We need to come up with some strategies whereby we get more
parental involvement.
He made several other suggestions for improving education,
and then he said:
It takes money to do that.
And that’s why I’m looking at CUEE.
It seems pretty clear from what several of the speakers said
that CUEE’s unification proposal is about getting financial
resources from the county.
Money’s still no use unless there’s a plan for improving education.
Rev. Floyd Rose quizzed Mrs. Ruth Council whether black students
got a better education in black schools.
She said she has taught in all sorts of schools, black and white.
He clarified:
…we were told about the world, where we came from, how we got here.
Mrs. Ruth Council said CUEE needs “parents, administrators, business people,
everybody, city and county”.
Whether we unify or not, we need to improve our educational offerings
for our boys and girls.
…
Will you please come to the meeting on the seventh
and provide information that you think will benefit.
Speakers pro and con school unification assembled up front
to talk about procedures, and a listener took exception to that.
Dr. Lee Allen said the important thing was “the simple idea of what we want to do”
and then talked about the 1960s and what he didn’t want to hear about that.
He never did say what he wanted to do now.
We have complaints that some people couldn’t understand
what Dr. Mark George was saying in
the previous post of his remarks at Monday’s Lowndes County Democratic Party meeting,
so here’s another version from a different camera.
Feedback, please.
He said the Chamber of Commerce said schools were not its issue.
Dr. George pointed out that it was the Chamber and the
real estate industry that largely produced the current situation
by funelling people to the county schools.
He said the unification project started with a request from
the Industrial Authority, who said it didn’t look good when
potential industry saw there was a black school system and
a white school system.
(The timing of this is interesting, because it comes after
Brad Lofton was hired as VLCIA Executive Director,
and other people formerly associated with VLCIA say they
were never asked by any potential industry how many school
systems we have.)
Dr. George discussed many other interesting points, such as CUEE’s
terminology drift from consolidation to integration to unification.
Camera 2: Dr. Mark George about CUEE @ LCDP 2 May 2011 Part 1 of 2:
Debate between proponents of school system unification (CUEE) and opponents,
at Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP), Gretchen Quarterman chair,
Videos by George Rhynes, Jim Parker, John S. Quarterman, and Gretchen Quarterman
for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2 May 2011.
In this second video from camera 2,
Dr. George noted
that the Valdosta school system is internally segregated.
He said both he and Rev. Rose asked to have somebody put
on the CUEE council, and that that didn’t happen.
There’s more; you can watch it for yourself.
Here’s
Part 2 of 2:
Camera 2: Dr. Mark George about CUEE @ LCDP 2 May 2011 Part 2 of 2:
Debate between proponents of school system unification (CUEE) and opponents,
at Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP), Gretchen Quarterman chair,
Videos by George Rhynes, Jim Parker, John S. Quarterman, and Gretchen Quarterman
for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2 May 2011.
Dr. Mark George pointed out that school consolidation didn’t solve
some problems last time:
In 2011 our schools were more segregated racially than they were in 1968.
He questioned why people should believe that consolidation, even if called
unification, would solve those same problems this time.
Continuing the
debate between proponents and opponents of unification of the
Valdosta and Lowndes County School Systems, organized by
Gretchen Quarterman, chair of the
The Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP).
Here, speaking against, is Dr. Mark George.
I’m on the CUEE board because
I believe a unified school system can better serve children
of our community, and particularly children in the city of Valdosta.
Gretchen Quarterman, chair of the
The Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP),
organized a debate between proponents and opponents of unification of the
Valdosta and Lowndes County School Systems.
Here, speaking for, is Dr. George Bennett, on the board of
Community Unification for Educational Excellence (CUEE).
There were several things that jumped out at me right away.
First, Lowndes County doesn’t even have a device for monitoring
ozone levels. We need to get one.
Second, on particulate emissions, Lowndes County gets a “B”.
Fulton County gets an “F”, Dekalb gets an “F”, Cobb gets “D” and
Clayton gets “C”. Horrifyingly, Douglas, Fayette, Henry and Rockdale
Counties don’t even have particulate monitors.
Third, over one third of the population of Lowndes County falls into
the two vulnerable categories of “Over 65” or “Under 18”.
Do the leaders of our area really want us to
be like the Atlanta area? Do we want to poison our children,
our parents and our grandparents with dirty air?
Dirty air leads to both lung and cardiovascular disease.
What are a few of things we could do to keep our air clean?
We could transition to clean energy sources like solar.
We could develop public transportation.
We could become active in our community and attend public meetings
to let our leaders know what issues are important to us and that
we want to be involved in decisions regarding development, industry
and environmental stewardship.
Rev. Leroy Butler,
the only CUEE board member from the county outside of Valdosta,
talked about his experiences at Pinevale High School and VSU.
He agreed with
Rev. Rose that there is more camaraderie in homogeneous
groups
such as Sunday morning, the most segregated times.
He said it’s time for a change.
