Two more polls about the charter school amendment show conflicting results, but even the most optimistic still shows decreased support since September. Opponents of the Amendment 1 power grab are winning.
Wayne Washington wrote for the AJC 12 October 2012, Poll shows tight race for charter schools amendment,
Continue readingSupport for the charter school amendment, previously falling, is now dropping like a rock. Saba Long wrote the Saporta Report 15 October 2012, Latest polls show the Charter School Amendment vote will be close, but the actual poll results, when compared to previous polls, including those before T-SPLOST lost by a landslide, say Amendment 1 is going down in flames.
That poll conducted 4 and 5 October showed 34.2% saying they would definitely vote no and 18.06% saying probably no. That’s 52.26% No, which is far higher than 26.2% only a month before.
The pollsters, HEG-GPS, say, Re: October 4-5 Charter School Amendment Survey, 15.35% responded Probably Yes and only 9.30% said Definitely Yes. That’s 24.62% Yes, far down from the 48.3% Yes of a month before.
Yet only 23.12% responded Unsure, which is hardly changed from 25.5% a month before. It sure looks to me like this is not just undecideds switching to No. It looks like a lot of formerly Yes votes are switching to No.
It looks even worse compared to T-SPLOST. Two weeks before the 31 July Primary election, Continue reading
Valdosta #3! Followed by Albany #4! In poorest cities in the country. What can we do about that?
Michael B. Sauter, Alexander E.M. Hess and Samuel Weigley, 24/7 Wall St., wrote for NBC News 14 October 2012, America’s richest and poorest cities,
3. Valdosta, Ga.
- Median household income: $32,446
- Population: 140,599 (87th lowest)
- Unemployment rate: 9.2 percent(140th highest)
- Percent households below poverty line: 27.6 percent (ninth highest)
From 2007 to 2011, the unemployment rate in Valdosta increased by 130 percent, from 4 percent of workers to 9.2 percent. The number of employed workers declined by more than 6,000 during that time. Those jobs remaining often pay a lower salary. Last year, nearly 17 percent of the work force was employed in the generally low-paying retail industry, the sixth highest percentage of all metro areas. In 2007, just 11.3 percent of the labor force worked in retail. Valdosta, however, has an improving and active housing market. Home prices rose nearly 12 percent between 2007 and 2011. Despite these positives, 14.4 percent of housing units were vacant last year, higher than the national vacancy rate of 13.1 percent. Also, 15.3 percent of homes were worth less than $50,000 versus 8.8 percent nationwide.
The study is actually for “U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs” and this population is not just for Valdosta, it’s for the Valdosta MSA, which includes Brooks, Echols, Lanier, and Lowndes Counties.
Look who’s next on the list:
Continue reading
“I think people would be more interested in government if they could see it going on,”
said
Gretchen Quarterman,
candidate for Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission,
on the Chris Beckham drive-time radio show
11 October 2012,
105.9, WVGA.
Here’s
video of that interview,
followed by some excerpts.
A few excerpts:
Continue readingOur county government does a lot of stuff really great… but one of the things they don’t do very well don’t advertise themselves; not very transparent; they don’t say what a great job they’re doing; so I thought we could improve in that area.
The County Commission a couple of years ago had two different studies commissioned about growth and planning, and one of them was…
growth close to existing services. The county already has an urban service area, like how far the water line goes, how far the sewer line goes. And that growth should be infilled, and not expand outside of that area, because that saves resources in terms of how far you have to send the sheriff, how far the school bus has to go. And they also gave an average house price, what it costs in terms of property taxes to support the services that are sent to them, to a development. So I would say close in to existing services is the way to go.
We need to actively seek out manufacturing jobs,
Received today on Georgia charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. -jsq
The Stanford study, Multiple Choice: Charter school performance in 16 states (p. 4), also found that multiple authorizers:
States that empower multiple entities to act as charter school authorizers realize significantly lower growth in academic learning in their students, on the order of -.08 standard deviations.
