“Board votes 4-3 to restore traditional school calendar - Marietta Daily Journal” plus 1 more |
| Board votes 4-3 to restore traditional school calendar - Marietta Daily Journal Posted: MARIETTA — Despite a majority of attendees speaking passionately in favor of the current balanced calendar, the Cobb school board voted 4-3 Thursday night to revert to a more traditional school calendar, with an Aug. 15 start state. Board members Lynnda Eagle, David Banks and David Morgan dissented. The calendar starts school Aug. 15, ends classes on May 25 and allows a week break at Thanksgiving, a two-week break at Christmastime and a week break in April. The other options the board considered had a start date of Aug. 1 or Aug. 17. Twenty-four teachers, parents and residents spoke to the board during its public comment session in front of a packed boardroom of about 300 people with an overflow crowd in the lobby of the Glover Street central office. Most spoke ardently in favor of the balanced calendar, with a few becoming highly critical of the newly elected board members. Tim Stultz faced the most attacks from audience members, who held signs reading: "RECALL STULTZ!" and "Stultz is NOT a voice for our schools or our children." Others waved signs that said: "Keep the Balance" and "Teachers for balance." Gina Ulicny reminded newly elected board members, speaking directly to Kathleen Angelucci, who ran on a platform in support of a more traditional calendar, that they were not elected solely on the calendar issue. "You may have gone on one promise, but people don't vote for you just because of one issue. Sometimes people vote for you because you're the only one running," Ulicny said, as many people in the crowd laughed. "I'm sorry if that was tacky." Former board member Holli Cash, who was narrowly defeated by Stultz in the November election, was openly critical of him, and questioned his appointees to the SPLOST oversight Facilities and Technology Committee during her impassioned speech to the board. "I think you should all know when I voted for the balanced calendar last year, I personally, personally supported the calendar that we had already in place with adding the February break. But it wasn't about me. It was about the people in my community," Cash said. "…We need to look at the members you appoint to the F&T. They need to have the facts and fictions. You chose to take away Ann Kirk, who was there before I came on the board, and Susan Pearson, two very active members of the community, to put on a losing politician who does not know their facts, did not ask the facts before they came to speak against the Smyrna school, and a man in the community that knows many of the neighbors in the Nickajack and Griffin area, who gave you $500." Others, like Beth Kriebel, simply asked the board to keep the current calendar because of the disruption another new calendar would have on their families. "I think you're taking a huge risk in changing something that greatly impacts any family that has a student in the school district," Kriebel said. "While campaign promises were made last year by some of you, what about the majority of Cobb County parents who have adjusted to the balanced calendar on good faith that no changes would be made?" One of the few audience members who spoke for the more traditional calendar was Vivian Jackson, the co-founder of "Georgians Need Summers" who was thrown out of a November 2009 meeting during public comment for her direct address to then-board Chairman Dr. John Abraham. "The last time I stood in front of this podium was in November 2009, and here I stand again, in front of a newly elected school board, a majority of which campaigned publicly to return our district to a traditional school calendar and to do this as soon as they took office," Jackson said. "The voters went to the ballot box, not a bogus Monkey Survey. We do not want this experiment to continue another year." Just hours before the meeting, the district posted the results of its online calendar survey, which showed that 72 percent of the 82,000 respondents were in favor of the balanced calendar, with 17.9 percent for the Aug. 15 start date and 10.1 percent for the Aug. 17 start date. The board released the survey Feb. 11 on its website through Survey Monkey and closed it Thursday at 1 p.m. Even before the results of the survey were released, many community members were highly critical of it, arguing that anyone could vote whether even if they did not live in the district, and that it was possible to vote more than one time for the survey. Prior to the vote for the traditional calendar, Eagle asked the board to vote to keep the balanced calendar for two more years and then revisit the issue. Her motion was turned down in a vote of 3-4, with all of the new members and Board Chair Alison Bartlett dissenting. "I have no personal preference for a calendar," Eagle said. "But I feel that the issue was voted on. We made a commitment to our community, to our teachers. It sends a very bad message to our community. What's going to stop us from changing the calendar in four months? What's going to stop us from changing it next year?" Banks asked his fellow board members to listen to the 72 percent majority who voted for the balanced calendar in the district's online survey. "Madam Chair, I am very disappointed that you have allowed the calendar issue to once again come before this board," Banks said. "The most important experts I am listening to is the Cobb