JC Cunningham, running for Georgia House District 175
against incumbent Amy Carter,
spells out his opposition to the charter school amendment.
-jsq
Video by George Boston Rhynes for bostongbr on YouTube.
Actually, it's even worse than JC indicates, because because HB 797 specifies more money per pupil for charter than for public schools, and the difference has to be made up out of local sales or property taxes.
-jsq
Mark Z. Jacobson's study shows offshore wind is plentiful from Virginia to Maine Let's do the study for Georgia! Southern Company brags about its private R&D:
Research & Development (since the 1960s)
- Awarded more than $1.3 billion to conduct more than $3.8 billion of research and development.
- Qualified for $412 million of investment tax credits for a 21st century coal plant being built in Mississippi.
OK, SO, let's see you do the study to show what we can really do with
conservation, efficiency, wind, sun, and less natural gas than we have now.
Sure, in the Georgia Bight we do have to contend with hurricanes.
But a
"great, big company"
like SO should be able to focus its vaunted private R&D on that problem and solve it.
Maybe SO doesn't want to do that because the result might show there is no need for any coal plants, nor new natural gas plants, nor any nuclear plants, which would mean Georgia Power would have to give up its nuclear-funding rate-hike stealth tax and SO would have to give up its $8.3 billion loan guarantee. Hey, we might even need to change the 1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act, and that might damage Georgia Power's guaranteed profit! Nevermind that Georgia Power and SO might make more profit if they got out in front on solar and wind power and a smart grid.
If SO won't do it, how about we elect some Public Service Commissioners and legislators who will? For jobs, energy independence, and profit, oh, and clean air and plenty of water!
-jsq
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
According to
their website:
The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Monthly Meeting for September Has Been Rescheduled For Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012 5:30pm Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority Offices
That’s at 2110 N. Patterson Street, Valdosta. They also posted this notice on their facebook page yesterday. No agenda is posted yet.
Here are videos of last month’s meeting.
-jsq
Here are videos of the
21 August 2012 Regular meeting.
of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA).
Here's
the agenda.
See also Steeda Manufacturing moving into medical parts and new markets.
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland, Chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer, Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton, Attorney, Tom Davis, CPA, Allan Ricketts, Project ManagerS. Meghan Duke, Public Relations & Marketing Manager, Lu Williams, Operations Manager,
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 August 2012.
-jsq
Dario Orlando, CEO of
Steeda Manufacturing,
which currently makes performance parts for Mustangs,
told the Industrial Authority at its
21 August 2012 Regular Session
that Steeda
is moving into making medical parts, plus selling to GM,
and into new geographical markets.
Here’s Part 1 of 4:
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 August 2012.
Allan Ricketts, VLCIA Project Manager, explained that
Steeda had requested a second extension, and an amendment to reduce
the requirement of number of jobs from 40 to 30.
We certainly think that is justified in the very difficult economic climate and conditions that we’ve had over the past couple of years, and certainly acknowledging that in that very challenging economic time, we’ve had steady continued growth by Steeda. And so now we’re up to about 23 employees there.
I think it is also significant to note […] that Steeda has now moved its entire manufacturing operation to Valdosta. That move represents about a million five investment in the community. Actually specifically it is $1,480,950 in some very unique manufacturing equipment. I think it is important to understand that some of this manufacturing equipment provides a great resource here that two of the current projects that we are chasing are very interested in.
Here’s Part 2 of 4:
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 August 2012.
Dario Orlando then remarked that things were going very well, and:
We’re expanding into other markets like I’d mentioned before the commencement of the meeting. We’re moving into medical manufacturing because we do have the most advanced manufacturing capabilities here in Valdosta. Furthermore, we’re starting to supply General Motors with performance parts, the GM performance brand. We opened up another company here in Valdosta called LSR Performance.
I was telling Allan this morning… that we’re all going to be looking back at this day. I plan to have a couple of hundred employees here in the next five years.
Then he mentioned a new development, and Roy Copeland reminded him this was an open public meeting. Hint: Continue reading
Why build nukes when wind can provide 3/4 of our power?
While Southern Company claims to be
“a company that is engaged in offering solutions, not just rhetoric”,
yet
does nothing about wind off the Georgia coast,
researchers in far California have demonstrated we can get
3/4 of all needed east coast electricity from offshore wind.
