Tag Archives: Lowndes County

Timing confusion —John S. Quarterman

Sent to all four Commissioners and the County Clerk Sunday evening:
Dear Commissioners,

There seems to be confusion as to how long citizens get to be heard. The policy says five minutes. Yet in at least a couple of recent examples, citizens were cut off at less than that,

4 and a half minutes for me on 28 June 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJseMtJvJE8

4 minutes 39 seconds for Jessica Bryan Hughes on 24 May 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZxieSV6Yz8

You can see the times on the YouTube videos.

This timing confusion may be because

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GA HB 87 ridiculed in California editorial

The Ventura County Star in California editorialized Sunday:
Laws sometimes have unintended consequences, and laws hastily passed in time of high political passions inevitably do.
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Three rezonings and three board appointments: Lowndes County Commission

Lowndes County Commission work session Monday morning and regular session Tuesday evening. Here’s the agenda:
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, JULY 11, 2011, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2011, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
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Wiregrass Tech town hall on a soft skills/work ethics curriculum 8 August 2011

Found on the Lowndes County web pages:

Town Hall Meeting

with state and local leaders
Monday, August 8, 2011
6:30 p.m.-8:00 p.m.

Wiregrass Georgia Technical College
Brooks Hall Conference Center
4089 Val-Tech Road, Valdosta

Give your input on a
soft skills/work ethics curriculum
required by House Bill 186 to help
prepare our future workforce for success and
help our businesses and industries to prosper.

Meeting will be moderated by Melvin Everson,
Executive Director of the Governor’s Office
of Workforce Development.

For directions or information please call 229-333-2121.

“a conflict of interest at its core” —church group on private prisons

Another Sunday, another church group against private prisons. This time, it includes ex-prisoners, and it went to the lion’s den: a CCA shareholder meeting.

Marian Wright Edelman wrote 13 December 2010, Strength to Love: A Challenge to the Private Prison Industry:

A few months ago a group of earnest and determined stockholders traveled together by bus from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend a shareholders’ meeting for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the country. The group included ex-offenders who now each hold one share of stock in the same prison company that once held them captive, and they attended the meeting in the hopes of sharing their perspective on how the privatized prison industry can better serve society by rehabilitating inmates, rather than just serving its own profits by perpetuating the prison cycle.

The group, part of Washington, D.C.’s Church of the Saviour, is named Strength to Love, after the title of one of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon collections. Members explain their mission this way:

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“It’s not about the children. It’s about somebody’s ego.” —Sam Allen, FVCS, 7 July 2011

Sam Allen asked in various ways:
“What about the children?”
He made it clear he doesn’t think school consolidation will help the children, and it will definitely hurt current Valdosta teachers and staff, so he says don’t do it.

Continuing the FVCS press conference, Sam Allen asked some good questions,

“If the school system was good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for us?”
and
“If there’s not going to be any change, why are we doing it?”

Here’s Part 1 of 9: Continue reading →

Tinkering with number of schools doesn’t improve education —John S. Quarterman

While I agree with most of Karen Noll’s post, especially the part about CUEE should come clean about why it’s spending so much money on something about which it knows little, I don’t agree that consolidating high schools would help.

I remember when Lowndes County consolidated two high schools into one, and the rationale was cost saving and more resources for science classes. What it was really about was football. And it worked: Lowndes High School now often wins the state championship, and Valdosta hasn’t in a decade. While education lags behind.

I think the Lowndes County Board of Education is doing the right Continue reading →

Pine Grove School Hotel?

Found in Reuters today, Top 10 quirky hotels:
3. Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon

You won’t mind staying after school at the Kennedy School hotel. A former neighborhood elementary school, the Kennedy was transformed into a luxurious and funky hotel, with guest rooms in former classrooms – complete with school-related décor like blackboards and coatrooms. After-school features include a restaurant, multiple bars, a brewery and a movie theater. Set in an up-and-coming residential neighborhood, the Kennedy draws locals and visitors alike.

The school rehab could be an idea for pine grove school: closest hotel to the base with non traditional services.

-gretchen

We’re here to save our schools —Sam Allen, FVCS, 7 July 2011

Sam Allen, former chair of the Valdosta school board and head of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS) held a press conference to announce opposition after CUEE announced 9,000 petitions for a referendum to combine the Valdosta and Lowndes County school systems.. Why so late with the opposition?

Sam Allen explained:

“We were scared. We were intimidated because we had heard about all these consultants coming down, and all these studies being done. So we just thought that we would just sit back and watch and this thing would eventually go away like a bad dream. But folks I want you to know it’s not going away like a bad dream. It’s becoming a nightmare.

Now we stand before you with one purpose in mind: do not sign any petitions. … If it comes to a vote, we want you to vote no.”

Guess they’re not scared any more.

He added: Continue reading →

Who wants to live in a prison colony?

Judy Green, a prison policy analyst says:
“The very first contract for the first private prison in America went to CCA, from INS.”
Hear her in this video Private Prisons-Commerce in Souls by Grassroots Leadership that explains the private prison trade of public safety for private profit:

A local leader once called private prisons “good clean industry”. Does locking up people for private profit sound like “good clean industry” to you? Remember, not only is the U.S. the worst in the world for locking people up (more prisoners per capita and total than any other country in the world), but Georgia is the worst in the country, with 1 in 13 adults in the prison system. And private prisons don’t save money and they don’t improve local employment. As someone says in the video, who wants to live in a prison colony?

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia. Spend that tax money on rehabilitation and education.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Jeana Brown.