community. I have heard them loud and clear and apparently they affirm the decision made in 2009 in regards to the three-year calendar. All I can say to some of my colleagues is clean out the wax that is in your ears." Stultz said, "I think throughout this entire process people were passionate on both sides of the issue. There's just a level of anxiety about the calendar and I think hopefully we can put that to rest this evening." In other business: The board voted unanimously to purchase the 18 acres of land adjacent to the Belmont Hills shopping center in Smyrna for a new Smyrna area elementary school at a price of $7.8 million. The board also voted to hire the architectural firm of Cunningham, Forehand, Matthews and Moore for $598,000 to create plans for the $22 million school. The board voted 4-3, with Bartlett, Angelucci and Stultz dissenting to build a ninth-grade center at Harrison High School. While a ninth-grade center for west Cobb was included in SPLOST III, its location was not specified. SPLOST Chief Doug Shepard Harrison was chosen because of the four high schools in the west Cobb area - Harrison, Hillgrove, Allatoona and Kennesaw Mountain - Harrison has the least amount of space and the most portable classrooms. Bartlett opposed the building of the center because she said the district should consider putting the project off until later in SPLOST III, when the district will be able to better evaluate growth of the schools in the west Cobb area. —-The board also approved renovations at 10 schools throughout the district which will be funded by SPLOST. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Fundraising Goal for Detroit RoboCop Statue Met - MyFox Detroit Posted: Updated: Wednesday, 16 Feb 2011, 6:20 PM EST SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WJBK) - It was a 1987 cult classic. "RoboCop" is the story of a hero officer killed in a shootout, but brought back to life as a half man, half machine cyborg, who defended Detroit against crime. Last week on Twitter, someone came up with the idea of putting up a RoboCop statue in Detroit. Mayor Dave Bing tweeted back, "There are not any plans to erect a statue to RoboCop. Thank you for your message." But that wasn't the end of the story. The idea soon became a movement on Facebook and then other websites. Now, just six days later, organizers say they've exceeded their fundraising goal of $50,000 and a statue of RoboCop will soon become a reality. John Leonard, an artist and one of the masterminds behind the online campaign, recently joined FOX 2's Huel Perkins for an in-studio interview. HUEL: There are a lot of projects out there, a lot of symbols you could choose, why RoboCop and why do you think this caught on? LEONARD: I think RoboCop for a long time has been a really popular character in a lot of circles, like science fictions fans, and he's really a popular international character … I think it has tremendously positive effect on people. HUEL: Where you even born when this movie came out? LEONARD: Yeah, I was pretty young, but I've been a fan for awhile. HUEL: So, do you actually have the cash here or do you just have pledges for the money, and where is that money coming from? LEONARD: The money's coming from a website called Kickstarter … It's a micro-funding website, which allows individuals to donate. It doesn't matter where they're from. It's just for people that want to support the project, and we're at $50,000 … What we're asking people to do on the Kickstarter website is that the more they donate, we're going to be able to use sort of the popularity of this project to fund some other initiatives or maybe bring attention to some other things that may be happening in the city … A lot of people have been matching their donations to the Detroit Public Schools … That's something I personally did, and there's been a lot of people that have been sort of seeing this as a way to bring a lot of positive support to the city. HUEL: That's one of the complaints, too, because some people say in the city where the traffic signals don't work, the symphony orchestra is on strike, some people complain that this is a waste of time and money. How do you answer that? LEONARD: I think that's up to the people that are supporting the project, and it's coming from private donations. We're not trying to take any money away from the city. We're not trying to take any money from people that don't want to give money to the project. At the same time, we're trying to use this to maybe get support for some other projects … I think there's been a lot of positive energy that's been flowing into the city because of this. HUEL: Just to make it clear, this is private money and you plan to put up this statue on private land, right? LEONARD: We're still talking to people about the best place to put it because I think the context and the location is really going to have an important effect on what this sends or what it says. HUEL: That's also one of the complaints. Some people say that this statue of RoboCop only underscores the crime issue here and insults the city. LEONARD: I think that it can be a symbol of rebirth. He's a superhero. I think if you look at the character … sort of the morals and the positive things that the character embodies are really the driving factor behind this. We called the mayor's office, but they had no comment on this RoboCop statue issue. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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