Yesterday I asked
But what does the joint resolution actually say?
Karen Noll has supplied the answer, in the form of a
PDF
of the signed resolution,
transcribed below.
This thing makes the education paragraph in the
Occupy Valdosta Mission Statement sound mild-mannered.
We’ve already seen
the state’s response.
-jsq
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
AND
VALDOSTA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION
JOINT RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF
QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION
Paul Bowers, CEO of Georgia Power, doubled down on baseload nuclear,
coal, and natural gas for the next fifty years.
What’s he scared of?
Nick Coltrain wrote for OnlineAthens yesterday,
Renewable push not in the cards for Ga. Power,
“Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,”
Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be
2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive
that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an
intermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of
the time.”
One time you can depend on it is hot summer days when everybody is
air conditioning, which is why
Austin Energy flipped in one year
from spouting such nonsense to deploying the most aggressive solar rooftop
rebate program in the country.
Austin Energy did the math and found those rebates would cost
about the same as a coal plant and would generate as much energy.
And when it is needed most, unlike the fossilized baseload grid,
which
left millions without power in the U.S. in June
and
hundreds of millions without power in India in July.
Bowers knows better than the nonsense he just spouted;
as recently as
November 2011 he told Georgia Trend,
Pushers of the charter school amendment must be desperate!
Blurring the line between public officials and private
citizens, state Attorney General Sam Olens wrote:
Local school boards do not have the legal authority to expend funds
or other resources to advocate or oppose the ratification of a
constitutional amendment by the voters. They may not do this
directly or indirectly through associations to which they may
belong….
As
Jim Galloway wrote yesterday for the AJC in
Sam Olens orders local school boards to stay out of charter school fight,
That means organizations like the Georgia School Boards Association,
and perhaps, the Georgia School Superintendents Association, would
be barred from speaking out against the proposed constitutional
amendment.
And would that include organizations like PAGE,
which produced
the slides
that
a local middle school teacher used last week?
What about that teacher, or
Dr. Troy Davis, speaking a few weeks earlier,
both on their own time?
Olens’ letter would apply to what
the VDT said was in the VBOE and LCBOE joint resolution,
at least the part about “The resolution explicitly states that the boards
are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative
to state charter schools.”
But what does Olens mean, duly elected local school boards don’t
have authority to express opinions about educational matters
that would directly affect the people who elected them?
Why has Sam Olens suddenly gotten religion about this now,
after he was silent last year when both VBOE and LCBOE adopted
resolutions against the school “unification” referendum?
Where was he when both boards of education hosted numerous
forums opposing consolidation?
Will he next be telling the Valdosta City Council it can’t
pass a resolution opposing a referendum?
What exactly is the difference between that elected body and
an elected school board as far as expressing such an opinion?
And all of those resolutions were non-binding opinions.
Will Sam Olens next be telling the VDT it can’t
editorialize against the charter school amendment?
How desperate are the pushers of the charter school amendment?
The Valdosta Board of Education, followed by the
Lowndes County Board of Education, adopted a
“Charter School Amendment Resolution” or a
“Joint Resolution in Support of Quality Public Education”,
depending on which ones minutes you go by.
What does the resolution actually say?
Brittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT 11 September 2012,
School boards to adopt resolution against charter school amendment.
“The Lowndes County and Valdosta City Boards of Education
request that the Governor and State Legislators commit their support
to adequately fund a first-class K-12 public education for students
in Lowndes County and Valdosta City and across the state of
Georgia,” the resolution states.
The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters
to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state
charter schools.
Valdosta Board of Education did that at their
10 September 2012 meeting:
Even the VDT opposes the charter school amendment.
“Staff Writer” editorialized in the VDT 12 September 2012,
Will charter schools hurt public education?
So the state has consistently run down the public education system
in Georgia over the course of the last decade by drastically cutting
funding from programs, but are now complaining because student test
scores and graduation rates have decreased.The state solution? Allow for basically anyone who has a building to
apply to run a “charter school” that would siphon money
away from public education. Students would be able to choose where
they would go, the parents or community officials would
“run” the schools, and they would not have to meet the
same standards as the current public schools, but taxpayers would
still be forced to pay for them.State officials are fond of saying that charter schools aren’t
private schools, but when a school gets to pick and choose who they
let in and who they don’t, that’s the definition of a private
school. Only the elite whose parents want to run the schools will
have a chance, and the poor and disenfranchised will have no choice,
will not be accepted, and will suffer even more because the money
will no longer be there to educate them.Here’s an idea: Restore all those drastic austerity cuts from
education to pre-Gov. “Sonny” Perdue levels, invest in
the public education system which is already in place and doing
quite well in spite of the state’s best efforts to shut it down, and
restore the true value of a public education to the taxpayers of the
state who are footing the bill and seeing fewer results.
I like that idea. Let’s vote No on the charter school amendment in November
so we can get back to funding public education.
-jsq
The
failed EDF nuke project at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland
makes it clearer why Southern Company (SO) was the first company
to get a nuclear permit in 30 years:
it was the only one big enough and monopolistic enough to pull it off.
