Tag Archives: ballot

LibertYOUtbreak @ LO 2012-10-27


Open, non-partisan forum
A local group, LibertYOUbreak, met at Valdosta High School Saturday
for a series of brief talks of opinion on issues by a variety of local people.

The first talk,
Why No on Amendment 1 by J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175,
has already been posted separately.
Here’s

a video playlist for the rest.


LibertYOUtbreak

Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

First they showed an animated movie,

The American Dream by the Provacateur Network,
which is mostly about money as debt.
As I remarked to one of the organizers afterwards,
that’s also the theme of

Debt: The First 5,000 Years,
by David Graeber, one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street
(here’s a

video interview with him,
and

a text interview).
The cartoon movie, while presenting that theme in some depth,
only briefly mentions Wall Street
and focuses on the Federal Reserve and an octopus-like long-lived financial
villain it calls Red Shield, which is English for Rothschild.
I find that last a bit far-fetched, not to say outdated,
considering that recent research shows that the real current
octopus-like set of interconnected corporations looks more

like this.
But then plenty of things were said in the recent local
political forums that I didn’t agree with, either.

-jsq

Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175



J.C. Cunningham, running for state representative district 175,
reminded us all that the basic purpose of the Georgia state government
is to provide public education, according to its constitution,
and that local school boards already can and do approve charter schools.
He gave five reasons for voting No on Amendment 1:

  1. Because out-of-state corporations are paying for this campaign….
  2. It creates a new Atlanta-based government bureaucracy.
  3. The new commission will be filled by appointments done by politicians,
    not the citizens.
  4. Georgia already has 200 charter schools, and we’ve already proven the
    process works.
  5. A Yes vote would… cost us an additional $430 million
    while most of our schools are not open a full year as it is….

The only reasoning that I can tell you that proponents have been giving us
is school choice, and again,
they already have school choice;
we have school choice.
The only new things about Amendment 1 are higher cost
and unnecessary state bureaucracy….

Here’s

the video,
followed by a partial transcript.


Why No on Amendment 1 —J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175

Talks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

VHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.

Partial transcript:

Continue reading →

Charter school referendum in New Jersey?

Here’s another potential charter school referendum
that

BallotPedia doesn’t seem to have caught yet, in New Jersey.

John Mooney wrote for NJ Spotlight 3 February 2012,

Assembly Committee Votes to Put Charters Under Local Control:
Bill calls for local referendum on any school that wants to be granted a charter in a NJ district,

The Assembly education committee yesterday moved a bill that would


give local voters the right to approve new charters in their home
districts. If passed by both houses, the law would make New Jersey
only the third state to require charter schools to face a local
referendum.

First proposed last year, the new bill has been toughened for the
new session. Amendments filed with the bill would make those
referendums retroactive for as many as 30 urban and suburban schools
awaiting their final charters.

The votes would come after the state’s preliminary approval, but
often as much as a year can lapse before the final charter is
granted and a school can open.

NJ bill A1877 seems to have

gotten stuck in the NJ state Senate Education Committee back in May.
It has 21 sponsors, starting with

Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex),
shown in the picture above.

Related bill A2147

got as far as a second reading in the Assembly in February.

Charter schools in Georgia already have to be approved by local school boards.
Let’s not give up that local control.
Vote No on the charter school referendum in November.

-jsq

Support Public School education! —Karen Noll

Received today. -jsq

Dear Friends,

After learning abut the for-profit charter school issue from and the tax credits for private school tuition, I interpret today’s VDT articles as part of a political agenda to further dismantle a Georgia Constitutional right to Free Public School Education. Here we are again, let’s paint the schools as failing and then try to legitimize further defunding of the schools. And instead of Free Public Education the students from poor families will continue to get what ever is left when the well-to-do take their large piece of the public school education pie.

CHARTER SCHOOLS SERVE STUDENTS ALREADY SERVED WELL IN PUBLIC EDUCATION:

It is important that we understand that Free Public Education is clearly being

Continue reading →

At the door of the most educational meeting —Karen Noll

Received today on

A most educational meeting. -jsq

Thank you, John for that accurate description of the most bizarre meeting
that I have ever attended.





Karen Noll and Dean Poling at the door

As I was not invited I remained at the door. Dean Polling came to
the door 10 minutes late because he’d been roaming around Rainwater
conference center with a few other folks before he found out the meeting
was located here. This meeting was held on the date that the CUEE had
given when it would unveil its education plan. So many assumed it would
be at the conference center and open to the public.(LOL)

The plan put together by the unnamed education task force a sub committee
of cuee pushed Levy into having it at VSU, when VSU has clearly stated
they are taking NO side!! So CUEE’s educational plan was presented before
the vote has been taken to an invited group at a public institution that
is staying out of the whole stinking affair. This is all to strange to
not ask why and who is behind this mess?

At the end when I told Myrna Ballard about the location

Continue reading →

He who has the gold rules —Mike Hill

Finally, some truth from the Chamber!
“Unification” has nothing to do with education,
and everything to do with “He who has the gold rules.”
Not any Realtors’ fault of course, “The Realtor doesn’t drive to showings;
she just turns the wheel and hits the gas.”
So they’d rather destroy public education through a proven
failed “unification” than deal with their claimed perception problem.
-jsq

‘No’ Vote May Hit You Where You Live




By Mike Hill

Valdosta resident

Realtor

I’m not qualified to talk about the quality of school systems in Valdosta
or Lowndes County, probably a rare admission these days. I am qualified
to talk about the damage done to Valdosta residential real estate by
the perception that one system is better than the other. It ain’t pretty
and it’s getting worse.

I’ve been a Realtor since 1976, when newcomers couldn’t house hunt
until they rolled in with the kids, dogs and all the furniture looking
for yard signs and a local newspaper, which led them to agents and
property managers, who then sold or rented them a home. Boy, has that
changed!

