Tag Archives: Kia

Perceptions on School Unification —Clinton Beeland

Well,

I was wrong:
there is still somebody willing to try to link
school consolidation in Troup County with the Kia plant,
even though

there’s no evidence there’s any connection and the mayor of the
town with the plant complains about the results of consolidation.
The appended LTE appeared in the VDT the other day. -jsq

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the process of
attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing
and interpreting sensory information

– Wikipedia



I have sat on the sideline for a while on the issue of
consolidation. Perhaps I am still on the sideline since I am not going
to tell you how to vote. Regardless of the decision on November 8th I
will continue to support education in one or two systems. In any event
I feel compelled to at least provide some words for consideration.
Here is my perspective from the sideline.

It is very apparent that we have pride in our schools. Pride is both

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CUEE demolishes its own case

CUEE still doesn’t have a plan for improving education.


When asked for any concrete examples of education improving
because of school consolidation, not one person could come up
with one: not CUEE, not the Chamber, not their invited experts.
Their invited experts established that consolidation in Troup County
not only didn’t save money, it required a bond issue.
And it took four or five years of the hardest work they’d ever done,
even though they couldn’t give any evidence that it improved education.
It was like that on almost every point: the Chamber and CUEE either
couldn’t answer the simplest questions, or even more frequently
demolished their own case.

The last question asked to give an example of any company that
had declined to come in because of multiple school systems.
Not only could nobody give an example, but someone, I believe it was
Walter Hobgood, stood up at the podium and said when he was working
for a large company he had never encountered a case where they looked
at the number of school systems.

Early on Chamber Chair Tom Gooding went on at great length about

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Kia and education: a connection after all

It turns out there is

a connection of the Troup County Kia plant to education,
but it’s not to the K-12 schools.
The Karen Kennedy
GeorgiaTrend article,

LaGrange/Troupe County: The Kia Effect,
devotes one paragraph to K-12 schools and ten paragraphs
to


West Georgia Tech,
the local technical college.

Here are the last three of those paragraphs:

The center “will educate a person to work in an advanced manufacturing
plant,” Gilley says, just the kind of plants that are coming to Troup
County over the next year or so. Using industry-standard equipment,
students will be educated to meet the manufacturing community’s
workforce needs.

In fact, the manufacturing community already is calling on the
center. DaeLim, a supplier to Kia and Hyundai (the latter has a plant
nearby in Alabama), expressed interest in students doing prototyping of
plastic parts once the center, which opened June 1, is up and running.

“We’ve left a good platform on which to build. We have good faculty,
good staff. I think we have good community relations,” Gilley says of
his time at West Georgia. Then he looks to the future and what he’ll
miss most about his job. “We offer programs that allow people to get
better paying jobs. I’ll miss having the power to make decisions that
change people’s lives.”

Hm, so the locals think the technical college has more to do with
industry than the K-12 schools.

An article by Jeff Bishop in Times-Herald.com,

Partnerships may develop between CEC, new hospitals,
notes the connection between high schools and industry is through
West Georgia Tech.

Hm, maybe
Wiregrass Technical College
could be important….

-jsq

After Kia: still school problems in Troup County; no mention of unification

Let’s keep looking for

evidence of any connection of school unification
in Troup County, Georgia, to the Kia plant,
even though

CUEE didn’t present any.
It’s rather odd that none of the locals seem to have mentioned
any such connection in the numerous articles published about the Kia plant.



Here’s
an interview with Mayor Drew Ferguson IV of West Point, Georgia
by Larry Copeland in USA TODAY, 25 March 2010,

Kia breathes life into old Georgia textile mill town.
Nope, no mention of schools, education, or unification.
Nice picture of the mayor with a Kia, though.

Karen Kennedy published
a lengthy article about the Kia plant
in GeorgiaTrend in August 2008,

LaGrange/Troupe County: The Kia Effect,
in which the first mention of schools is for the period after
the Kia plant opened:

The biggest need Mayor Ferg-uson sees in West Point right now is public
education. “We have a wonderful elementary school.” But there is
no middle or high school in the city limits. “The current formula for
education funding is not working,” he says of the state’s approach,
which bases money on students who are already in the system, not on
students who will be coming through the system in the near future. “If
you don’t have great education opportunities people will live far away
and drive [to work]. Schools should be looked at as an economic driver.”
They are a way to help recruit good strong families to an area, he adds.

That’s right, after the Kia plant, there are big problems
with the schools, and there’s not even any mention of unification.

-jsq

Kia and school unification in Troup County, Georgia: any connection?

The only example in Georgia that

CUEE claimed of good effects
of school unification was Troup County, Georgia, where a few people
are convinced that
the Kia plant
would not have come to town
if the schools hadn’t unified.
That’s one county out of 159.
And it’s hearsay anecdotal evidence.
So let’s look for any actual evidence.



The county’s own

announcement of the Kia plant opening
says nothing about schools, much less unification.
Troup County’s web page about their

Strategic Plan for Sustainable Development
does mention education, but says nothing about school unification.
Their
county history page mentions the Kia plant but nothing
about education being a factor, much less school unification.

Even if that anecdotal connection between school unification and
the Kia plant had some evidence behind it, that’s not an example of
improved education!

-jsq