{"id":1346,"date":"2011-10-25T13:04:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T17:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-real-truth-about-school-consolidation-by-supt-smith-to-lowndes-county-schools.html"},"modified":"2011-10-25T13:04:47","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T17:04:47","slug":"the-real-truth-about-school-consolidation-by-supt-smith-to-lowndes-county-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-real-truth-about-school-consolidation-by-supt-smith-to-lowndes-county-schools.html","title":{"rendered":"The Real Truth About School Consolidation by Supt. Smith to Lowndes County Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"Received today. -jsq\n
\n\n<\/a>\nSent: Tue, October 25, 2011 7:55:07 AM\n
\nSubject: Letter to the Staff\n
\nFriends,\n
\nAttached is a copy a document that was sent to all Lowndes County\nteachers and staff from Dr. Steve Smith.\n
\nThanks,\n
\nSam Allen\n
\nSamuel Allen, Superintendent Emeritus [Valdosta City Schools]\n<\/blockquote>\nThe letter is on the LAKE website.<\/a>\nHere are a few excerpts:\n
\nREAL TRUTH: Continuing all of the current programs the Valdosta City\nSchool System and the Lowndes County School System have would\n\n<\/a>\nrequire a\nmillage rate of approximately 24 mills. Considering state law limits us\nto 21 mills, some programs will be eliminated. The decision to eliminate\nsuch programs will be recommended by the Lowndes County Superintendent,\nsubject to final approval by the Lowndes County Board of Education. There\nwill be winners and losers in consolidation and several current successful\nprograms will likely have to go.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\nREAL TRUTH: One of the primary goals of CUEE is to increase diversity\n\n<\/a>\nin the consolidated school system; therefore, you cannot increase\ndiversity and leave what CUEE calls segregated schools. As a result,\nmany students will be transported to other schools in order to achieve\na school population that is representative of the demographics of our\ncommunity. This will not only mean a shift of attendance zones of schools\nin the city and county, it will also mean a drastic increase in the\ncost of transportation of students. Dr. Terry Jenkins (the consolidation\n\n<\/a>\nauthority that CUEE brought in as their featured speaker at their forum)\nstated in his presentation at the CUEE forum that the morning after the\nconsolidation in Troup County, he received a call from the Department of\nJustice mandating that he achieve a racial diversity within the school\nsystem that reflects the demographics of their community.\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nREAL TRUTH: Option 1 was not a bill introduced by the Georgia General\nAssembly;\n\n<\/a>\nit was a revision to the State Constitution in 1983. Option 2\nwas a statute established in 1926. The Chamber of Commerce and CUEE NEVER\nproposed option 1 to either school board or superintendent. However,\nthey did state that option 1 was not feasible because they knew the\ncounty would defeat any consolidation effort. It is ironic that CUEE\nuses the terminology unification. If they truly desired unification,\nthey would have both the city and county voters engaged in the decision\nfor or against consolidation. CUEE’s failure to allow the county voters\na voice in consolidation has disenfranchised over half of the people\naffected by consolidation. If consolidation is approved and taxes\nincrease, the county taxpayers will be a victim of taxation without\nrepresentation. This is all part of CUEE’s plan to force consolidation\nregardless of the consequences. When one analyzes the number of organized\ngroups who have publically opposed consolidation and compare that number\nto the mere two groups who promote consolidation, one would naturally\nquestion why we are even having this conversation at this time. For the\n\n<\/a>\nChamber leadership and CUEE, a private entity, to so forcefully promote\nsuch a divisive issue, one must question their motive.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nIndeed, one must question their motive.\nHere are \nsome thoughts on that.<\/a>\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Received today. -jsq Sent: Tue, October 25, 2011 7:55:07 AM Subject: Letter to the Staff Friends, Attached is a copy a document that was sent to all Lowndes County teachers and staff from Dr. Steve Smith. Thanks, Sam Allen Samuel Allen, Superintendent Emeritus [Valdosta City Schools] The letter is on the LAKE website. Here are […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,1376,14,15,49,3305,8,20,1105,3,1106,332],"tags":[1636,8829,8705,8869,8701,3391,8710,8815,3562,7,3080,1635,6,8816,3563,8765],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-fvcs","category-georgia","category-law","category-lcboe","category-transparency","category-vboe","category-vlcoc","tag-consolidation","tag-cuee","tag-education","tag-fvcs","tag-georgia","tag-greed","tag-law","tag-lcboe","tag-lhs","tag-lowndes-county","tag-steve-smith","tag-unification","tag-valdosta","tag-vboe","tag-vhs","tag-vlcoc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-lI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}