I’ve got friends teaching or retired from both city and county
systems who tell me that a good education is available from either system
for students who want one. But newcomers concerned about their children’s
education have consistently been getting a different message long before
they ever see a “sale” or “rent” sign here.

Unlike even 10 years ago, Internet magic now allows newcomers to arrive
armed with all the statistical knowledge our two school boards provide,
plus state and federal statistics. And right or wrong, the perception
those statistics create that one system is better or worse than the
other travels like gossip between anybody anywhere in the world with an
Internet connection who has or can create the slightest link to anybody
in Valdosta/Lowndes County with one.

How do I know this? Because families walking into my real estate office
to buy or rent “in the county school district” who have never been here
before has been consistently increasing for years. Newcomers concerned
about their children’s education will sacrifice a garage or fenced yard
from the “wish list” for their new home, plus make higher payments, for a
county location. It irks me that retired city school superintendent Sam
Allen has publicly accused Realtors of adding to a problem that started
well before he retired from the city school system. Realtors, he has
publicly stated, avoid showing houses for sale in city school districts.

Space isn’t available to address the absurdity of that statement,
except to quote the other side of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold
rules.” The Realtor doesn’t drive to showings; she just turns the wheel
and hits the gas. The client started driving the car the minute he got
into the passenger seat with his checkbook and knew where he wanted to go
before he and his family came to town. Accurate or not, perceptions about
differences in our split school system exist, with serious consequences
in several different directions that aren’t going away. Industries may
avoid us, for instance, and we’ll never know how many jobs we lost. In
real estate, “perception” makes the value of a house on the city side
of a street worth less than an identical house on the county side of
the street.

Neither of those things are good and without change, it’s not going to
get any better, either.

A most educational meeting: VSU, Wiregrass Tech, CUEE, FVCS, et al.

Only Lemony Snicket could do justice to the peculiarity


of last night’s
most educational meeting at VSU’s Continuing Education building,
about K-12 education even though neither school superintendent was there,
most of the school board members were not present,
and it was presided over by two very uneasy college presidents.

Who called it was unclear, who was invited even less, for what purpose
there was no consensus, yet there was a decision
by the pair of presiding college presidents.
It was somehow
about the general state of education in Valdosta and Lowndes County, Georgia,
although the topic of consolidation was discussed only by the frequent
admonitions that it was not to be discussed, and for that matter that
nothing else related to educational improvements should be discussed
until after the November 8th consolidation referendum.
Both school system superintendents were elsewhere
at a conference of school superintendents.
A few Valdosta City School Board members were in attendance, although none of them
said anything.
I didn’t recognize any Lowndes County School Board members.
There were no introductions to the group, other than self-introductions by the
two college presidents.
Maybe you can identify some of the attendees.





CUEE Vice-Chair Rusty Griffin near left, Chamber President Myrna Ballard far right,
VBOE Member Jeana Beeland and CUEE Board Member Tom Kurrie near corner of the tables,
SCLC President Rev. Floyd Rose to Kurrie’s right.
FVCS President Sam Allen is near the far end of the left side of the table.
CUEE Board Member Walter Hobgood is near the far end of the right side of the table.

There was no agenda.
There was a document to be presented,
but it was not handed out to the attendees,
and the principal presider, VSU interim president Dr. Louis Levy,
refused

Continue reading →

Why CUEE turned shy

So why did

the list of community supporters disappear from CUEE’s website?
After a most educational meeting this evening so peculiar only


Lemony Snicket could really write it up properly (more on that later),
I found the answer to that question.

First I asked Lee Henderson, who was on that list.
He admitted he knew, but he wouldn’t say.
He suggested I talk to CUEE.

Tom Kurrie walked up at that point, and I asked Henderson if Kurrie was CUEE.
Henderson said I would know that better than he would, which caused me to
refer to Black Crow’s Mr. Henderson as very modest and humble.

Tom Kurrie remarked that he always saw me with a camera,
and at a previous event I’d asked him what was in unification for him.
He reminded me he’d answered there was nothing in it for him,
and I observed that was a good answer.
Anyway, I asked

CUEE Board Member Mr. Thompson Kurrie, Jr.
what went with the list of supporters.
He allowed as how he didn’t really visit the web site very often,
since he wasn’t good with computers.

So I asked who would know?
He said that fellow over there at the table with the sign-in sheet,
Daniel Storey.

Continue reading →

Valdosta graduation rates

In his

updated Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation
David Mullis included
as new material

a revised response to CUEE statement #2 for graduation rates,
which contains these percentages:


He then asks:

Therefore, one must
ask, "Why would CUEE say the graduation rate for Valdosta High
School is in the low 50% range for all students and below 50% for
African Americans? The answer is simple. CUEE wants to mislead the
voters into believing that the graduation rate for Valdosta High
School is lower than it actually is. Therefore, not only does CUEE
make false statements, it also fails to state that the graduation
rate has improved significantly over the past 5 years for all
students and for African American Students. Again, this is an
attempt by CUEE to give the appearance that something other than what
is being done must be done. They do not tell us what should be done
other than to consolidate the school systems. The logic is
frightening to say the least.

Here’s a suggestion on
what to do about that.

-jsq

Update: The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation —David Mullis

Received today. -jsq

Dear Media:

I am sure you are aware that the vote of whether or not to consolidate


the Valdosta City Schools into the Lowndes County School System will be
held November 8, 2011. The City only is being asked to vote on whether
to dissolve the Valdosta City School charter. The proponents of the
referendum had a choice between putting the referendum in front of the
county and city or the city alone. The Lowndes County Board of
Education asked

Continue reading →