anyway? CUEE never showed us his resume, as near as I can tell, and they’re a private organization, so they don’t have to. But his tracks are all over the Internet.

Cynthia M. Gettys and Anne Wheelock wrote for The New Alternative Schools in September 1994, (Volume 52, Number 1, Pages 12-15) Launching Paideia in Chattanooga,

With the board’s approval and support from the Lyndhurst Foundation, a committee outlined the necessary steps to develop a Paideia school for Chattanooga students. First, the group hired Steve Prigohzy as the school’s planner, promoter, and educational leader. Prigohzy looked for teachers who were lifelong learners themselves. “I would ask teachers to talk to me about a book they were reading that I shouldn’t miss. I wanted people who were acting out their curiosity about the world,” he said. Prigohzy also sought teachers whose appreciation for discourse would sustain the school as a community of learners. Limited public confidence, especially in the city’s middle schools, influenced the planning.
They must have liked him, because he was hired as its principal, according Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla in Haunted Chattanooga, Continue reading →

Ashley Paulk’s Greatest Hits!

No, not every intemperate outburst! We can’t be everywhere. Just the outstanding ones from the podium as chairman in County Commission meetings.

Ashley Paulk is code enforcement

Citizens were opposing a rezoning on Old Pine Road, 8 June 2010. A Mr. Mulligan of Bemiss Road wanted to know who does code enforcement. Chairman Paulk responded:
You’re looking at him. Me.

I locked up some of my best friends!

While he was interrogating Dr. Noll 12 January 2011 who had the temerity to come to invite the Commission to a meeting, Ashley Paulk remarked:
“I was the sheriff sixteen years; I locked up some of my best friends; that’s the way I operate.”
This was shortly after he said: Continue reading →

Lowndes County: commuter rail hub

Look at all those other railroads converging on Valdosta in that GFRR project proposal map. Valdosta is a historical rail hub for passenger traffic to Atlanta, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, Thomasville, Tallahasssee, and beyond. All the tracks are still in place and still in use for freight. With some rolling stock and a few deals with the railroads, Valdosta and Lowndes County could become again a passenger rail hub with a mass transit system for local commuting to jobs and for long distance travel.

Add a bus system and local commuting becomes very practical. People could take the train to town and catch a bus to work. Many people could walk or take a bicycle to their work from the train station. This could work the other way around, too. People could live in Valdosta and work in Ray City or Lakeland or Hahira or Lake Park or Clyattville and not have to drive to get there. That would save a lot of wasted time and wasted fuel.

This kind of mass transit would attract the knowledge-based workers we supposedly want around here. Including jobs our high school and college graduates could take, so they wouldn’t have to move elsewhere.

And upgrading the railroads, building stations, building and refurbishing houses and apartments near the stations, etc., would employ a lot of construction workers; probably as many as road projects and sprawling subdivision projects, but without the sprawl.

-jsq

Georgia and Florida Railway (GFRR) – Valdosta to Willacoochee Rehabilitation $6.25 million T-SPLOST

Now here’s a T-SPLOST project I like: upgrading the railroad that runs from Valdosta to Moody AFB and on to Ray City and Nashville in Berrien County, and Willacoochee in Atkinson County. This proposal is to aid freight, but with this upgrade to the track, the same track would be even more readily usable for passenger rail. That same track was used for passenger travel up into the 1950s. My mother used to catch the train at Barretts (just north of Moody) to go visit her relatives in Pearson (a bit east of Willacoochee).

It’s true the project sheet talks about “potential customers in the region”:

This project will provide for more efficient train operations along the rail corridor to accommodate the increase rail traffic serving the existing and potential customers in the region.
However, rail promotes development in existing population centers and at stations, unlike all along automobile roadways.

This project is also another example of how the economic area of Moody AFB includes Continue reading →

Sonny Vickers, Mayor of Valdosta?

A usually-reliable source says Sonny Vickers will be appointed interim Mayor of Valdosta tomorrow by the Valdosta City Council at its 5:30 PM 8 September meeting.

Since he’s running unopposed for City Council District 3, Sonny Vickers can resign from that post, get appointed mayor, and get re-elected as Council 3 in November.

This is the same method used in 2003 when former Mayor James H. Rainwater died before the election. Council appointed David Sumner interim mayor. According to the VDT 31 August 2011:

At that time, Councilman David Sumner assumed the role of mayor, but had to resign his council seat to do so. He had already qualified to rerun for his seat in the November 2003 election, was re-elected to his seat and stepped down as mayor at the end of 2003, re-assuming his duties as a newly elected councilman at the beginning of 2004.

If they don’t appoint Vickers interim mayor tomorrow, the Valdosta City Council will probably appoint somebody else. According to the VDT today:

Vickers is among those being considered for appointment by council, along with Dexter Sharper and David Sumner, who are also former council members. Vickers pointed out that he did not submit his name for consideration, but rather it was mentioned in conversations with other council members.
We’ll see.

In the November election, one of Brooks D. Bivins, John Gayle, or Gary Minchew will be elected mayor (unless of course there’s a runoff).

-jsq

Georgia still in the solar shade

The 20th century with its coal and oil and nuclear was more than a decade ago now. It’s time for Georgia to see the 21st sunshine.

Jerry Grillo wrote for the July 2011 Georgia Trend, Partly Sunny In Georgia: The state’s solar industry is growing steadily, but slowly, as the national industry explodes

“Georgia is shackled to the 20th century,” Peterson says. “If all I did was look at Georgia, I’d think we were doing well. But I work all over the country, and I’m not kidding when I say we’re dealing with $500-million solar projects that have no chance of coming here because of systemic problems that keep Georgia from participating in the 21st-century economy, which has renewable energy as a major component.

“It’s disgusting, considering our potential, how much opportunity is lost, how much capital investment is passed up.”

All it would take to fix this is the political will.

Maybe if the people and elected and appointed officials look at the handwriting on the wall: Continue reading →

CCA really doesn’t like community opposition, so apparently it works

Private prison company CCA, which in conjunction with ALEC promotes laws in dozens of states and nationally that lock up more people for CCA’s private profit at taxpayer expense, really doesn’t like community opposition to siting private prisons in their communities. Hm, why would CCA hate community opposition so much, unless it works?

Not quite rolling his eyes when she mentions visiting communities, CCA’s video pair disparage community opposition to private prisons on their own web page, When Corrections Meets Communities:

Question: There are Web sites and blogs that are adamantly opposed to your company and industry, and they provide negative information about you. Why?
Hm, you mean like some of the material on this blog?
Answer: CCA and all corrections companies recognize the ongoing efforts of local, loosely formed grassroots groups and national, well-funded associations that jointly oppose the establishment of partnership prisons, many for self-serving reasons. Such groups go to great lengths to attack, criticize and misrepresent the entire industry. They make false allegations and often rely on hearsay and unreliable sources. Regrettably, these biased groups often resort to misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric to turn isolated incidents into broad generalizations about the corrections industry as a whole.
Well-funded? Har! OK, not this blog. That plus we provide evidence, like Continue reading →

“I have seen cameras here at this building when it concerns football” — George Boston Rhynes @ VBOE 29 August 2011

If TV cameras show up for football, why don’t they show up “when the people come together on issues such as this, not just black folk, not just white folk, but all Americans are here tonight because of our concern”?

George Boston Rhynes made three points: Continue reading →