Category Archives: Community

Vote No for the Children helps Occupy Valdosta

Seen today on Vote No! for the children. -jsq
Opportunity to March: Occupy Valdosta will be assembling at the Chamber of Commerce this Friday. Please contact Bobbi Hancock bahancock@valdosta.edu or Erin Hurley ephurley@valdosta.edu if you have questions. All of us need to support one another, these college kids were crucial in the efforts to get rid of the Biomass incinerator. Please help get the word out and join up if you can. The Chamber needs to see that we are all united! We’ll post times and places as soon as they are confirmed.

Chamber opposes hidden taxes while proposing taxation without representation

Chairman Tom Gooding of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce said that the Chamber was opposed to government adding hidden taxes, and Roy Taylor can be heard going “Amen!”. Yet both of them back the Chamber and CUEE’s school “unification” referendum, which would raise taxes for everyone in Valdosta and Lowndes County plus making conditions more difficult for business. None of the school consolidation proponents seem to see the irony.

Gooding’s talk about the Chamber’s Government Affairs Committee spelled out the Chamber’s theory of local government, which is all about helping business, and apparently not about anything else. He didn’t say a word about government providing public benefits for the common good. Which is the tail and which is the dog?

Also, Gooding promised at least three times (1 2 3) that Continue reading →

Occupy Valdosta Flyers

Already more people have signed up to march Friday than showed up at the Chamber’s event last night. Here are some flyers. There’s an Occupy Valdosta organizational meeting tonight; more in the blog after that. The traditional media are starting to flock around, as well.

-jsq

Do we want a Gladiator School prison in Lowndes County?

Remember FBI investigating CCA “Gladiator School”, the CCA-run private prison in Idaho the FBI was investigating last year? Well, it hasn’t improved much. Cutting corners for private profit endangers prisoner safety and public safety. Is that what we want in Lowndes County, Georgia?

The same reporter, Rebecca Boone, wrote again for AP Sunday, almost a year later, CCA-run prison remains Idaho’s most violent lockup

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In the last four years, Idaho’s largest privately run prison has faced federal lawsuits, widespread public scrutiny, increased state oversight, changes in upper management and even an ongoing FBI investigation.

Yet the Corrections Corp. of America-run Idaho Correctional Center remains the most violent lockup in Idaho.

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that while the assault rate improved somewhat in the four-year period examined, ICC inmates are still more than twice as likely to be assaulted as those at other Idaho prisons.

Between September 2007 and September 2008, both ICC and the state-run Idaho State Correctional Institution were medium-security prisons with roughly 1,500 inmates each. But during that 12-month span, ICC had 132 inmate-on-inmate assaults, compared to just 42 at ISCI. In 2008, ICC had more assaults than all other Idaho prisons combined.

By 2010, both prisons had grown with 2,080 inmates at ICC and 1,688 inmates at ISCI. Records collected by the AP showed that there were 118 inmate-on-inmate assaults at ICC compared to 38 at ISCI. And again last year, ICC had more assaults than all the other prisons combined.

What improvement there has been is because multiple inmates filed lawsuits.

Even so, Idaho renewed and even increased its contract with CCA. With one small improvement: Continue reading →

Valdosta State Students defend their right of free speech

Campus authorities tried getting students to move away from the University Center where Governor Nathan Deal was having a luncheon. The students stood their ground.

Here’s the video.


Protesting Gov. Nathan Deal at Valdosta State University (VSU), 16 September 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

The students had been standing on the sidewalk in front of the Continue reading →

MLK Jr. radio ad for CUEE?

I haven’t heard it, but multiple people say they have: a radio ad on Black Crow media
promoting Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream with cuee’s mission.
Voiced by Morgan Freeman. So we know CUEE is pouring money into their local disaster capitalism.

This is not sitting well with opponents of consolidation. Here’s JC Cunningham’s reaction:

I personally am not surprised by any tactics that Cuee uses in order to win on Nov. 8th. In the last 5 minutes I have received 3 phone calls and 6 emails. Each one asked me what was I going to do about it? After the last call I began to get a little upset, because I did not ask that person the same question. What are you going to do about this?

Cuee and the Chamber will try and get away with

Continue reading →

School consolidation as disaster capitalism

School consolidation would set up an artificial fiscal disaster that could force the “unified” public school system to turn to private foundations for funding, at the price of control of public education by private entities. This is disaster capitalism, or the shock doctrine, right here in Valdosta and Lowndes County.

What’s the Shock Doctrine? It’s been around for a long time, but Naomi Klein researched it for her book of the same name. It’s

“the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock”
She was writing mostly about wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. Locally here we haven’t had any of those. But we may be about to create a disaster, a shock, at the ballot box in November, if voters fall for the school “unification” snake oil.

