Tag Archives: Education

Health and safety through bicycles —Roy Taylor @ VCC 10 Nov 2011

Roy Taylor spoke first in Citizens to Be Heard at Thursday’s Valdosta City Council meeting:
We need bicycle paths in this community, very very badly. I travel to Europe… and they have bicycle paths all over, and it helps our children as they are growing up. It helps us as adults…. It helps all of us…. It is good for our children, our community.

I want you to think about the health care cost that those bicycles can save. In the health care we have to pay, the hospitalization, the medical costs, if we keep our bodies in good shape.

You have a grant in here now of about $75,000 to $100,000 … school money. I can think of no finer way for those children than to walk the sidewalk and to ride a bicycle.

That’s right: Roy Taylor spoke in favor of a grant, and for bicycles. Bicyclers listened from the back before some of them spoke: Continue reading →

People say we don’t talk —Sam Allen 8 Nov 2011

Sam Allen demonstrates Valdosta City and Lowndes County School Boards cooperate, right there at the Board of Elections last night. As he said, a 4 to 1 victory against 10 to 1 financial odds proves grassroots organizing works.
It’s OK, to be beat. But to be beat by a one-armed man….

Here’s the video:


People say we don’t talk —Sam Allen 8 Nov 2011
Victory Celebration,
Vote No for Consolidation, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 Nov 2011.
Videos by George Boston Rhynes for K.V.C.I., the bostongbr on YouTube.

-jsq

This is what democracy looks like at the Chamber @ Occupy Valdosta 14 October 2011

A gentle reminder to the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce of what just happened at the polls yesterday.

Myrna Ballard:

I understand that you have something that you’d like to say?

Occupy Valdosta:

This is what democracy looks like!

Here’s the video:


This is what democracy looks like at the Chamber @ Occupy Valdosta 14 October 2011
We are the 99%,
Marching to Occupy Valdosta, Occupy Valdosta,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 14 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

That’s Sam Allen, president of FVCS holding the front Vote No sign; Vote No for the Children is holding another one. Greg Gullberg of WCTV is standing in front of Myrna Ballard, Jade Bulecza of WALB has a camera in the lower right, David Rodock of the VDT is standing behind Myrna Ballard in the video, Desiree Thompson of the VSU Spectator was there, Valdosta Today was there, George Boston Rhynes of K.V.C.I. and bostongbr on YouTube was there, and LAKE was there.

-jsq

The grass roots effort, outspent by a 10 to 1 margin, defeat the CUEE effort by 4 to 1! —Jim Parker

Received today on School Consolidation Lost by a Landslide with 14 of 16 precincts reporting. -jsq
Hip! Hip! Hooray!

Absolutely amazing! The grass roots effort, outspent by a 10 to 1 margin, defeat the CUEE effort by 4 to 1! That’s what it’s all about! This is what democracy looks like!

Thanks to all the put in the time and effort and showed up at the polls. Now I hope we can have a serious discussion about the education of our children in Valdosta. Y’all in the county can, too.

-Jim Parker

And I feel like there’s somebody meddling in their affairs; I wish they wouldn’t have. —Ashley Paulk @ LCC 7 November 2011

As previously noted, Chairman Ashley Paulk last night told Matt Portwood he didn’t think the Lowndes County Commission should be meddling in school affairs. Here’s the part the VDT didn’t quote:
And I feel like there’s somebody meddling in their affairs; I wish they wouldn’t have.
That’s pretty interesting considering that Brittany D. McClure reported for the VDT 4 November 2011 that FVCS makes campaign contributions public:
Ashley Paulk, Lowndes County Commission chairman contributed $200
So it’s not like the public doesn’t already know Ashley Paulk’s opinion on this subject, and it seems he was reminding us of it: he contributed money to FVCS, a group actively lobbying to prevent the school consolidation promoted by CUEE.

Chairman Paulk also noted:

We do have county residents who live in the city.
Seems like he’s confusing two excuses for the Commissioners not speaking about school consolidation: Continue reading →

CUEE Campaign Disclosure Report Completed

Received yesterday.
From: Sam Allen
Date: November 6, 2011 5:26:15 PM EST
Subject: CUEE Campaign Disclosure Report Completed

Friends,
Attached is a copy of the CUEE Disclosure Report. How many children could this have help!!!!! How many teachers and support staff could we have saved? Are we in still in a recession?

Thanks,
Sam Allen
—
Samuel Allen, Superintendent Emeritus

We don’t need consolidation to change anything that needs to be changed —Barbara Stratton

Received today on Tracking can help all distributions of students —new research” of the blog “On the LAKE Front. -jsq
I’m definitely against consolidation, but I don’t like tracking either. When I was self employed breeding & training race horses in the 80’s I worked part time as a substitute teacher. The county system used a form of tracking that grouped students into slow, medium & fast learners. My children were in the top group so it worked well for them. However, I did not like the system because I observed a lot of students who lost the desire to try because they were classified in the slow learner group.

I finished the last month for one 7th grade class & had to sit in on the end of year decisions to pass or fail. One student was

Continue reading →

Tracking can help all distributions of students —new research

It turns out tracking students can help all students if done properly. CUEE’s invited speaker Terry Jenkins co-authored a paper back in 1997 about Detracking Troup County: Providing an Exemplary Curriculum for All Students. He appeared to be saying de-tracking was an advantge of school consolidation. Back then tracking was apparently considered a bad thing. Recent research shows that actually tracking students can help all levels of students. So yet another supposed reason or benefit of consolidation turns out not to be true.

Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer wrote for American Economic Review, 101(5): 1739–74, DOI:10.1257/aer.101.5.1739, Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya

To the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking will help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may benefit if tracking allows teachers to better tailor their instruction level. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from tracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the distribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects and test its implications in a randomized tracking experiment conducted with 121 primary schools in Kenya. While the direct effect of high-achieving peers is positive, tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly by allowing teachers to teach to their level. (JEL I21, J45, O15)
The first sentence is the standard “diversity” argument that CUEE keeps making. The authors state it so as to poing out that their study finds that it’s far from the whole story.

I find this part especially interesting: Continue reading →

How about as a first step the Chamber pledge… —Jim Parker

Received today on Why the Chamber Supports Unification. -jsq
So true, John. There was no meat in the whole letter. The last line sums it up, “We BELIEVE…” yada, yada, yada. Faith based thinking might fly in religious institutions, but in the education of our children, we have a pretty good handle on what is needed. Deferring to those trained and with years of experience in the education of our children, who have brought countless facts to the discussion, none of which the Chamber can or has bothered to refute, I will go along with both Boards of Education and vote NO to consolidation.

I did note that Mr Gooding offered to “combine our resources and our efforts and work together as a community to transform two average school systems…” Since he used the first person plural “our,”

Continue reading →

Jobs, Title VI, and education —George Boston Rhynes @ VBOE 25 October 2011

George Rhynes tied together parents, jobs, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and local education at the VBOE 25 October 2011 open forum. His question:
If we are concerned about our children really getting an education, better be concerned about equal employment and getting federal funds, so these parents get their equal share of the jobs, in the community…. I’m talking about the qualified parents that apply for jobs in this area and some of you know they don’t get them.
[applause]

Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading →