Category Archives: Georgia

VDT against charter school amendment

Even the VDT opposes the charter school amendment.

“Staff Writer” editorialized in the VDT 12 September 2012, Will charter schools hurt public education?

So the state has consistently run down the public education system in Georgia over the course of the last decade by drastically cutting funding from programs, but are now complaining because student test scores and graduation rates have decreased.

The state solution? Allow for basically anyone who has a building to apply to run a “charter school” that would siphon money away from public education. Students would be able to choose where they would go, the parents or community officials would “run” the schools, and they would not have to meet the same standards as the current public schools, but taxpayers would still be forced to pay for them.

State officials are fond of saying that charter schools aren’t private schools, but when a school gets to pick and choose who they let in and who they don’t, that’s the definition of a private school. Only the elite whose parents want to run the schools will have a chance, and the poor and disenfranchised will have no choice, will not be accepted, and will suffer even more because the money will no longer be there to educate them.

Here’s an idea: Restore all those drastic austerity cuts from education to pre-Gov. “Sonny” Perdue levels, invest in the public education system which is already in place and doing quite well in spite of the state’s best efforts to shut it down, and restore the true value of a public education to the taxpayers of the state who are footing the bill and seeing fewer results.

I like that idea. Let’s vote No on the charter school amendment in November so we can get back to funding public education.

-jsq

Southern Company’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool

The failed EDF nuke project at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland makes it clearer why Southern Company (SO) was the first company to get a nuclear permit in 30 years: it was the only one big enough and monopolistic enough to pull it off. Even then it’s such a bet-the-farm risk that even “great, big company” SO only dared to deploy its “great big huge scale“ equipment with the regulatory capture triple-whammy of a stealth tax on Georgia Power bills, PSC approval of cost overruns, and an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee:

  1. a legislated stealth tax in the form of a rate hike on Georgia Power customers for power they won’t get for years if ever. If you’re a Georgia Power customer, look on your bill for Nuclear Construct Cost Recovery Rider. You’ll find it adds about 5% on top of your Current Service Subtotal. Georgia is one of only a handful of states where such a Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge is legal thanks to our regulatory-captured legislature. Doubling down on bad energy bets, Southern Company is also trying to use CWIP to build a coal plant in Mississippi.
  2. A captive Public Service Commission that rubber-stamps costs for Plant Vogtle. In case there was any doubt as to the PSC’s role in legitimizing those new nukes, the very next day Fitch reaffirmed Southern Company’s bond ratings.

    Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.

    Translation: Georgia Power customers subsidize SO’s bonds and SO shareholders’ stock dividends. The PSC also approved cost overruns being passed on to Georgia Power customers, and those nukes are already over $400 or $900 million, depending on who you ask. What do you expect when 4 out of 5 Public Service Commissioners apparently took 70% of their campaign contributions from utilities they regulate or their employees or their law firms, and the fifth commissioner took about 20% from such sources? Hm, there’s an election going on right now!
  3. An $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee. Even that’s not good enough for SO and Georgia Power: SO is asking for less down payment.

And what if even one of that three-legged regulatory capture stool’s legs went away? Continue reading →

Charter school referendum preamble is Parent Trigger jargon

 

A pressure group for privatizing schools is the origin of the jargon in the charter school referendum on the November Georgia ballot. And yes, it’s tied to ALEC.

In Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people, Karen Noll asserted “…the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents….” The preamble to the charter school amendment on the November ballot reads:

Provides for improving student achievement and parental involvement through more public charter school options.

Where else is that wording found? Combinations of the three phrases “student achievement”, “parental involvement”, and “charter school” actually are not very common, according to google. But the Parent Trigger wrote in Empowering Parents,

Policy initiatives that empower parents are likely to increase parental involvement and satisfaction and raise student achievement by inviting parents into the process.

What process?

The designers of the California Parent Trigger made a grave mistake by leaving tepid reform modules in the bill and allowing districts to override the parents’ reform choice.

The Georgia constitutional amendment wouldn’t leave school districts any ability to decide anything.

