VALDOSTA — Prior to the regular meeting of the Valdosta Board of Education, members of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP held a press conference outside the Valdosta City School Board Office on Monday.

During the press conference Jennifer Falk, NAACP Georgia State Conference education chair, presented facts and figures from the Valdosta City School System while Edward Dubose, NAACP Georgia State Conference President, provided a call to action to the those gathered.

Falk said it was time to strike down false notions of success in the school system and for parents and community members to educate themselves on the test scores and data about the system.

Under Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) scores meets standards is sometimes heralded as a good thing, Falk said.

That is a false belief, she said, as those students who exceed expectations on AYP are considered ones ready to go to a four year university or college.

Those meeting expectations will need remedial work at a college level to succeed, Falk said.

“I don’t know about you but I don’t want to pay for my child to be

remediated at college when it should occur here at the elementary, middle and high schools,” she said.

She cautioned those gathered to carefully review the exceeds category when AYP scores are posted, especially in the African American sub-group.

She also noted the Georgia High School Graduation Test as a marker for exceeding but also said the test has a lower minimum for proficiency than end of course tests.

At the state level, African American exceed at 43.7 percent on the GHSGT math portion; at Valdosta High the exceed percentage is at 25 for African Americans in the math portion.

“That’s not only pitiful numbers but it’s worse than the state’s numbers,” Falk said. “It’s time to step in and demand the school focus on exceeds.”

She also addressed out of school suspensions at the middle and high school level.

“You can’t learn if you are not in school,” Falk said.

In 2009, 915 students were suspended out of school at Valdosta High, 846 of them African American. At the state level, 785 of these suspensions are coded as other, not as drugs, or violence or gang activity, she said.

Falk said she doubted the school was using creative problem solving on cutting back on these suspensions.

She then encouraged the crowd to look into the corrective action procedures required by the state when a school fails to make AYP for consecutive years.

Newbern Middle School is under a corrective action currently and must lower their out of school suspensions from 40 percent to 20 percent by May of 2010, Falk said.

“Your superintendent signed off on the document,” she said. “A 40 percent suspension rate is horrendous.”

She told the crowd to look into PBIS, Positive Behavior Support, and see if the system is using it to reduce disciplinary action.

Falk then focused her attention on the Pinevale Performance Learning Center.

In July 2009, the system made the decision to turn the PLC into a “school,” with Falk saying she placed quotations around the word school.

This will allow the system to report test scores on the students at the school and take FTE, or full-time equivalent, counts which will provide funding, she said.

For an AYP score to be counted, the student has to be in the school from October to the end of the testing period, Falk said.

Also if a sub-group of students on AYP is below 40, the group will not count toward AYP, she said.

At the end of her speech, Falk said parents and community members should get involved with local school councils, and if the system doesn’t have them to get them started.

“This is a call to action for administrators to be transparent and honest,” Falk said.

Dubose said it was the intent of the NAACP (National Association of the Advancement of Colored People) to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights and contact the Justice Department concerning the decree on hiring more minority faculty.

He said he also would ask the superintendent to resign.

“There is no way possible for a person that has set in place as long as this superintendent to change the status quo,” Dubose said. “It’s time for it to stop.”

The school board should also not get too comfortable in their seats, he said.

The reason those people are sitting in those seats is because the community put them there, Dubose said.

The NAACP Georgia State Conference will be back in December to keep abreast of the communication between the community and school system and provide education to the community on understanding data from the school system and how to obtain it.



Valdosta City Board Meeting

Six people were scheduled to talk to the board during the regular meeting by the Rev. Floyd Rose, president of the Valdosta-Lowndes County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Leigh Touchton, Interim Secretary of the Lowndes-Valdosta NAACP, yielded their time to provide more for Dubose and Falk.

Before Dubose and Falk, community member George Rhynes addressed the board.

Rhynes said he sent to letters to the board requesting a larger facility to hold the meeting and the letters were never responded to nor was the venue changed. This made Rhynes question whether the board really wants the community to come forward, he said.

Wayne Veal, a parent of an elementary school student and a high school student within the school system then came forward to speak.

Veal said he was speaking on behalf of a large group of parents and students who are enthusiastic about the things going on in the school.

He cited gains in several academic areas on both AYP, GHSGT, end of year tests and CRCT noting that the numbers had not declined but only increased.

Veal also commended the inclusion of tutoring programs at the high school level and thanked Superintendent Dr. Bill Cason for increasing the system’s general fund and effectively bringing the system out of fiscal bankruptcy.

“Don’t stop challenging these kids,” Veal said.

Veal said his daughter feels safe at the high school because administrators and faculty charge the students with being respectful to each other, to faculty and to themselves.

Falk then addressed the board and reiterated many of her points made during the press conference and also charged Veal and the board to look deeper into the figures he presented.

She questioned Veal’s comment about a safe learning environment, when so many students are given out of school suspension for minor offenses.

During 2009, the system doled out 12,000 days of out of school suspension.

Falk then addressed the alternative school and the fact that students that are transferred to the alternative school may not be counted in AYP at either school.

Afterwards Dubose addressed the board and said that he originally planned to come in here and discuss filing a compliant with the Office of Civil Rights on behalf of the NAACP, contact the justice department about the decree and ask the superintendent to resign.

When asking for Cason’s resignation, Dubose mispronounced the superintendent’s name several times before being corrected.

Instead of those things, Dubose said, he requested that the board sit down with the NAACP and discuss the information presented.

Dubose said he had several things run through his head when Veal said his child felt safe at the high school.

“Whose kids feel safe?” Dubose said. “Does one group feel safe because the other group is suspended?”

He then said he watched people cringe as Falk read her stats and wondered if they were cringing because it was true or because they thought “how dare they bring this information out.”

Dubose said he figured it was a combination of both.

“Let’s talk about these numbers, numbers I know you couldn’t be satisfied with,” Dubose said. “Let’s put together a plan that changes the numbers for African American and white students so together they can move forward, if one is left behind then they are all left behind.”

Chairman Ricky Rowe, District 8, Superward West, said he would sit down with them today.

“It’s good to get this out on the table, the board does want to go forward and make the entire school system better for all children,” Rowe said. “We are all in this side by side and that is all we got.”