{"id":1428,"date":"2011-10-08T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/consolidation-was-about-economic-development-fred-wetherington-lcboe-4-oct-2011.html"},"modified":"2011-10-08T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-08T12:00:00","slug":"consolidation-was-about-economic-development-fred-wetherington-lcboe-4-oct-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/consolidation-was-about-economic-development-fred-wetherington-lcboe-4-oct-2011.html","title":{"rendered":"Consolidation was about economic development &mdash;Fred Wetherington @ LCBOE 4 Oct 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"Current LCBOE member Fred Wetherington said he was on the Chamber of\nCommerce Board and is still a member.\nRemembering how consolidation started at the Chamber:\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wf-7glC-aNU\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i4.ytimg.com\/vi\/wf-7glC-aNU\/default.jpg\"><\/a>\nThe whole idea was could it help us with economic development in our community.\nAt the same time could we increase student achievement.\nAnd could we save the taxpayers money.\n<p>\nWell, I&#8217;m here to tell you tonight that I was one of the board members&#8230;\nthat if that theory and those ideas had held up after research and study,\nI would be supporting this idea.\n<\/blockquote>\nBut he doesn&#8217;t.  Because that theory and those ideas did not hold up.\n<p>\nHe might have settled for something less than that:\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\nI promise you that if I thought after our study and research\nthat this would improve student achievement,\nbecause we could even say, Dr. Smith, if it would improve student achievement,\nmaybe it would be worth a little more local revenue&#8230;.\n<p>\nBut that&#8217;s not what we found.\n<p>\n&#8230;\n<p>\nStudent achievement cannot be gained if our systems consolidate&#8230;.\nIt will increase property taxes.\n<\/blockquote>\nThen he connected the dots:\n<blockquote>\nIf you believe what I&#8217;m saying that\nstudent achievement gains are not to be found;\nit&#8217;s going to increase local property taxes significantly;\nthen how in the world will we ever help with economic development?\nWe will not.\n<\/blockquote>\nSchool consolidation: lose, lose, lose on all three points\nof the original Chamber idea.\n<ul>\n<li>\nLose on educational achievement.\n<li>\nLose on property taxes.\n<li>\nLose on economic development.\n<\/ul>\nFred Wetherington ended by getting to the real issues with education:\n<blockquote>\nWe can do something.\nWe can do better.\nI want to end this on a positive note, not just no no no.\n<p>\n&#8230;\n<p>\nDr. Smith\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/10\/telling-the-truth-supt-steve-smith-lcboe-4-oct-2011.html\">\nmentioned it earlier,<\/a> and I just want you to know this.\nPoverty.\nAll the issues surrounding poverty are our number one enemy in public\neducation.\nAnd it don&#8217;t just reside in Lowndes County, folks: that&#8217;s everywhere.\n<p>\nHow can we as a community better reach out to our\nparents,\nguardians,\ngrandparents,\nsingle parents,\nparticularly in the low socio-economic status, the low-income earners,\nthe ones that&#8217;s underemployed or unemployed.\nI&#8217;ll ask you; that&#8217;s where we need to put our energy.\n<p>\n[Applause]\n<\/blockquote>\nThere&#8217;s more.\nFor example, he said he was taught at LHS to question everything\nhe read:\n<blockquote>\nAnd I&#8217;m saying that to you tonight even about what Fred Wetherington is telling you.\nGo home and do; this information that we presented as fact is the best of\nour ability what we brought to you tonight as the truth.\nBut do your own work.\nGo home, challenge us.\nWhether you&#8217;re on one side or the other,\nI say go home, do your homework, and decide.\nAnd then get out and get involved,\nbecause this vote on November 8th is extremely important.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd a final key point:\n<blockquote>\nTalk to the businesses where you work.\nTalk to the businesses where you trade with, where you do business at.\nThey have to understand funding in education\nis not like a business; it&#8217;s not a business model.\nIt&#8217;s not like two businesses merging.\n<p>\nI&#8217;m telling you, I raised my hand a while ago,\nI&#8217;m telling you, I was one of the guilty ones.\nThe theory that was proposed to me several years ago was very interesting.\nCan we improve student achievement at a lower cost, and help economic\ndevelopment all at the same time?\nIt was very interesting to me.\n<p>\nThat&#8217;s not where the facts have led me.\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wf-7glC-aNU\">\nthe video:<\/a>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wf-7glC-aNU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<br>\n<small>\nConsolidation was about economic development &mdash;Fred Wetherington @ LCBOE 4 Oct 2011\n<br>\nWhy we oppose consolidation,\n<br>\nCommunity Forum, Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE),\n<br>\nValdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 October 2011.\n<br>\nVideos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.\n<\/small>\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Current LCBOE member Fred Wetherington said he was on the Chamber of Commerce Board and is still a member. Remembering how consolidation started at the Chamber: The whole idea was could it help us with economic development in our community. At the same time could we increase student achievement. And could we save the taxpayers [&hellip;]","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":[97,40,1376,14,15,49,2,602,19,1105,3458,3,1106,332],"tags":[3461,3460,8701,10,8702,8815,12,7,1620,6,3459],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-government","category-hahira","category-history","category-lcboe","category-lcboe-4-october-2011","category-transparency","category-vboe","category-vlcoc","tag-4-october-2011","tag-community-forum","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lcboe","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-board-of-education","tag-valdosta","tag-why-we-oppose-consolidation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-n2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","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=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}