Click here for the GCS BOE meeting agenda for 5/22/08.
Of interest:
C. Twelve-Month Pay Option
At the meeting of May 22, 2008, Sharon Ozment, co-interim superintendent, will present to the board information regarding the twelve-month pay option. If you have questions regarding this item, please contact Ms. Ozment at 370-8343, prior to the meeting.
D. How Discrimination is Handled in GCS
At the meeting of May 22, 2008, Dr. John Morris, chief student services officer, and Monica Walker, diversity officer, will present to the board a report on the process of handling discrimination within schools. If you have questions regarding this item, please contact Dr. Morris at 370-8380 or Ms. Walker at 370-8999, prior to the meeting.
Hmmmmmm…….
E.C. 🙂
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Guilford School Watch 
Here is the true agenda…more money and people:
“That the district considers adding additional personnel to the Office of Diversity. We would also recommend adding additional dollars to the Diversity Office budget for contracted services. Currently, our Diversity
Officer, along with the help of one office support person, with a limited budget, is trying to handle community mediation issues that impact our schools, school mediation issues, and crisis issues while at the same time,
trying to provide much needed staff development and training for 10,000 employees.”
“contracted services”….what might that be????
Stormy, you know–the contracted services for the nice group of people who come in and charge of a lot of money to tell the white folk they were born racist and they can’t help it but that’s the way it is, and to tell the black folk to blame the white folk for all their woes–remember that group? Yes, I can see why one man can’t handle that position alone and why he’d need more money. Forget that our schools are supposed to be teaching academics, we’ve got a race-card game to play!
Beth,
Actually, the one person is Monica Walker, who in addition to being Diversity Officer at GCS, she is also a workshop trainer for the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond doing “Undoing Racism” workshops. I have little doubt that the “contracted services” is to bring People’s Institute trainers in to do the “Undoing Racism” workshops.
Comments from a participation in this workshop:
“All of a sudden, there was clarity,” she says. “I started to see an ‘Apartheid America.’ The workshop underscored that we’re in a race-constructed society, and that everything is based on that—that if we don’t look through the lens of racism, we end up perpetuating the disparities. These workshops give us a common language and understanding. It’s not about the individual but the institution.” To Bernabei, social workers are supposed to be agents for social change. “Once you have an analysis, white privilege is seen in a much larger context,” she says. “It’s about a power differential.”
Note the mention of “white privilege” and “power differential”. Yes, these are the similar workshops conducted by the Chicago Ministry group a few years ago. Weren’t they from Chicago? I wonder if they know Jeremiah Wright?
http://www.crossroadsantiracism.org/mission.sxml
John Hood has a great column today regarding the growth effects of human capital. In essence, he observes that there is a high correlation between learning (not schooling years) and economic growth.
http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/index.html
“What Hanushek and his colleagues found in their model was that while average years of schooling demonstrated a correlation with long-term economic growth, average math and science scores demonstrated a far stronger effect – for every half a standard deviation increase in average score, a country’s growth rate went up by a full percentage point, which in economic terms is huge. Indeed, once they put test scores into the model, the effects of years of schooling disappeared. It’s about learning, not time spent.”
“If American students performed as well as Canadian, Korean, Finn, Taiwanese, and Dutch students, Hanushek concluded, the additional output of the American economy would exceed the entire cost of our K-12 education system.
That’s not to say America spends too little now. We already outspend all of these countries in dollars per pupil, often by huge margins. Just as with educational attainment, education investment is more about quality than quantity.
This speaks to the point that our public schools are always concerned about getting more and more funding, but it is not to increase learning, but rather to finance social causes, such as Monica Walker’s non-discrimination objectives. We outspend most other countries on public education, but not in a manner that actually increases learning, thus human and capital growth. We are losing our standing as the leading national economy in the world because we are more concerned about issues other than learning and human growth.