{"id":1395,"date":"2011-10-14T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-grassroots-handbook-against-school-consolidation.html"},"modified":"2011-10-14T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T12:00:00","slug":"the-grassroots-handbook-against-school-consolidation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/the-grassroots-handbook-against-school-consolidation.html","title":{"rendered":"The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation"},"content":{"rendered":"Received yesterday,\n\nThe Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation:\nThe Truth About Unification\/Consolidation of the Valdosta\/Lowndes\nSchool Systems<\/a>\nBy David E. Mullis, J.D., LL.M., October 12, 2011.\nIt’s a 43 page exhaustive compendium of all the statements\nagainst consolidation by both school boards, the Valdosta City Council, etc.,\ntogether with detailed debunking of every argument CUEE has made.\n

\nI think this passage on page 3 sums it up:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIn other words, we can offer a great education, provide incentives for\nstudents to perform, make modifications to education to help students\nsucceed, and provide technical help, but if the child is homeless,\nleft home alone for long periods of time, living in a high crime area,\nliving in a home with substance abuse, or just downright defiant, there\nis only so much the school can accomplish in helping these students\nsucceed. Good parental, home and community environments are critical to\nthe success of underprivileged children.\n

\nTherefore, CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce’s efforts are focused on\nthe wrong methods of improving our school statistics. Unification will\nnot accomplish any of their stated goals, but will create an enormous\nfinancial burden on the community and its families during this time of\nrecession and high unemployment. The business community and volunteer\norganizations should instead focus on providing educational awareness\nand success clinics in low income areas. They should organize efforts\nto reduce poverty by bringing in industry with good wages and sponsoring\nbasic community literacy and vocational training and tutoring. They should\nfocus on programs to promote the value of education. They should organize\ndrug awareness and rehabilitation programs in low income areas. They\nshould focus their efforts in decreasing poverty. They should focus on\nencouraging community diversity. If they will do this, the educational\nproblems will take care of themselves in good systems like Valdosta\nand Lowndes.\n

\nHowever, CUEE and the Chamber have insisted on pushing forward with their\nunification agenda despite the certain negative effect it will have on\nthe community and the education of our children. They deny there will be\nany negative effect, but they have no personal accountability if they are\nwrong. They ignore all relevant studies and dismiss the results as being\nmisleading. Then they state their own misleading and false assertions\nand claim them to be FACTS.\n<\/blockquote>\n\nIndeed, what qualifies the Chamber of CUEE to talk about education?<\/a>\nJudging by their track record, nothing does.\n

\nThis Handbook is a great resource, and I applaud David Mullis for\nproducing it.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Received yesterday, The Grassroots Handbook Against School Consolidation: The Truth About Unification\/Consolidation of the Valdosta\/Lowndes School Systems By David E. Mullis, J.D., LL.M., October 12, 2011. It’s a 43 page exhaustive compendium of all the statements against consolidation by both school boards, the Valdosta City Council, etc., together with detailed debunking of every argument CUEE […]","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":[97,40,1376,14,15,49,70,3305,2,19,72,332],"tags":[512,1636,8829,8705,8869,8701,8730,7,2873,839,1635,6],"class_list":["post-1395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-ethics","category-fvcs","category-government","category-history","category-incarceration","category-vlcoc","tag-chamber-of-commerce","tag-consolidation","tag-cuee","tag-education","tag-fvcs","tag-georgia","tag-incarceration","tag-lowndes-county","tag-neighborhood","tag-poverty","tag-unification","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-mv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395","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=1395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}