Karen Noll spoke to the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday
about the charter school amendment,
saying it would implement taxation without representation
and would take more tax dollars from our public schools
to give twice as much money to special charter school students.
When you’re talking about my kids in the schools and you’re going to take their money and ship it to somebody else’s family and then there’s no accountability, that’s just unacceptable.
Here’s the video.
-jsq
So if Southern Company is a “great, big company” similar to Australia,
why did Australia just deploy a solar farm ten times the size of
the biggest one SO has in Georgia?
Back in May, Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning said:
From an energy standpoint, Southern Company is a little bit smaller, but similar to, the energy production profile of the nation of Australia. We are a great, big company from an energy production standpoint.
Meanwhile in Australia, Giles Parkinson wrote for Clean Technica 10 October 2012, Australia’s 1st Utility-Scale Solar Farm Now On!
At about 11am local time near the Western Australian town of Geraldton this morning, Australia’s first-utility scale solar farm was officially switched on.
It was a suitably sunny day (blighted by three million flies) and although just 10MW in size, and built courtesy of funding from the local government, a state-owned utility and by one of the wealthiest companies on the planet, it may presage a dramatic change in the way this country produces energy.
So what’s SO or Georgia Power’s biggest solar plant in Georgia? You remember, 1 MW in Upson.
OK, to be fair, that’s just Georgia Power. SO does have larger solar farms elsewhere, including
Now I know Georgia Power’s party line is that solar is only good in the U.S. southwest. But I don’t know how that explains Continue reading
Let's look at Georgia's non-unionized public schools. So far as I know, Georgia does not have teachers' unions. But there's still no reason to believe charter schools in Georgia would be any more magic than in Chicago.
According to CREDO at Stanford University,
which has done
state-by-state charter school studies,
they find
CHARTER SCHOOLS IN GEORGIA PERFORM
SIGNIFICANTLY BELOW THEIR TRADITIONAL
PUBLIC SCHOOL PEERS IN MATH:
No Difference Found in Reading Performance.
That's their press release.
Here's
the detailed study.
So if someone has a charter school idea that they think will perform
better than public schools,
they can talk to their local school board about that, and maybe
that local board will agree.
There's no need to authorize an unelected Atlanta board to force that charter
school on us.
Vote No on the charter school amendment in November.
-jsq
The Georgia “charter school” amendment isn’t really about charter schools (which any school district in Georgia can already approve, and many have): it’s about giving an unelected committee in Atlanta power to force us to pay extra local taxes to fund charter schools we don’t want. However, since the pushers of that amendment say it’s about charter schools, it’s worth reviewing that charter schools actually on average perform no better or even worse than traditional public schools. Let’s look at what the pushers hate most, unionized public schools in Chicago. and then let’s look at Georgia’s non-unionized public schools.
Ben Joravsky wrote for chichagoreader.com 3 October 2012, Today’s lesson: charters do not outperform unionized schools: Confronting the anti-teachers’ union myth with, you know, facts
But as I was saying, the foes of the teachers’ union declare that we should pay close attention to the all-important standardized test scores. So let’s take a look.
There are 541 elementary schools in Chicago. Based on the composite ISAT scores for 2011—the last full set available—none of the top ten are charters. None of the top 20, 30, or 40 either.
In fact, you’ve got to go to 41 to find a charter. Take a bow, CICS Irving Park!
Most of the 49 charters on the list are clustered near the great middle, alongside most of their unionized neighborhood schools.
The top scorers are public schools with unionized teachers who are members of the Chicago Teachers Union.
UNO is a charter school operator. Joravsky compares one of its schools side-by-side with a unionized public school.
Continue readingSo what is Georgia Power afraid of that made their CEO Paul Bowers double down on old-style baseload? Competition, that’s what! What could be more scary in the power-monopoly state of the 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act?
On one side, Georgia Power faces
GaSU and its 80 or 90 MW solar plant proposal.
Walter C. Jones wrote for OnlineAthens 24 September 2012,
Proposed solar company could stir up Georgia’s utility structure,
Continue readingA proposal from a start-up business promises to lower electricity rates by rebating profits to customers if given a chance to compete as Georgia Power Co.’s “mirror image.”
To proceed with its long-range plan of developing 2 gigawatts of solar power, the start-up, Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., wants to start by building an 80-megawatt “solar farm” near Milledgeville as soon as it gets a green light from the Georgia Public Service Commission. GaSU filed its request last week, and as of Monday, it’s still too fresh for public evaluation.
So radical is the proposal that spokespersons for Georgia Power and the Georgia Solar Energy Association said they still were evaluating it and could not comment.
Groups that normally advocate for customers also are staying quiet.
GaSU executives recognize such a big change won’t come easily.
Fewer speakers at the Regular Session than at the previous morning’s Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission. The longest item was a citizen wishing to be heard, who only spoke for 3 and a half minutes. Up until then, the meeting took five minutes, as the Chairman noted. And everything was adopted unanimously, with little or no discussion.
Here’s the agenda, annotated below with links to the videos and a few notes, and followed by a video playlist.
Call to Order
First the Chairman welcomed Leadership Lowndes.
Dell Lease Agreement for Sheriff’s Office Laptops —Aaron Kostyu
Agreement with Basic Life
Chairman Ashley Paulk noted it was 5:35, and then
Ken Klanicki spoke
for 3 and a half minutes, the longest item in the meeting,
after which
they adjourned.
Video Playlist
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 25 September 2012.
-jsq
Yesterday I asked But what does the joint resolution actually say? Karen Noll has supplied the answer, in the form of a PDF of the signed resolution, transcribed below. This thing makes the education paragraph in the Occupy Valdosta Mission Statement sound mild-mannered. We’ve already seen the state’s response. -jsq
Continue readingLOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
AND
VALDOSTA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION
JOINT RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF
QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION
Paul Bowers, CEO of Georgia Power, doubled down on baseload nuclear, coal, and natural gas for the next fifty years. What’s he scared of?
Nick Coltrain wrote for OnlineAthens yesterday, Renewable push not in the cards for Ga. Power,
“Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,” Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be 2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an intermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of the time.”
One time you can depend on it is hot summer days when everybody is
air conditioning, which is why
Austin Energy flipped in one year
from spouting such nonsense to deploying the most aggressive solar rooftop
rebate program in the country.
Austin Energy did the math and found those rebates would cost
about the same as a coal plant and would generate as much energy.
And when it is needed most, unlike the fossilized baseload grid,
which
left millions without power in the U.S. in June
and
hundreds of millions without power in India in July.
Bowers knows better than the nonsense he just spouted; as recently as November 2011 he told Georgia Trend,
Continue readingPushers of the charter school amendment must be desperate! Blurring the line between public officials and private citizens, state Attorney General Sam Olens wrote:
Local school boards do not have the legal authority to expend funds or other resources to advocate or oppose the ratification of a constitutional amendment by the voters. They may not do this directly or indirectly through associations to which they may belong….
As Jim Galloway wrote yesterday for the AJC in Sam Olens orders local school boards to stay out of charter school fight,
That means organizations like the Georgia School Boards Association, and perhaps, the Georgia School Superintendents Association, would be barred from speaking out against the proposed constitutional amendment.
And would that include organizations like PAGE, which produced the slides that a local middle school teacher used last week? What about that teacher, or Dr. Troy Davis, speaking a few weeks earlier, both on their own time?
Olens’ letter would apply to what the VDT said was in the VBOE and LCBOE joint resolution, at least the part about “The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state charter schools.”
But what does Olens mean, duly elected local school boards don’t have authority to express opinions about educational matters that would directly affect the people who elected them?
Why has Sam Olens suddenly gotten religion about this now, after he was silent last year when both VBOE and LCBOE adopted resolutions against the school “unification” referendum? Where was he when both boards of education hosted numerous forums opposing consolidation?
Will he next be telling the Valdosta City Council it can’t pass a resolution opposing a referendum? What exactly is the difference between that elected body and an elected school board as far as expressing such an opinion? And all of those resolutions were non-binding opinions.
Will Sam Olens next be telling the VDT it can’t editorialize against the charter school amendment?
How desperate are the pushers of the charter school amendment?
Continue readingThe Valdosta Board of Education, followed by the Lowndes County Board of Education, adopted a “Charter School Amendment Resolution” or a “Joint Resolution in Support of Quality Public Education”, depending on which ones minutes you go by. What does the resolution actually say?
Brittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT 11 September 2012, School boards to adopt resolution against charter school amendment.
“The Lowndes County and Valdosta City Boards of Education request that the Governor and State Legislators commit their support to adequately fund a first-class K-12 public education for students in Lowndes County and Valdosta City and across the state of Georgia,” the resolution states.
The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state charter schools.
Valdosta Board of Education did that at their 10 September 2012 meeting:
Continue reading