On the LAKE Front

Most corrupt state sells public education to Waltons

And it wasn't even close: 2,152,091 to 1,526,959 (58.50% to 41.50%). Lowndes County went for the Atlanta-power-grab "charter school" amendment 18,606 to 17,619 (51.36% to 48.64%). The voters of Georgia just sold their children's educational birthright for a mess of slick brochures.

The other ALEC amendment, on multi-year contracts, passed by an even wider margin: 2,241,621 to 1,275,809 (63.73% to 36.27%). Lowndes went for it 20,205 to 14,414 (58.36% to 41.64%).

Apparently Georgia voters will vote for any old thing that's submitted to them as a constitutional amendment.

Congratulations, ALEC and Wal-Mart! You've demonstrated money talks and slick brochures sell. This was even better for you than ALEC's so-called anti-immigration law which the legislature passed and that actually devastates Georgia agriculture for the profit of private prison company CCA. This time you got the people of Georgia to vote directly against their own best interests to the benefit of school privatizing corporations in Virginia and Michigan!

Boo Georgia voters. You've just given the most corrupt legislature in the country the ability to commit you the taxpayers to contracts for decades. And you've just traded your children's educational birthright for a mess of slick paper.

-jsq

Propaganda for charter school amendment 1 paid for by out-of-state donors

Who can afford to pay for these two glossy mailers pushing the charter school amendment? Who are GeorgiaHope2012.org and BrighterGeorgia.org, anyway? Recipients of millions from Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation to push a bill sponsored in the statehouse by ALEC's "our state legislators". Will we believe Alice Walton and ALEC, or will we believe our Georgia educators, who overwhelmingly oppose Amendment 1?

GeorgiaHope2012.org's mailer (the big one) says in really light grey type:

Paid for by Families for Better Public Schools Edward Lindsey Chairman

We've heard of them before. They raised $486,750 by September, about 96% from outside Georgia, including Alice Walton ($250,000), K12 Inc. of Virginia ($100,000), Charter Schools USA of Florida ($50,000), J.C. Huizenga and National Heritage Academies Inc. of Michigan ($25,000 each). Their spokesman Bert Brantley (who went to Lowndes County public schools) claims the bogus preamble to the charter school amendment, the one that uses ALEC Family Trigger jargon and asserts things that just aren't in either of the authorizing bills; he claims that preamble is "factual". His previous PR campaign was pushing the T-SPLOST transportation tax that failed by a landslide.

Families for Better Public Schools is still playing the charter school bait and switch in their mailer by pretending Amendment 1 is needed for charter schools:

EVERY CHILD DESERVES A CHANCE! VOTE YES! for Public Charter Schools on November 6^th.

We don't need this amendment to create charter schools. Any local school board can already do that.

BrighterGeorgia.org's mailer (the smaller one) says in grey on grey type:

Paid for by Georgia Charter Schools Association

GCSA got $700,000 from the Walton Family Foundation last year, and is a member of

Two more charter school polls: Amendment 1 still losing support

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,

Support plummeting for charter school amendment

Support 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,

Vote No on Amendment 2 —Charlie in Peach Pundit

Let's cut to the chase on what Charlie wrote for Peach Pundit 18 Oct 2012:

Georgia needs significant ethics reforms. There needs to be greater transparency for those who do business with the state. Trust must be restored. Good governance must be demonstrated.

Paying slightly higher rates for a few more years is a small price to pay to avoid giving away 20 year favors to today's patronage class. Vote no on this amendment. That is the best way to save Georgians money.

Georgia is the worst state for legislative corruption. Do we want those legislators committing us financially for 10 or 20 years? If knowing it's an ALEC bill wasn't enough for you, maybe this will be. Vote No on amendment 2.

-jsq

ALEC's "our state legislators" behind multi-year GA constitutional amendment referendum

Look who sponsored Georgia Senate Resolution 1231 which put the second referendum question on the ballot! Two of ALEC's "our state legislators", Senators Ronnie Chance of the 16th, and Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of the 21st, are among the sponsors (Chance is the first sponsor).

SourceWatch's ALEC Exposed found Ronnie Chance on ALEC's International Relations Task Force. Rogers himself told CBS News how much he values ALEC, Who is ALEC? By Mark Strassmann and Phil Hirschkorn 30 June 2012. Rogers spelled out the same thing ALEC itself told me: it considers people like Chance and Rogers "our state legislators". "Our" as in belonging to ALEC, not representing you the voters and taxpayers.

Guess who sponsored the bill that put the charter school amendment on the ballot, HB 1162 in its Senate form? Chip Rogers. And who sponsored the companion bill that would suck money out of public schools and give more per pupil to charter schools, using our local tax dollars, HB 797 in the Senate? Chip Rogers. And House sponsors Jan Jones (R 46th) and Edward Lindsey (R 54th) of both bills are also ALEC's "our state legislators".

