{"id":1469,"date":"2011-09-28T17:49:33","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T21:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/questions-concerning-consolidation-were-strictly-forbidden-barbara-stratton.html"},"modified":"2011-09-28T17:49:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T21:49:33","slug":"questions-concerning-consolidation-were-strictly-forbidden-barbara-stratton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/questions-concerning-consolidation-were-strictly-forbidden-barbara-stratton.html","title":{"rendered":"Questions concerning consolidation were strictly forbidden. —Barbara Stratton"},"content":{"rendered":"Received today on\n\n18 years later in Troup County<\/a>. -jsq\n
\n\n<\/a>\nThe reference to the consolidation process which produced a magnet school\nin Troupe Co. without any improvements in general academic or financial\nimprovement takes me back to my first CUEE meeting experience. It was\nheld at the new Valdosta Boys & Girls Club. VDT news articles stated\nthe meeting would be to discuss consolidation.\n

\nHowever, at the meeting\nquestions concerning consolidation were strictly forbidden. We watched\nthe movie\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n“Waiting for Superman” which depicted several students\nvying for selection into charter or magnet schools to escape the\nills of public education. The ones who were selected were ecstatic,\nwhile the ones who were not chosen were devastated & forced to remain\nin the evil public school systems. Much of the movie involved problems\nwith teacher unions. When it was pointed out to the hired facilitator,\nSteve Prigohzey, that Valdosta\/Lowndes doesn’t have the illustrated\nunion problems, he appeared surprised. Clearly he was not hired for his\nability to familiarize himself with the local educational issues, but he\ndid present a great performance of Delphi Technique info control.\n

\nHis mantra of the night was “the power of selection” referring to the\nselection scenarios from the movie. I raised my hand to ask “What about\nthe ones not selected?” & received the Delphi skip over while he went on\nto keep repeating, “the power of selection”. Sorry, CUEE, but I defer to\nDr. Spock’s wise adage, “the good of the few does not outweigh the good\nof the many”. Dog & pony shows that “select” a control group that can\nbe taught to perform while the majority of students are relegated to the\nalso rans is not my idea of education reform. Isn’t that what they do in\ncommunist countries where the government partners with educators and\/or\ncoaches to produce a few government controlled stars in academics or\nathletics while the others are just common fodder for the work force.\n

\nWe were also told by Mr. Prigohzy that the new Public\/Private Partnership\ncreated, grant & tax subsidized facility for the Boys & Girls Club has\nproduced what he said must become part of our new notion of school. I\nhave not fully explored how the power of selection fits into that scheme\nbecause the only selection process readily evident is the ability to pay\n$70 a week for after school care. I think we’ve all noticed that local\nyouth sports is swiftly switching from a sports for all mentality to a\n“power of selection” process that fosters elite performance teams. I’m\nalso wondering how much access is available to nonpaying participants\nlike the hordes of us who grew up enjoying the old facilities.\n

\nBack to my concerned citizen mantra – Public\/Private Partnerships which\nare glorified by CUEE & local developers are a mixture of private business\n& government, which is an obvious fascism move toward communism. Aside\nfrom the dangerous fascist issues, is our community really that desperate\nfor grant handouts from a government that is borrowing money from China\nto pay these grants?\n

\n-Barbara Stratton\n<\/blockquote>\nAs always, posts on this blog are the opinions of their authors,\nexcept in the rare cases where they are explicitly marked as being for LAKE.\n

\nBarbara seems to be referring to the meeting\nSharah Denton reported on for the VDT 25 June 2011,\n\nCUEE Education Committee planning continues:\nGroup sees positive side of Valdosta schools<\/a>\n

\nThe committee members watched a documentary, \u201cWaiting on Superman,\u201d\nwhich is based on the No Child Left Behind Act and gives a unique\nperspective of public education.\n

\nFacilitator Steve Prigohzy asked the committee about their thoughts on\nthe film.\n

\nA question was asked why consolidate the school system and not spend\nmore money on the VECA program.\n

\nPrigohzy stated that the meeting was not about school consolidation but\nabout finding ways to help the school system improve overall.\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Received today on 18 years later in Troup County. -jsq The reference to the consolidation process which produced a magnet school in Troupe Co. without any improvements in general academic or financial improvement takes me back to my first CUEE meeting experience. It was held at the new Valdosta Boys & Girls Club. VDT news […]","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":[97,40,1376,14,15,49,3305,3],"tags":[1636,8829,8705,8701,7,3435,8700,1635,6],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-fvcs","category-transparency","tag-consolidation","tag-cuee","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-lowndes-county","tag-questions","tag-transparency","tag-unification","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-nH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469","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=1469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}