Tag Archives: rich

Charter school referendum preamble is Parent Trigger jargon

 

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 reading →

Democrats and Tea Party: both against charter school amendment



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:

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

The charter school amendment is about control —Dr. Troy Davis @ LCDP 2012-09-10

Lowndes 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 reading →

Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people —Karen Noll

Received 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