{"id":368,"date":"2012-10-29T19:47:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T23:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/why-no-on-amendment-1-jc-cunningham-for-ga-house-district-175.html"},"modified":"2012-10-29T19:47:35","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T23:47:35","slug":"why-no-on-amendment-1-jc-cunningham-for-ga-house-district-175","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/why-no-on-amendment-1-jc-cunningham-for-ga-house-district-175.html","title":{"rendered":"Why No on Amendment 1 &mdash;J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/7f5OFiKGCmM\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i4.ytimg.com\/vi\/7f5OFiKGCmM\/mqdefault.jpg\"><\/a>\nJ.C. Cunningham, running for state representative district 175,\nreminded us all that the basic purpose of the Georgia state government\nis to provide public education, according to its constitution,\nand that local school boards already can and do approve charter schools.\nHe gave five reasons for voting No on Amendment 1:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol>\n<li>\nBecause out-of-state corporations are paying for this campaign&#8230;.\n<li>\nIt creates a new Atlanta-based government bureaucracy.\n<li>\nThe new commission will be filled by appointments done by politicians,\nnot the citizens.\n<li>\nGeorgia already has 200 charter schools, and we&#8217;ve already proven the\nprocess works.\n<li>\nA Yes vote would&#8230; cost us an additional $430 million\nwhile most of our schools are not open a full year as it is&#8230;.\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nThe only reasoning that I can tell you that proponents have been giving us\nis school choice, and again,\nthey already have school choice;\nwe have school choice.\nThe only new things about Amendment 1 are higher cost\nand unnecessary state bureaucracy&#8230;.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s\n<a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/7f5OFiKGCmM\">\nthe video,<\/a>\nfollowed by a partial transcript.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7f5OFiKGCmM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\">\n<small>\nWhy No on Amendment 1 &mdash;J.C. Cunningham for GA House District 175\n<br>\nTalks, Liberty Outbreak (LO),\n<br>\nVideo by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),\n<br>\nVHS PAC, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 October 2012.\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nPartial transcript:\n<\/p>\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nArticle 8 Section 1 of the Constitution of Georgia states:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n&ldquo;The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens\nshall be the primary obligation of the state of Georgia.\nThe public education for the citizens prior to the college\nor post-secondary level shall be free, and shall be provided by taxation.\nThe expense of other public education shall be provided\nin such a manner and in such an amount that may be provided by law.&rdquo;\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nAs most of you know I&#8217;m J.C. Cunningham, and I&#8217;m running for\nstate representative district 175.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOn November 6<small><sup>th<\/sup><\/small>\nwill be asked to vote on a very, very, very, very important\nballot question which states:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n&#038;ldquo:Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow state or local\napproval of public charter schools upon the request of local communities?&rdquo;\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nNow I ask you, why is this amendment necessary,\nwhen locally approved charter schools are already constitutional?\nI just read that to you.\nIt&#8217;s already constitutional.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nBecause the passage of this amendment has nothing to do with granting\nlocal approval.\nIf approved by voters,\nit will give state officials full legal authority to create\nand fully finance with state money\nlocal charter schools even over protest of local elected school officials.\nThe passage of this amendment, House Bill 1162,\nwould authorize the legislature and the government to establish\na private committee with the power to approve\napplications for charter schools, thus taking the power and decision-making\nfrom local school systems.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI oppose this amendment because it is designed to overturn the\nGeorgia Supreme Court decision that ruled that the power to create\ncharter schools lies with local school boards, not the state.\nI am also opposed to this amendment because taxpayer dollars,\nand I repeat, taxpayer dollars, should never fund private for-profit\ncharter or special schools.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe proposed amendment is about who creates and controls our schools\nOur local school boards, which answer only to parents and taxpayers,\nnow control whether charter schools are created.\nThat&#8217;s called accountability.\nIt&#8217;s called good common sense.\nThose who live and pay taxes in our communities know best what\nthe kids need in our communities, not the bureaucrats in Atlanta.\nA system of checks and balances is already in place to ensure\nthat the needs of all of our students are met.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe proposed constitutional amendment would get rid of that accountability.\nState-controlled charter schools would cost an additional\n$430 million in state funds.\nNow Georgia&#8217;s already cut nearly $5.6 billion from our education\nover the last nine years.\nThe passage of this amendment would require a shift of funding\nthat would result in larger class sizes, shorter school days,\nmore teacher furloughs, layoffs, and, worse, more local taxes\nto each one of us, so we can supplement that loss.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nNow I&#8217;m going to give you five reasons why all Georgians should\nvote against this amendment.\n<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\nBecause out-of-state corporations are paying for this campaign&#8230;.\n<li>\nIt creates a new Atlanta-based government bureaucracy.\n<li>\nThe new commission will be filled by appointments done by politicians,\nnot the citizens.\n<li>\nGeorgia already has 200 charter schools, and we&#8217;ve already proven the\nprocess works.\n<li>\nA Yes vote would, as I said earlier, cost us an additional $430 million\nwhile most of our schools are not open a full year as it is&#8230;.\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nThe only reasoning that I can tell you that proponents have been giving us\nis school choice, and again,\nthey already have school choice;\nwe have school choice.\nThe only new things about Amendment 1 are higher cost\nand unnecessary state bureaucracy&#8230;.