Tag Archives: unification

CUEE filed enough petitions for a referendum

Less than one percent of the registered voters in Valdosta have made the difference between CUEE’s school consolidation petition getting on the ballot and not.

According to the City of Valdosta’s website 19 August 2011: Continue reading →

There is more than one option —Sam Allen @ FVCS 7 July 2011

Sam Allen of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS) tells us what CUEE didn’t.
“You can read the billboards, you can look at the pretty brochures, but that’s all your going to get.”
So what haven’t we been told? Continue reading →

The end game is …. —Karen Noll

Received yesterday on “the qualified voters voting thereon in each separate school system proposed to be consolidated”. -jsq
Questions abound: Why is it that Lowndes County residents will not be voting on the most important issue to face their school system since its inception in 1950?

If I lived in the county I’d be mad that CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce chose to leave my vote out of such a very important decision.

Quick fact: Consolidation alone will not save money & Consolidation alone will not improve academic success, according to the Vinson Institute report commissioned by CUEE and the Chamber.

Further Query: Why would CUEE and the Chamber of Commerce spend $50 grand to collect the signatures for the petition causing the City of Valdosta to spend thousands of tax dollars (2 staff dedicated to task & 4 temps hired) to verify the signatures on the petition?

Continue reading →

A real education dialog @ LCDP 2 May 2011

The only real public dialog about unification or education that I’ve heard of was at the May 2011 Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP) meeting, organized by LCDP Chair Gretchen Quarterman. You can see it either of two ways:
  1. Through the LCDP 2 May 2011 LAKE blog topic, which has all the relevant posts, newest first.
  2. Through the YouTube video playlist. Each video has a link to the relevant blog post.


    School unification dialog at Lowndes County Democratic Party (LCDP)
    Videos by John S. Quarterman, Jim Parker, Gretchen Quarterman, 2 May 2011.

At that LCDP meeting I pointed out that the CUEE education committee was not scheduled to report back until after the proposed referendum vote, and nobody had any rebuttal.

-jsq

dialogue on consolidation was a forbidden zone —Barbara Stratton

Received yesterday on Videos of CUEE’s idea of a “public dialog”. -jsq
In their minds every name signed as attending is part of their consensus, which is why I never sign in. It is also why they keep trying to say Sam Allen is for consolidation even though he chairs the group against consolidation.
I went to the June & July CUEE meetings just to see what they were doing & to dialogue about consolidation. At both meetings dialogue on consolidation was a forbidden zone. I keep telling you their game plan is textbook UN Agenda 21. Debate is not allowed. They manipulate everything to create what they misname “consensus” which means per their numbers & statistics everyone who does not speak out against their agenda is for their aganda including anyone who never shows up at all. In their minds every name signed as attending is part of their consensus, which is why I never sign in. It is also why they keep trying to say Sam Allen is for consolidation even though he chairs the group against consolidation. They made sure they got photos of him at the July meeting to further their consensus game.

If you live in the city or the county & you want to hear real dialogue about consolidation

Continue reading →

a “public dialog” —Alex Jones

Received today on Three things to actually improve education. This CUEE supporter completely ignores all three things I recommended to improve education; I will respond in more detail in the next post. -jsq
I have actually attended several of the public meetings and listened to the discussions from the Education Planning Committee. I’m not sure if you realize this or not, but the committee consists of parents, concerned residents and educators from both school systems and VSU. The committee also has members who are supportive and opposed to school unification, and it includes both city and county residents. In fact, Sam Allen even attended and participated in the last meeting.

The objective of the Education Planning Committee is to

Continue reading →

Three things to actually improve education —John S. Quarterman

People ask me why I oppose CUEE. It’s because I’d rather actually improve education instead.

It seems to me the burden of proof is on the people proposing to make massive changes in the local education system. And CUEE has not provided any evidence for their position. Sam Allen of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS) pithily sums up CUEE:

“It’s not about the children. It’s about somebody’s ego.”
I don’t think the children should have to suffer for somebody’s ego.

CUEE’s unification push isn’t about education. It’s about a “unified platform” to attract industry. That alone is enough reason to oppose “unification”. It’s not about education!

As former Industrial Authority Chair Jerome Tucker has been heard to remark on numerous occassions, “nobody ever asked me how many school systems we had!” The only example in Georgia CUEE points to for this is the Kia plant that came to Troup County, Georgia. It’s funny how none of the locals seem to have mentioned any such connection in the numerous articles published about the Kia plant. Instead, the mayor of the town with the Kia plant complains that his town doesn’t have a high school. That’s right: he’s complaining that the school system is too consolidated! The only actual education between Kia and education in Troup County is with West Georgia Tech, the local technical college.

CUEE has finally cobbled together an education committee, but it won’t even report back before the proposed ballot referendum vote. CUEE has no plan to improve education.

If CUEE actually did want to help the disadvantaged in the Valdosta City schools, Continue reading →

Why is CUEE so interested? —Karen Noll

Received today on We’re here to save our schools. -jsq
To date CUEE has lead the discussion and they have no role in making the solutions happen if consolidation should go through. CUEE consists of folks very minimally involved in the city schools at this time. Why is this group so ‘interested in Valdosta City Schools’? Until this issue is clarified CUEE’s motives will forever be questioned.

At the same time, if this issue is on the ballot we (parents, teachers, BOEs…)must begin the true discussion of facts and become informed on the issue that we may be called to vote on in November. So, here we are.

CUEE has spent thousands (more than 100 grand) to get this Continue reading →

Bright flight visualized

Lanier County gained more than 30% in children under 18. Lanier looks like the exurbs around Atlanta, except it’s even more striking. Also visible on the map is Hamilton, County, Tennessee, home of Chattanooga, CUEE’s favorite example of school unification: Hamilton County showed a loss of children while just across the state line Catoosa County, Georgia gained 15-30%. If school unification doesn’t cause bright flight, it doesn’t seem to stop it.

Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg wrote in USA Today 3 June 2011, Census reveals plummeting U.S. birthrates

Because families with children tend to live near each other,

the result is an increasingly patchy landscape of communities teeming with kids, and others with very few.

…

Even in counties where the percentage of children grew, only 49 gained more than 1 percentage point — many of them suburbs on the outer edge of metropolitan areas such as Forsyth, Whitfield and Newton outside Atlanta and Cabarrus and Union outside Charlotte.

So that makes Lanier County one of only 49 Continue reading →

“Maintain our focus on educating children” —Jeana Beeland

Leigh Touchton mentioned that
I had heard that some Board members were elected with intention to support consolidation but that I hadn’t heard anything about that from any of them when they were running.
They didn’t say much about it when they were running, either. Back in 2009, the only one who got elected who was asked about this issue, Jeana Bealand, pretty much dodged the question at AAUW’s Lowndes County Political Forum on 15 September 2009.

This was the forum that was the day after the VBOE meeting that drew 400 people because of Superintendent Cason’s decision about President Obama’s speech. Very few of those 400 people showed up at the forum to ask questions of their likely school board members. Maybe more people should take an interest in who is going to represent them on their school board.

Here’s the video:


Jeana Beeland answers a question about school system consolidation
Lowndes County Political Forum, AAUW, 15 Sep 2009
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq