Do you think the Valdosta and Lowndes County School Systems should be consolidated? I don’t, but CUEE does, and they’re having an “official kick-off” 6PM tomorrow, 24 March 2011, at the Gazebo Room, James H. Rainwater Conference Center, 1 Meeting Place, Valdosta.

Note at the top of the invitation:

It’s Your Decision. It’s Your Choice.

Well, not if you live in the county outside Valdosta, it’s not. CUEE is promoting a referendum for Valdosta voters in November 2011 for Valdosta to give up its school system:

“Shall the City of Valdosta public school system and the Lowndes County public school system be consolidated by amending the City of Valdosta charter to abolish the City of Valdosta’s public school system and making the City of Valdosta public school system a part of the Lowndes County public school system?”

If that passes, the county school board will have no choice but to pick up the pieces. And county voters outside Valdosta don’t get to vote on it.

You might want to read this before you get to CUEE’s event this evening, the School System Study on the Chamber of Commerce’s web pages. It’s called “Study to Determine the Impact of School System Organization on Economic Development in Our Community”. Note that’s economic development, not educational development. And by my reading the study report says consolidation won’t increase educational performance significantly, and won’t reduce the overall total school budget. Here’s the PDF of the final report. Read it for yourself; it’s only six pages.

Who is CUEE, anyway? Community Unification for Educational Excellence, Inc. (CUEE) is most of the local people from the Chamber study group that produced that report, except for the ones who dropped out when they saw the results.

What’s it really about? Look at the invitation:

“OFFICIAL KICK-OFF”.

Is football really all we care about as a community? What do you think?

-jsq

Short Link: