On the LAKE Front

A rezoning, wastewater pump repair, solid waste RFP, and community planning month @ LCC 2012-10-08

A rezoning for well and septic, Bevel Creek is back with a lift station pump repair, and something about an Alapaha waterline: water, water, water. Plus a beer license, refunding revenue bonds, and the long-awaited waste management RFP. And an employee health fair, whatever that is, and apparently this is community planning month. All that at the Lowndes County Commission, Monday morning and Tuesday evening.

Here's the agenda.

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

GA State attorney general tries to order private citizens not to oppose charter school amendment

Pushers of the charter school amendment must be desperate! Blurring the line between public officials and private citizens, state Attorney General Sam Olens wrote:

Local school boards do not have the legal authority to expend funds or other resources to advocate or oppose the ratification of a constitutional amendment by the voters. They may not do this directly or indirectly through associations to which they may belong....

As Jim Galloway wrote yesterday for the AJC in Sam Olens orders local school boards to stay out of charter school fight,

That means organizations like the Georgia School Boards Association, and perhaps, the Georgia School Superintendents Association, would be barred from speaking out against the proposed constitutional amendment.

And would that include organizations like PAGE, which produced the slides that a local middle school teacher used last week? What about that teacher, or Dr. Troy Davis, speaking a few weeks earlier, both on their own time?

Olens' letter would apply to what the VDT said was in the VBOE and LCBOE joint resolution, at least the part about "The resolution explicitly states that the boards are asking voters to not support the Constitutional Amendment relative to state charter schools."

But what does Olens mean, duly elected local school boards don't have authority to express opinions about educational matters that would directly affect the people who elected them?

Why has Sam Olens suddenly gotten religion about this now, after he was silent last year when both VBOE and LCBOE adopted resolutions against the school "unification" referendum? Where was he when both boards of education hosted numerous forums opposing consolidation?

Will he next be telling the Valdosta City Council it can't pass a resolution opposing a referendum? What exactly is the difference between that elected body and an elected school board as far as expressing such an opinion? And all of those resolutions were non-binding opinions.

Will Sam Olens next be telling the VDT it can't editorialize against the charter school amendment?

How desperate are the pushers of the charter school amendment?

Charter school referendum preamble is Parent Trigger jargon

 

A pressure group for privatizing schools is the origin of the jargon in the charter school referendum on the November Georgia ballot. And yes, it's tied to ALEC.

In Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people, Karen Noll asserted "...the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents...." The preamble to the charter school amendment on the November ballot reads:

Provides for improving student achievement and parental involvement through more public charter school options.

Where else is that wording found? Combinations of the three phrases "student achievement", "parental involvement", and "charter school" actually are not very common, according to google. But the Parent Trigger wrote in Empowering Parents,

Policy initiatives that empower parents are likely to increase parental involvement and satisfaction and raise student achievement by inviting parents into the process.

What process?

The designers of the California Parent Trigger made a grave mistake by leaving tepid reform modules in the bill and allowing districts to override the parents' reform choice.

The Georgia constitutional amendment wouldn't leave school districts any ability to decide anything.

What would the parents' reform choice be?

Democrats and Tea Party: both against charter school amendment

In the same month, both the Lowndes County Democratic Party and the Valdosta Tea Party had speakers explaining how bad the charter school amendment is. Neither group took a vote, but it seemed pretty clear most of the attendees at both meetings were against that referendum on the November ballot, and mostly for the same reason: nobody wants an unelected state committee taking away local control and local tax revenue. Parental choice is one thing, and charter schools are another, but nobody seemed to like Atlanta taking away local control.

As the PAGE slides say,

This isn't a Democrat vs. Republican debate. Legislators voted across party lines to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot. Republican and Democrat voters must defeat it together.

You can watch for yourself. Here are the two presentations:

• 10 September 2012: The charter school amendment is about control —Dr. Troy Davis
• 27 September 2012: A parallel state school system that we have no control over. —Christie Davis

If you don't want Atlanta taking away our educational control and local tax dollars, vote No on the charter school amendment in November.

-jsq

The charter school amendment is about control —Dr. Troy Davis @ LCDP 2012-09-10

Lowndes County Schools Assistant Superintendent Troy Davis gave his personal opinion: "it's about control". The charter school amendment on the November ballot is not about charter schools, which any community in the state can create now. It's about control by the state of local schools and resources.

Dr. Davis pointed out Georgia already has 350 charter schools, up from 160 three years ago. All but 19 were established and agreed upon by local communities. There's a successful one in Berrien County, established by the Berrien County school board. The process to create more is in place in every community. If we wanted one in Lowndes County, all it would take would be for one of the two school systems (Lowndes or Valdosta) to approve one.

He suggested looking at the sources of funds for Families for Better Schools, which is backing the amendment. Top of the list is a Wal-Mart heir. (It's Alice Walton. Dr. Davis deferred to Al Rowell for that information, and that's also where I heard about Alice Walton. And as I discovered, the Walton Family Foundation put in much more than that last year.) He noted the bulk of the rest comes from for-profit school operators. (They include K12 Inc. of Virginia.)