What would the parents’ reform choice be?

Continue reading →

Kickoff speeches @ SPLOST 2012-09-28

Apparently WCTV’s “at the South Georgia Medical Center Parking Garage”> meant actually in the nearby parking lot, because that’s where we found some city and county employees and a few volunteers standing in the shade of a Valdosta Police van. An invocation and six speeches from five speakers ensued, all in support of SPLOST VII, the Special Local Option Sales Tax on the November ballot. Several of the speakers were not so positive off the podium about the library and auditorium projects, and nobody from the library board spoke.

Here are videos of all of the speeches.

Also the VDT was there, and Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT yesterday, Committee kicks off SPLOST campaign,

The major theme of the event was a firm reminder that SPLOST VII is not a new tax, just a continuation of a penny sales tax that has been in place since 1987.

Fair enough. However, Sam Allen’s second talk summed up what’s wrong with SPLOST VII: Continue reading →

Democrats and Tea Party: both against charter school amendment

In the same month, both the Lowndes County Democratic Party and the Valdosta Tea Party had speakers explaining how bad the charter school amendment is. Neither group took a vote, but it seemed pretty clear most of the attendees at both meetings were against that referendum on the November ballot, and mostly for the same reason: nobody wants an unelected state committee taking away local control and local tax revenue. Parental choice is one thing, and charter schools are another, but nobody seemed to like Atlanta taking away local control.

As the PAGE slides say,

This isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican debate. Legislators voted across party lines to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot. Republican and Democrat voters must defeat it together.

You can watch for yourself. Here are the two presentations:

If you don’t want Atlanta taking away our educational control and local tax dollars, vote No on the charter school amendment in November.

-jsq

A parallel state school system that we have no control over. —Christie Davis

A local middle school teacher spelled out problems with the charter school referendum: no local control over creation or operation of the charter schools it would authorize; money siphoned off from existing local schools; and charter schools actually perform worse than traditional public schools anyway.

Christie Davis, a teacher at Hahira Middle School, speaking at the Lowndes County Tea Party monthly meeting Thursday, pointed out it’s not just the preamble to the referendum that’s misleading. The actual wording of the referendum is also misleading:

Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow state or local approval of public charter schools upon the request of local communities?

She remarked:

It sounds very good that we should say yes. It’s very misleading. And the reason why it’s misleading is totally purposeful. It says something about local communities. We already have that right in our local community, our local boards, to go ahead and implement a charter school, if we see the need. However, they put it in there so that voters that don’t really know what’s going on think they’re helping our local schools by voting yes. However, by voting yes, it will be funding a parallel state school system that we have no control over.

Here’s the video:

A parallel state school system that we have no control over. —Christie Davis
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 27 September 2012.
Thanks to Diane Cox, President, Lowndes County Tea Party, for the invitation.

She also got into the financial aspects:

Continue reading →

The charter school amendment is about control —Dr. Troy Davis @ LCDP 2012-09-10

Lowndes County Schools Assistant Superintendent Troy Davis gave his personal opinion: “it’s about control”. The charter school amendment on the November ballot is not about charter schools, which any community in the state can create now. It’s about control by the state of local schools and resources.

Dr. Davis pointed out Georgia already has 350 charter schools, up from 160 three years ago. All but 19 were established and agreed upon by local communities. There’s a successful one in Berrien County, established by the Berrien County school board. The process to create more is in place in every community. If we wanted one in Lowndes County, all it would take would be for one of the two school systems (Lowndes or Valdosta) to approve one.

He suggested looking at the sources of funds for Families for Better Schools, which is backing the amendment. Top of the list is a Wal-Mart heir. (It’s Alice Walton. Dr. Davis deferred to Al Rowell for that information, and that’s also where I heard about Alice Walton. And as I discovered, the Walton Family Foundation put in much more than that last year.) He noted the bulk of the rest comes from for-profit school operators. (They include K12 Inc. of Virginia.)

He noted that the state of Georgia just passed this fiscal year the third largest budget in the history of Georgia, $19.1 billion. Yet the public schools have been cut $6.6 billion (apparently since 2002). And the Lowndes County school system lost nearly $8 million last year, and $43 million in the past 10 years. So he asked:

Continue reading →

Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people —Karen Noll

Received yesterday on K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36% -jsq

Keep in mind that this company is based in Virginia, so our tax dollars from say, South Georgia meant for our school teachers, administraters, supplies, and educating our students, would go to bolster the economy in Virginia and line the pockets of the very rich. Meanwhile we have to raise taxes to simply educate the students attending our public schools. This is clearly NOT a plan to ‘improve academic achievement’ as the preamble boldly lies.

The preamble is boldly inaccurate and completely biased. The wording added to the question on the ballot implies that the amendment would improve student achievement and parent involvement. My stars, what breathing individual doesn’t want those things.

Facts are that by some measures charter schools perform 3% worse than traditional public schools. We would hope that schools where parents have to sign a commitment of parent involvement would have superior parent involvement. Might I just add that students can be kicked out of charter schools and all students are educated in the Traditional Public School setting as per our Georgia constitution.

The ‘biased and inaccurate’ wording in the preamble to the charter schools question is not found in HB 1162, the law that allowed this question to be placed on the ballot. It is not in HB 797, the law thaw would be enacted should the amendment pass. NO the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents, which are the equivalent of ‘legislation for Dummies’ with a particular slant as you might imagine.

-Karen Noll

K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36%

Does your school superintendent get paid $5 million a year? Ronald J. Packard, CEO of K12 Inc., the second biggest donor to the pro-charter school amendment campaign, does. Is that where you want your tax dollars to go?

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Executive Profile, Ronald J. Packard CFA, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director, K12, Inc. K12 CEO Packard made $551,539 in salary in 2011, but was awarded other compensation totaling $5,002,933. Which is even richer than the approximately $3,266,387 total compensation private prison company CCA’s CEO Damon Hininger got in 2010, which, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, apparently only went up to 3,696,798 in 2011.

According to Emma Brown for the Washington Post 9 December 2011, K12 Inc. chief executive Ron Packard paid $5 million compensation package in 2011,

That’s nearly twice the $2.67 million Packard earned in 2010. It includes $551,000 in cash, $4.2 million in stock awards and about $290,000 in other compensation.

Packard’s pay reflects a new employment agreement negotiated in September 2010 and good until 2014. The company had $522 million in revenue in 2011, up nearly 36 percent percent from the year before.

“We determined that these awards were necessary and appropriate to retain Mr. Packard as our Chief Executive Officer and in recognition of Mr. Packard’s leadership and performance over the term of his employment with the Company,” the filing said.

Do we want our tax revenue going to retain K12 Inc.’s CEO? What if we retain our local schools instead? After all, it’s dubious that charter schools would be any better Continue reading →

Georgia Power inches towards more solar, trailing New Jersey

If you’re quick, you may be able to sell solar from your roof to Georgia Power. If the PSC approves a pending request. If you get in before that new quota gets filled. And if you’re a Georgia Power customer. The rest of us? Not until the 1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act is changed. Until then, Georgia will continue to lag way behind New Jersey in solar power.

210 MW is more than 50 MW but way less than 3,000 MW

Walter C. Jones wrote for the Augusta Chronicle today, Georgia Power plans to triple solar power use,

Georgia Power filed Wednesday seeking permission from state regulators to more than triple the amount of solar power it uses to generate electricity for its 2.4 million customers by swapping it for what was already planned from other renewable sources.

What “other renewable sources”?

The Georgia Power plan won’t affect rates because it is based on paying the solar providers what it would have paid the biomass provider, 13 cents per kilowatt hour, which is already figured into customer’s rates.

OK, that’s good, because it means biomass is well and truly dead in Georgia. But it also means Georgia Power isn’t very serious about solar, if all it’s doing is fiddling with accounting for the small amount of power biomass might have produced and not going for the real numbers solar can produce. OK, how many solar megawatts?

Continue reading →