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLet&#8217;s follow the money.\nCheck out the groups promoting charter schools and high-stakes\ntesting and policies that link teachers evaluations to test scores.\nIn particular, who&#8217;s on the board of education reform?\nWhy are huge interests in Wall Street and hedge funds and real estate\nmoguls; what are they doing in charter schools?\nWhat are their connections between education reform,\nStand with the Children, CAN, a host of other groups promoting\nprivatization: what are they doing?\nAlso, New School Venture Fund, and the big foundations like Bill Gates\nand Wal-Mart?\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAnd another interesting thing I was reading about this morning,\nthere&#8217;s not another high-performing nation in the United States\nthat&#8217;s even proposing anything this ridiculous.\nThat should tell us something right there.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nFollow the money, take it by corporate interests that control\nour local politicians, they control our legislature, and most of all\nthey control our governor.\nThe policymakers pushing charter school expansion ask taxpayers to\noverlook the business side, but they don&#8217;t give us a good reasoning\non how to save money to spend in our classrooms.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSome of you may have already read this, but every time I read this\nstatement by state school superintendent John Barge, I feel inspired.\nI feel inspired because he&#8217;s a Republican and he knew when he made\nthat statement he put his political career at risk, especially\nwith the Republican-controled legislature.\nBut I have a great amount of respect for him and I want to just read something\n<a href=\"http:\/\/johnbarge.com\/newsroom\/state-school-superintendent-dr-john-barge-on-the-constitutional-amendment-for-charter-schools-2\">\nthat he said&#8230;.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n&ldquo;I fully support the continued creation of high quality\n<a href=\"http:\/\/johnbarge.com\/newsroom\/state-school-superintendent-dr-john-barge-on-the-constitutional-amendment-for-charter-schools-2\">\n<img style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   width=\"150\" height=\"135\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/johnbarge.com\/wp-content\/themes\/StandardTheme_261\/uploads\/john-barge-370.jpg\"><\/a>\ncharter schools for Georgia&#8217;s students, but after careful\nconsideration of what is best for all of Georgia&#8217;s students, I have\ndecided to take a position in opposition to the constitutional\namendment that will be on the Nov. 6 ballot.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nUntil all of our public school students are in school for a full\n180-day school year, until essential services like student\ntransportation and student support can return to effective levels,\nand until teachers regain jobs with full pay for a full school year,\nwe should not redirect one more dollar away from Georgia&#8217;s local\nschool districts &mdash; much less an additional $430 million in\nstate funds, which is what it would cost to add seven new state\ncharter schools per year over the next five years (the annual\naverage of the Charter Commission that would be revived if the\namendment passes).\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n&#8230;What the legislature did that we have not talked about a lot is\nthat they actually passed a funding mechanism before we\npassed the actual charter school amendment;\nthat&#8217;s in House Bill 797.\nBut the only way we can really calculate those numbers if if we\nget the amendment passed or defeated&#8230;.\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nI cannot support the creation of a new and costly state bureaucracy\nthat takes away local control of schools and unnecessarily\nduplicates the good work already being done by local districts, the\nGeorgia Department of Education, and the state Board of Education.\nWhat&#8217;s more, this constitutional amendment would direct taxpayer\ndollars into the pockets of out-of-state, for-profit charter school\ncompanies whose schools perform no better than traditional public\nschools and locally approved charter schools (and worse, in some\ncases).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI trust our local school districts will continue to approve only\nhigh quality charter schools for Georgia&#8217;s students, and I am\ncommitted to working with all of our school districts to ensure that\nhigh quality applicants are not denied locally &mdash; including\nmediating between high quality charter school applicants and any\nlocal districts that are reluctant to approve them, as provided by\nexisting Georgia law.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nI think it just took a lot of courage for him to come forth\nfor the betterment of the citizens of the state of Georgia.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nJ.C. Cunningham continued with an example of charter schools in Brady County,\nand a hypothetical example.\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nThere&#8217;s about four or five charter school websites looking for teachers.\nAnd not one of them asks about a degree.\nThey were just asking did you have a background in this area.\nYou know, we can&#8217;t allow that.\nWe can&#8217;t allow for folks that worked for four and six and sometimes eight\nyears to get degrees and have specialties to now lose their jobs and\nlose their health insurance because you&#8217;re going to allow a for-profit\ncorporation to let anybody walk off the street&#8230;.\n<\/P>\n<p>\nThat&#8217;s not their concern.\nTheir concern is about profit.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"J.C. Cunningham, running for state representative district 175, reminded us all that the basic purpose of the Georgia state government is to provide public education, according to its constitution, and that local school boards already can and do approve charter schools. He gave five reasons for voting No on Amendment 1: Because out-of-state corporations are [&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":[40,14,15,49,8,2],"tags":[1483,1385,1487,1485,8717,1488,8704,8705,1484,8701,8699,1368,548,8702,1481,12,7,1486,1480,6,1482],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-georgia","category-government","tag-27-october-2012","tag-amendment-1","tag-ballot","tag-charter-school","tag-community","tag-district-175","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-election","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-j-c-cunningham","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-liberty-outbreak","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-referendum","tag-talks","tag-valdosta","tag-vhs-pac"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-5W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","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=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}