Even then it’s such a
bet-the-farm risk
that even
“great, big company”
SO only dared
to deploy its
“great big huge scale“ equipment
with the regulatory capture triple-whammy
of
a stealth tax on Georgia Power bills,
PSC approval of cost overruns,
and
an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee:
Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable
cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively
favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and
exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover
fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.
Translation: Georgia Power customers subsidize SO’s bonds
and SO shareholders’ stock dividends.
The PSC also approved
cost overruns being
passed on to Georgia Power customers,
and those nukes are already over
$400 or $900 million, depending on who you ask.
What do you expect when
4 out of 5 Public Service Commissioners
apparently took 70% of their campaign contributions from utilities
they regulate or their employees or their law firms,
and the fifth commissioner took about 20% from such sources?
Hm, there’s an election going on right now!
And what if even one of that three-legged regulatory capture stool’s legs
went away?
A pressure group for privatizing schools is the origin of the jargon
in the charter school referendum on the November Georgia ballot.
And yes, it’s tied to ALEC.
In
Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people,
Karen Noll asserted “…the wording that
is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents….”
The preamble to the charter school amendment on the November ballot reads:
Provides for improving student achievement and parental
involvement through more public charter school options.
Where else is that wording found?
Combinations of the three phrases “student achievement”, “parental involvement”,
and “charter school” actually are not very common, according to google.
But the Parent Trigger wrote in
Empowering Parents,
Policy initiatives that empower parents are likely to increase
parental involvement and satisfaction and raise student achievement
by inviting parents into the process.
What process?
The designers of the California Parent Trigger made a grave mistake
by leaving tepid reform modules in the bill and allowing districts
to override the parents’ reform choice.
The Georgia constitutional amendment wouldn’t leave school districts
any ability to decide anything.
What would the parents’ reform choice be?
To get a decent deal on streetlights, a small Georgia city may have
to help change the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Or, an energy concern in Hahira happened to coincide with
a visit by PSC candidate Steve Oppenheimer.
Ralph Clendenin, City Council member, is looking into converting
Hahira's streetlights to LEDs or maybe solar.
He has discussed that with Georgia Power, which will do it for
$250,000 up front.
At a savings of $1,000 a month, that would take quite a while to pay back:
more than 20 years.
Steve Oppenheimer, running for Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC),
found the streetlight issue interesting:
Just like you're looking at options the city might do for better choices for lighting
in terms of serving the people and meeting your budget, as Georgians we need that, too.
He indicated that there are more solutions than we're being told.
To me what's improtant are homeowners rights,
and we get control over the power rates,
because our residential rates and small business rates have gone up about 31% in five years.
He brought up
Dublin's solar streetlights, and
solar for energy and jobs.
He indicated energy was a future source of jobs.
What it comes down to is people like you in this room in the small communities
figuring out what pieces do we put together to make our community better for tomorrow.
Afterwards in the entranceway,
Ralph Clendenin showed Steve Oppenheimer how
he'd figured out that Georgia Power was charging about 73% maintenance
above the electricity cost of the streetlights.
Oppenheimer said there were many options.
Clendenin suggested one:
The option I see right now is, the Commission somehow, has got to change the rules
on how Georgia Power… structures payments.
Oppenheimer suggested a way to get there:
We need a commission with some new leadership,
with some separation from industry, that doesn't have the
apparent conflicts of interest.
Ralph summed it up pithily:
Ralph Clendenin: 73% is that forever payment to Georgia Power.
Steve Oppenheimer: It's a great deal, if you're on the right end of it.
[laughter]
What say we change the end of the stick we the taxpayers are getting from the PSC?
Here's
a playlist.
Work Session, Hahira City Council, Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 October 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
-jsq
Apparently
WCTV’s “at the South Georgia Medical Center Parking Garage”>
meant actually in the nearby parking lot, because that’s where we found
some city and county employees and a few volunteers
standing in the shade of a Valdosta Police van.
An invocation and six speeches from five speakers ensued,
all in support of SPLOST VII,
the Special Local Option Sales Tax on the November ballot.
Several of the speakers were not so positive off the podium about the
library and auditorium projects, and nobody from the library board spoke.
Here are
videos of all of the speeches.
Also
the VDT was there,
and
Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT yesterday,
Committee kicks off SPLOST campaign,
The major theme of the event was a firm reminder that SPLOST VII is
not a new tax, just a continuation of a penny sales tax that has
been in place since 1987.
Fair enough.
However, Sam Allen’s second talk summed up what’s wrong with SPLOST VII:
In the same month, both the Lowndes County Democratic Party
and the Valdosta Tea Party
had speakers explaining how bad the charter school amendment is.
Neither group took a vote, but it seemed pretty clear most of the
attendees at both meetings were against that referendum on the November ballot,
and mostly for the same reason: nobody wants an unelected state committee
taking away local control and local tax revenue.
Parental choice is one thing, and charter schools are another,
but nobody seemed to like Atlanta taking away local control.
As the
PAGE slides say,
This isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican debate.
Legislators voted across party lines to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Republican and Democrat voters must defeat it together.
You can watch for yourself.
Here are the two presentations:
If you don’t want Atlanta taking away our educational control and local tax dollars,
vote No on the charter school amendment in November.
-jsq