What’s the next step after CUEE has accidentally revealed that Continue reading →

If I were Superintendent —Sam Allen

Seen on the FVCS facebook page, dated 6 October 2011. -jsq
If I were Superintendent in the Lowndes County School System on November 9, 2011 and I had 7700 additional students and a potential $10 Million Deficit this would be my starting list:

Winners:

  • Bus Drivers (ALL – NO supervisors, trainers or mechanics)
  • Lunchroom Staff (Until we decide which schools to close)
  • Custodial Staff (Until we decide which schools to close – no supervisor)
  • Media Specialists (Until we decide which schools to close – then I would move you down to the Losers section)
  • 2 Maintenance Workers (Heating/Air – no supervisor)
  • Academic Teachers (with good evaluations) – NOT ALL because I would raise teacher class size to the max and ask for a waiver for an additional child or two 1 Asst. Superintendent
  • 2 Technology support staff (no Supervisors)
  • School Secty (Until we decide which schools to close)
  • 1 Finance staff person (Payroll)
  • Principals (Until we decide which schools to close – except Southeast, will not rebuild)

Losers:

  • Teachers (especially ones that do not have tenure)
  • Assistant Principals (at Elementary Schools that have more than one)
  • Media Specialists (Until we decide which schools to close)
  • 3 Curriculum Directors at Central Office
  • Technology Supervisor
  • Special Education Director
  • 2 Assistant Superintendents
  • Director of ESPLOST Projects
  • Superintendent
  • All Central Office Support Staff
  • Food Service Director and Staff
  • Ticket Manager
  • Community Relations Director
  • 1 Social Worker
  • VECA Staff (ALL)
  • Pinevale Learning Center Staff (ALL)
  • Personnel Director and Staff
  • Title I Director and Staff
  • Director of Testing
  • Mail Courier
  • Vocational Teachers due to change in direction (Not All)
  • Elective Teachers (Some)
  • Parent Involvement Coordinators (Title I $ will be cut)
  • Instructional Supervisors
  • Para Educators (except for Special Education)
  • Valdosta Police Department Dare Officers/SRO’s and Football Games (taken over by the County if funding is available)
  • 1 Band Director at VHS – student fees will increase and school will not furnish as many instruments
  • Performing Arts Center Mgr. – public will be charged a higher costs to use
  • Director of Purchasing and Staff
  • 1 School Psychologist
  • 9 Board of Education Members
  • 2 @ Asst Principals at VMS and JLN
  • 2 Asst Principals at VHS
  • No Swim Team staff
  • IB Teachers would be relocated if positions are available
  • 5 Furlough days for the first year
  • School Board Attorney

School Closing:

  • Southeast
  • Pinevale Learning Center
  • VECA
  • JL Lomax ???
  • Parker Mathis
  • Old Pine Grove
  • Moulton- Branch ????

Sell:

  • Bazemore Hyder Stadium and Central Office to VSU at Fair Market Value – Wildcat Museum would be housed at the Historical Society
  • Southeast School
  • VECA to VSU at Fair Market Value
  • Pinevale Learning Center
Now it took me about 15 minutes to come up with this list and it’s not near what my actually happen during the 2011-12 school year if we don’t get people out to vote against this misguided attempt to dismantle our schools. If I didn’t include you don’t thank for one second that you are safe. Remember I didn’t hire you and I don’t owe you anything, so pay your bills on time and keep your credit ratings high because you may need to rent for a while.

-Samuel Allen, Superintendent Emeritus

Some U.K. folks having doubts about catching up with U.S. in prisons

Will Self wrote 7 October 2011 for the BBC, A Point of View: Prisons don’t work
It was Dostoevsky who said: “The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” But in contemporary Britain you don’t even need to do this, you can simply stand on a street corner and wait for the ghosts to come flitting past in order to appreciate its parlous condition.

We now have the highest prison population in Europe by a considerable measure, and following the recent riots there is no likelihood of it decreasing.

Of course, we aren’t quite at the levels enjoyed by our closest allies, those prime exponents of the civilising mission the United States, whose extensive gulag now houses, it is estimated, more African American men than were enslaved immediately prior to their Civil War – but we’re getting there.

Why the second thoughts? Continue reading →

The promises that are impossible —Barbara Stratton

Received 6 October 2011 on LCBOE did its homework about consolidation. -jsq
CUEE has staked their efforts on catch phrases & false promises that look & sound good. All of their info is at best a half truth. The promises that are imposible to keep are lies. I was raised believing a promise broken is a truth untold, which is a lie.

Unfortunately this tactic will work for today’s lazy voters who won’t even take the time to go to a website where the true facts are posted much less do their own research. Surely don’t ask them to leave the comfort of their homes & entertainment & personal addictions to attend any public meetings on either side when they should be visiting both sides at least once. They are part of the convenient idiot masses that facilitate take overs by the clever greedy for money & power few.

Both school boards [VBOE, LCBOE] and their supporters have done a great job of researching to produce true evidence that dissolves all the CUEE false rhetoric & print.

We cannot assume that truth will prevail because it is much easier to believe the fast sell that requires no personal effort. CUEE is banking on this. Most of the school consolidations that have occurred had many that were shocked when they passed because they did not account for the money/power ruses of the facilitators working so well with the lazy voter public. Many will not even show up claiming they have no stake since they have no children in either system. They are too lazy to check the researched facts to see they will be paying higher taxes for a handicapped unified system.

-Barbara Stratton