showed it to us all, and could answer questions,
all demonstrating that school consolidation would not improve education,
would increase expenses and taxes, and far from bringing in more industry
would probably drive some away by reducing the quality of education.
Tuesday evening, going beyond
the research it had already published,
Dr. Troy Davis took CUEE’s own figures for how much more consolidation would
require to be spent per each Valdosta City school student,
and demonstrated that not only would that
require raising taxes for both
Valdosta and Lowndes County residents to near the state-capped maximum
of 21 mils, but even then there is no way enough tax revenue would be
generated to pay for all the things CUEE proposes to do after consolidation,
and probably not even enough taxes to continue employing all the teachers
currently employed by the two school systems.
Oh, plus consolidation would lose state and federal grant money by
increasing the composite school system size, so the local taxpayers
would have to make up that slack, too.
Jerome Tucker, on fire as a cheerleader, spelled out his life-long Continue reading