Currently we have the local boards of education that authorize charter schools at a very high rate, 94%. If the charter is not approved by the local board then they can appeal to the Dept of Ed. For approval. So, by adding another authorizer in the form of the UNCONSTITUTIONAL charter school commission you simply reduce the academic learning of the students! This is not about education this amendment is about the money earned by some to keep power! Our constitution states that we have an obligation to provide free quality education to all Georgians. We have no obligation to line the pockets of the rich with our tax dollars!
-Karen Noll
The big item at Tuesday’s Lowndes County Commission Regular Session
was, same as
at Monday’s Work Session,
the waste management railroad,
terminating in a decision.
Other topics included citizen Karen Noll speaking
against the charter school amendment.
Here’s the agenda with links to the videos and a few notes, or links to separate posts. Apologies for the poor sound on the first videos; we didn’t have the usual camera. Of course, if the Commission did its own videoing and posting, that problem would be unlikely to occur.
Call to Order
- Invocation
- Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
- Minutes for Approval
- Work Session — September 24, 2012
- Regular Session — September 25, 2012
Public Hearing — REZ-2012-15 Glenn O’Neal, Pecan Plantation Rd. & US Hwy 84 W E-A to C-H, County Water & Septic, ~4.5 acres
- For Consideration
- Bevel Creek Lift Station Pump Repair
- Alapaha Waterline size Increase
- Beer License — Naylor’s Pantry — 8777 E. Hwy 135
- Refunding Revenue Bonds
- Solid Waste Management Request for Proposal
- Reports
Chairman Ashley Paulk interjected not on the agenda
Community Planning Month Proclamation
Plus recognition of two planners from Moody AFB.- Employee Health Fair
some comments about recently deceased former VSU president Hugh C. Bailey,
- and noted the fire chief had a new fire truck, which was parked outside.
- Citizens Wishing to be Heard Please State Name And Address
Karen Noll spoke against the charter school amendment, saying it would implement taxation without representation Karen Noll @ LCC 2012-10-09 and would take more tax dollars from our public schools to give twice as much money to special charter school students.
- Ken Klanicki never actually even approached the podium. After being asked by the chairman to come to the podium or leave the room, he wandered to the back of the room and was escorted out by a deputy sheriff. He called me by name as he left, but I have no idea what he was trying to accomplish. He called me later, but when I asked him that, he had no explanation.
Here’s a video playlist. It shifts from the first camera (good video, poor sound) to the second camera (video with no closeups, good sound) in the middle, when I arrived with the second camera. The rest of the first camera videos are tacked onto the end. Next time we’ll attempt to have the good camera.
Video Playlist
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 9 October 2012.
-jsq
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
Tuesday the Lowndes County Commission voted to abolish the current rural waste collection centers and to contract with Veolia for waste pickup like in urban areas. This decision on an essentially rural matter was made by three urban Commissioners without any public hearing on their current RFP.
Before deciding, County Manager Joe Pritchard gave the history of the county's waste management railroad. A curiously redacted history.
As y'all know, in FY 04 and 05, operating costs of the solid waste program was approximately $1.1 million increasing at a rate of approximately 10% a year. As a result the at-that-time recently passed service delivery […] act of General Assembly, the county and the cities of Lowndes County were forced to come to an agreement on the delivery of the vasrious services. As a result of that, solid waste came to be funded strictly on a user fee basis.
I'm guessing he's referring to HB 489, the Local government service delivery strategy agreement of 1997. As we learned from Richard Raines Monday, it's not clear HB 489 precluded a special tax district for waste disposal similar to the special tax lighting districts the county often sets up for streetlights in subdivisions. I've seen no indication the county ever seriously looked into that.
In April and May of 2008 the county advertised and conducted a series of eight public meetings in which we were asked by Commission to gather input from the public regarding the various options that were available. During those meetings it was obvious that there was not one clear option that was chosen by the public.
Obvious to whom? For that matter, 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 reading