He noted that the state of Georgia just passed this fiscal year the third largest budget in the history of Georgia, $19.1 billion. Yet the public schools have been cut $6.6 billion (apparently since 2002). And the Lowndes County school system lost nearly $8 million last year, and $43 million in the past 10 years. So he asked:

Our south Georgia school tax dollars would go to Virginia rich people —Karen Noll

Received yesterday on K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36% -jsq

Keep in mind that this company is based in Virginia, so our tax dollars from say, South Georgia meant for our school teachers, administraters, supplies, and educating our students, would go to bolster the economy in Virginia and line the pockets of the very rich. Meanwhile we have to raise taxes to simply educate the students attending our public schools. This is clearly NOT a plan to 'improve academic achievement' as the preamble boldly lies.

The preamble is boldly inaccurate and completely biased. The wording added to the question on the ballot implies that the amendment would improve student achievement and parent involvement. My stars, what breathing individual doesn't want those things.

Facts are that by some measures charter schools perform 3% worse than traditional public schools. We would hope that schools where parents have to sign a commitment of parent involvement would have superior parent involvement. Might I just add that students can be kicked out of charter schools and all students are educated in the Traditional Public School setting as per our Georgia constitution.

The 'biased and inaccurate' wording in the preamble to the charter schools question is not found in HB 1162, the law that allowed this question to be placed on the ballot. It is not in HB 797, the law thaw would be enacted should the amendment pass. NO the wording that is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents, which are the equivalent of 'legislation for Dummies' with a particular slant as you might imagine.

-Karen Noll

Bill Moyers on ALEC

Bill Moyers takes on ALEC.

Posted yesterday On Bill Moyers' website, ‘United States of ALEC’ Video Previews

This week, Moyers & Company (check local listings) presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

He said more on Huffington Post Wednesday,

K12 CEO Packard: $5M in 2011, up 36%

Does your school superintendent get paid $5 million a year? Ronald J. Packard, CEO of K12 Inc., the second biggest donor to the pro-charter school amendment campaign, does. Is that where you want your tax dollars to go?

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Executive Profile, Ronald J. Packard CFA, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director, K12, Inc. K12 CEO Packard made $551,539 in salary in 2011, but was awarded other compensation totaling $5,002,933. Which is even richer than the approximately $3,266,387 total compensation private prison company CCA's CEO Damon Hininger got in 2010, which, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, apparently only went up to 3,696,798 in 2011.

According to Emma Brown for the Washington Post 9 December 2011, K12 Inc. chief executive Ron Packard paid $5 million compensation package in 2011,

That's nearly twice the $2.67 million Packard earned in 2010. It includes $551,000 in cash, $4.2 million in stock awards and about $290,000 in other compensation.

Packard's pay reflects a new employment agreement negotiated in September 2010 and good until 2014. The company had $522 million in revenue in 2011, up nearly 36 percent percent from the year before.

“We determined that these awards were necessary and appropriate to retain Mr. Packard as our Chief Executive Officer and in recognition of Mr. Packard's leadership and performance over the term of his employment with the Company,” the filing said.

Do we want our tax revenue going to retain K12 Inc.'s CEO? What if we retain our local schools instead? After all, it's dubious that charter schools would be any better

Walton Family Foundation granted $1.05 million towards GA charter schools in 2011

The total amount of Walton family affiliate money backing the Georgia charter school referendum is far larger than Alice Walton's $250,000.

In the Walton Family Foundation's list of 2011 Education Reform Grants, there are two Georgia organizations:

Georgia Charter Schools Association Inc.	700,000
Georgia Family Education and Research Council, Inc.	350,000

GCSA has made the news quite a bit lately, and its name makes its purpose pretty clear. According to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), GCSA is a NACSA member. You remember NACSA, the organization that Zaid Jilani discovered was an ALEC member, and that bailed out of ALEC two days later. That was in May 2012, after the Georgia legislature passed the bill putting the charter school referendum on the ballot.

Georgia Family Education and Research Council, Inc. (GFERC) is slightly less obvious. According

Class action lawsuit against second largest donor to GA charter school referendum

K12 Inc. of Virginia has a class action lawsuit against it, as well as allegations of lack of effectiveness of its courses. K12 is the second biggest contributor to the Georgia charter school referendum which would privatize Georgia's public schools. Shades of CCA desperately offering 48 states to privatize their prisons! And we know there's a connection: ALEC helps push both private prisons and privatization of public schools. We didn't fall for ALEC's privatized prisons: let's not fall for ALEC's privatized schools.

Emma Brown wrote for the Washington Post 31 January 2012, Shareholder lawsuit accuses K12 Inc. of misleading investors,

A shareholder in Virginia-based K12 Inc. has filed a lawsuit against the virtual-schools operator in federal court, alleging that the firm violated securities law by making false statements to investors about students' poor performance on standardized tests.

The class-action complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, also accuses K12 of boosting its enrollment and revenues through “deceptive recruiting” practices.

Herndon-based K12 is the country's largest operator of full-time public virtual schools, a growing sector in which students as young as five learn at home via computer.

The lawsuit comes after a spate of national news stories — including in The Washington Post — raised questions about the effectiveness of virtual schools, K12's in particular. The firm's stock has since plummeted.

There's more in the article, and in the actual Class action suit against K12 Inc. Named in the suit are Ronald J. Packard (K12 Inc's CEO and Founder) and Harry T. Hawks, executive vice president and chief financial officer, both pictured here.

-jsq