Monday morning was the first event of the 31st annual Hahira Honeybee festival: early morning food and conversation at the Honeybee breakfast.
This was underneath the water tower, at the community center on Randall Street, where the Senior Walk is going on this morning.
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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?
Continue readingTo 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.
Continue the growth —Sam Allen, co-chair
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: Continue reading
At the 24 July 2012 Regular Session,
Lisa Burton gave a much shorter version of her
presentation from the previous morning’s Work Session,
and the Lowndes County Commission unanimously rubberstamped without
discussion
the library board’s selection of an out-of-state architect
over several local candidates.
Here’s the video:
Rubberstamping library architect
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 24 July 2012.
-jsq
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:
27 September 2012:
A parallel state school system that we have no control over. —Christie Davis
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
A local middle school teacher spelled out problems with the
charter school referendum: no local control over creation or operation
of the charter schools it would authorize; money siphoned off from
existing local schools; and charter schools actually perform
worse than traditional public schools anyway.
Christie Davis, a teacher at Hahira Middle School, speaking at the Lowndes County Tea Party monthly meeting Thursday, pointed out it’s not just the preamble to the referendum that’s misleading. The actual wording of the referendum is also misleading:
Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow state or local approval of public charter schools upon the request of local communities?
She remarked:
It sounds very good that we should say yes. It’s very misleading. And the reason why it’s misleading is totally purposeful. It says something about local communities. We already have that right in our local community, our local boards, to go ahead and implement a charter school, if we see the need. However, they put it in there so that voters that don’t really know what’s going on think they’re helping our local schools by voting yes. However, by voting yes, it will be funding a parallel state school system that we have no control over.
Here’s the video:
A parallel state school system that we have no control over. —Christie Davis
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 September 2012.
Thanks to Diane Cox, President, Lowndes County Tea Party, for the invitation.
She also got into the financial aspects:
Continue readingLowndes County Schools Assistant Superintendent Troy Davis gave his personal opinion: “it’s about control”. The charter school amendment on the November ballot is not about charter schools, which any community in the state can create now. It’s about control by the state of local schools and resources.
Dr. Davis pointed out Georgia already has 350 charter schools, up from
160 three years ago.
All but 19 were established and agreed upon by local communities.
There’s a successful one in Berrien County, established by the
Berrien County school board.
The process to create more is in place in every community.
If we wanted one in Lowndes County, all it would take would be for
one of the two school systems (Lowndes or Valdosta)
to approve one.
He suggested looking at the sources of funds for Families for Better Schools, which is backing the amendment. Top of the list is a Wal-Mart heir. (It’s Alice Walton. Dr. Davis deferred to Al Rowell for that information, and that’s also where I heard about Alice Walton. And as I discovered, the Walton Family Foundation put in much more than that last year.) He noted the bulk of the rest comes from for-profit school operators. (They include K12 Inc. of Virginia.)
He noted that the state of Georgia just passed this fiscal year the third largest budget in the history of Georgia, $19.1 billion. Yet the public schools have been cut $6.6 billion (apparently since 2002). And the Lowndes County school system lost nearly $8 million last year, and $43 million in the past 10 years. So he asked:
Continue readingReceived yesterday on K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36% -jsq
Keep in mind that this company is based in Virginia, so our tax dollars from say, South Georgia meant for our school teachers, administraters, supplies, and educating our students, would go to
bolster the economy in Virginia and line the pockets of the very rich. Meanwhile we have to raise taxes to simply educate the students attending our public schools. This is clearly NOT a plan to ‘improve academic achievement’ as the preamble boldly lies.
The preamble is boldly inaccurate and completely biased. The wording added to the question on the ballot implies that the amendment would improve student achievement and parent involvement. My stars, what breathing individual doesn’t want those things.
Facts are that by some measures charter schools perform 3% worse than traditional public schools. We would hope that schools where parents have to sign a commitment of parent involvement would have superior parent involvement. Might I just add that students can be kicked out of charter schools and all students are educated in the Traditional Public School setting as per our Georgia constitution.
The ‘biased and inaccurate’ wording in the preamble to the charter schools question is not found in HB 1162, the law that allowed this question to be placed on the ballot. It is not in HB 797, the law thaw would be enacted should the amendment pass. NO the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents, which are the equivalent of ‘legislation for Dummies’ with a particular slant as you might imagine.
-Karen Noll
Bill Moyers takes on ALEC.
Posted yesterday On Bill Moyers’ website, ‘United States of ALEC’ Video Previews
This week, Moyers & Company (check local listings) presents
“United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.
He said more on Huffington Post Wednesday,
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