The real answer is in the first sentence after A: in this
FAQ by CUEE:
Q: HOW WILL UNIFICATION OF OUR SCHOOL SYSTEMS IMPROVE EDUCATION?
A: School unification, by itself, will not improve the quality of
education for our children.
Unfortunately, CUEE didn’t stop there.
Their FAQ continues:
What about county voters, and what about the combined budget?
Q: “What is the county’s view on consolidation?”
A: CUEE Chairman Leroy Butler answered:
“We did no poll of individuals in the county,
so we don’t have any; anything we say would be speculation.”
Remember,
only one of CUEE’s board is from the county outside the City of Valdosta,
and nobody outside Valdosta gets to vote in the referendum.
They don’t know what the county thinks, and they don’t care,
because legally they don’t have to:
if Valdosta votes to give up their school system, the Lowndes County
school board has no choice but to pick up the pieces.
Here’s
the video:
Kick-off meeting, Community Unification for Educational Excellence, Inc., CUEE.
They’re for consolidation of the Valdosta and Lowndes County School Systems.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
http://lake.typepad.com/on-the-lake-front/cuee/
There’s another question in this video:
What local county grew twice as fast as any of the others?
If you guessed Lowndes, nope, no prize for you.
The answer, according to the 2000 census, is Lanier County:
What school consolidation would get us is more of that.
Not white flight, rather bright flight, to Lanier and other counties.
Many of the leaders of the local African-American community already
don’t live in Valdosta; they live in Lowndes County or even Berrien County.
More of both black and white people will move out of a county
with a consolidated school district, resulting in lower educational
results not just for Valdosta but also for Lowndes schools.
Is that what we want?
How about all the people who claim they know how to take our schools
to “the next level” get on with doing that right now with the two
existing school systems?
-jsq
Let’s meet
the CUEE board and ask them a simple question.
The Chair, Leroy Butler, named them in this order:
Rusty Griffin (Vice-Chair), George Bennett,
Tom Kurrie,
Walter Hobgood,
Johnny Ball,
Jack Edwards,
Jud Rackley,
Gene Godfrey,
and “last but certainly not least”
Ruth Council.
(Not named but listed
on CUEE’s website are
David Durland,
Terry Hunt,
and Ronnie Mathis.)
As I told Rusty Griffin, I congratulate CUEE on holding public meetings
about their plans.
Here’s the question:
How many of the current CUEE board are from the county
outside of Valdosta?