Bjorn Carey wrote for Stanford Report 14 September 2012, Offshore wind energy could power entire U.S. East Coast, Stanford scientists say
A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that there is enough offshore wind along the U.S. East Coast to meet the electricity demands of at least one-third of the country.
The scientists paid special attention to the Maine-to-Virginia corridor; the historical lack of strong hurricanes in the region makes it a favorable site for offshore wind turbines. They found that turbines placed there could satisfy the peak-time power needs of these states for three seasons of the year (summer is the exception).
“We knew there was a lot of wind out there, but this is the first actual quantification of the total resource and the time of day that the resource peaks,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford who directed the research. “This provides practical information to wind farm developers about the best areas to place turbines.”
Mark Z. Jacobson already worked out a framework for
powering the entire world from wind, water, and sun alone.
The late
John Blackburn, Ph.D., showed us how
to power North Carolina with sun, wind, and hydro,
plus less natural gas than NC uses now.
Now Jacobson is working out the details of implementation.
-jsq
PS: Owed to Seth Gunning.
Thanks to Jim Galloway, we learned that charter school proponents say “No other state has had a positive outcome for a charter-positive ballot initiative.” OK, what other states have had any sort of charter school referendums? Such ballot initiatives have at least been tried in Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington.
BallotPedia records some state charter school referendums.
In Massachusetts,
charter school proponents couldn’t even get enough signatures to put a
pro-charter school referendum on the ballot this year.
The measure would have removed limits on number of charter schools, their funding, and enrollment. Other changes would have been made in laws that governed charter schools, including requiring approval of qualified applications for charter schools to be in districts where there was low student performance.
In Michigan, a referendum to ban for-profit charter schools may be on the ballot in November:
Continue readingOn facebook, Save Strickland Mill just posted a critique of certain parts of the VDT’s writeup on the Remerton City Council’s Strickland Mill vote. -jsq
Valdosta Daily Times, September 12, 2012Continue reading
Mill to come down: Buildings to be razed, historic tower to remain
by Quinten PlummerVALDOSTA — The iconic smoke stack will still tower over the
City of Remerton, according to local officials, but the majority of the historic Remerton Mill complex will be demolished and converted into a park after the City Council gave the mill’s owners the go-ahead for demolition during Monday evening’s regular session.
This is not a factual statement: the city council’s motion is as follows: Councilman Bill Wetherington made the following motion which was unanimously voted in by the council members present that night (note that councilman Sam Flemming was not in attendance)
“I move to approve the certificate of appropriateness 2012-04 for 1853 W. Gordon to be issued and effective as of October 25th 2012 for a period of one year from that date with the condition that the cotton mill smokestack remains intact and shall continue to remain intact in accordance with title 18 of the code of City of Remerton.”The mill’s ownership group simply wants relief from its obligations to the property, and Remerton Mayor Cornelius Holsendolph said the restoration of the mill is just too large of a project for a city of Remerton’s size.
That is the reason why
A recent poll shows markedly lower support
for the November charter school
referendum than polls in March and July, which were already down from January.
At this rate, the charter school referendum can lose as badly in November
as T-SPLOST did in July.
Maybe people are catching on that diverting local taxes to control by
a state appointed body is a bad idea,
especially this time when the money would end up going to private profit.
Georgia Family Council wrote, presumably in January, Poll Shows Support for Charter School Changes,
On January 24, the Georgia Charter School Association and My School, My Choice Georgia held a news conference on Capitol Hill to release the results of a new study regarding public school choice….
The new numbers showed that 52 percent of voters are dissatisfied with the public system as it currently stands. A whopping 72 percent feel that a group other than local school boards should be able to authorize charter schools, the basis for HB 881. Moreover, Georgia voters tend to support a “money follows the child” approach to charter school funding.
So there’s a baseline for January for what proponents of charter schools claimed: 72% support for something very like the charter school referendum that ended up on the November ballot.
Or not. That writeup includes a link to georgiaschoolchoice.com, but that domain is no longer registered. This is probably it over on the snazzy new gacharters.org website. The gacharters.org writeup doesn’t mention 72%, and does say:
Continue reading