I don't always agree with Adam Smith, but when I do, I quote The Wealth of Nations from 1776:

Wall Street's next big thing: privatizing public education

What's really behind the charter school amendment referendum? Corporate greed.

Jeff Faux wrote for AlterNet 15 October 2012, Education Profiteering: Wall Street's Next Big Thing? Wall Street's involvement in the charter school movement is presented as an act of philanthropy, but it's really about greed. He reviews some of the evidence that charter schools don't improve education, especially when forced on states. Then he gets into why so much money is flowing into charter schools anyway.

Education privatization would not, per se, create a net new stimulus for the economy. But by diverting large existing flows of money from the public to the private sector it would create new profit-making ventures that could be capitalized and transformed into stocks, derivatives and leveraged securities. The pot has been sweetened by a 39 percent federal tax credit for financing charter school construction that can double an investor's return in seven years. The prospect of new speculative opportunities could well recharge the animal spirits upon which Wall Street depends.

Some "liberal" privatization promoters claim that charter schools should not be considered private. But that's an argument the management companies that run the schools only use when they are asking for more government funding. At the same time they argue in courts and to legislatures that as private enterprises they should not be subject to government audits, labor laws and other restrictions.

These companies rent, buy, and sell buildings; make contracts for consulting, accounting and legal services, food concessions, and transportation; and pay their managers far more than public school principals earn. In cases where city governments have given land to charter schools, for profit real estate companies have ended up owning the subsidized land and buildings. In states where charter schools are required to be nonprofit, profit-making companies can still set them up and then organize a board of neighborhood residents who will give them the right to manage the school with little or no interference.

In 2008 Dennis Bakke, CEO of Imagine Schools, a private company that managed 71 schools in eleven states, sent an email to the firm's senior staff. It reminded his managers not to give school boards the "misconception" that they were "responsible for making decisions about budget matters, school policies, hiring of the principal, and dozens of other matters." The memo suggested that the community board members be required to sign undated letters of resignation. "It is our school, our money, and our risk," he wrote, "not theirs."

Yet in Georgia it's our tax money they want to use to fund those "public" private charter schools. That's the "large existing flows of money" they want to divert into their profiteering pockets. No wonder ALEC is so big into charter schools! And look who else:

Score high on ALEC policy, score low on education

 

According to ALEC's own website, states that score high on ALEC's education policies score low on education. Remember, ALEC is behind the Georgia charter school amendment on the November ballot. If you didn't believe Stanford Credo's study that showed adding a charter school authorizer, as that amendment would do, reduces academic learning, how about ALEC's own data?

Bill Simon write for The Political Vine today, Charter Schools and ALEC: The Facts ALEC Doesn't Want You To Know,

If you take the state performance rankings and match them up to each state's education policy rankings, you come-up with an entirely different picture of how little (if any at all) a state's degree of conservative education “policy” translates into actual education performance.

I did this ( PDF copy available here) and this is what the 2012 Top 10 states in Performance looks like, and their corresponding Policy ranks:

2012 Performance/Policy Rank

1. Massachusetts / B-
2. Vermont / D+
3. New Jersey / B-
4. Colorado / B
5. Pennsylvania / C+
6. Rhode Island / C
7. North Carolina / C
8. Kansas / C-
9. New Hampshire / C+
10. New York / C-

The numbers are ALEC's performance rankings, and the letters are ALEC's policy grades.

Video Playlist @ LCC 2012-10-09

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.

1. Call to Order
2. Invocation
3. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
4. Minutes for Approval
   1. Work Session — September 24, 2012
   2. Regular Session — September 25, 2012
5. 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
6. For Consideration
   1. Bevel Creek Lift Station Pump Repair
   2. Alapaha Waterline size Increase
   3. Beer License — Naylor's Pantry — 8777 E. Hwy 135
   4. Refunding Revenue Bonds
   5. Solid Waste Management Request for Proposal
7. Reports
   1. Community Planning Month Proclamation
      Plus recognition of two planners from Moody AFB.
   2. Employee Health Fair
   Chairman Ashley Paulk interjected not on the agenda
   • 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.
8. 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

 

Videos: Water, water, water, waste! and planning? @ LCC 2012-10-08

The big news was the waste disposal railroad, but the Lowndes County Commission also heard about three water issues (one a rezoning), plus a beer license, revenue bonds, community planning month, and a health fair at its Work Session this morning.

Here's the agenda, with links to the videos and a few notes, or links to separate posts.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2^nd Floor