Sunday, June 24, 2012

Whew! No Mention of Cell Towers in School Board's New Budget Plan

(click headline for full story and budget recap)

Photo credit:  Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com
Dekalb County School Board members
(from left) Thomas E. Bowen, Jay
Cunningham, Sarah Copelin-Wood
and Eugene P. Walker (chairman)
talk before a meeting.

We were happy to hear the DeKalb County School Board did not discuss cell towers as a means of supplementing its billion dollar budget at the expense of our children, teachers and neighborhoods, but the cuts they made were still dramatic. 

From the DeKalb School Watch Blog,
here's a recap: 

■The property taxes in DeKalb county were raised by one full millage point.
 ■All employees are subject to 2 more furlough days on top of the already scheduled furlough days.
 ■70 more people in the central office will lose their job
 ■Pre-k programs will be reduced to only what the state funds provide
 ■52 magnet teachers will lose their magnet job
 ■28 Montessori teachers will lose their magnet job
 ■Transportation to special programs: DECA, magnet, themes AMS and STT remains unchanged
 ■Transportation for field trips will be cut by $1.6 million
 ■Additional transportation (efficiency plan) will be cut $700,000
 ■200 general ed parapros will lose their jobs
 ■25 media specialists will lose their jobs
 ■29 (all remaining) media clerks will lose their jobs
 ■10 SROs will lose their jobs
 ■Overtime pay for extra activities will be reduced by $5 million
 ■Fernbank will have to cut $1.9 million from its programs budget
 ■10 Asst Principals lost through attrition will not be replaced
 ■10 counselors lost through attrition will not be replaced
 ■20 interpreters will lose their jobs
 ■The summer work schedule is reduced to 4 – 10 hour days
 ■Employees will have to subsidize health insurance by an additional $35.57/month
 ■Employees will have to subsidize dental insurance by an additional $16.02/month
 ■Regular Ed Class sizes will increase by 2
 ■Special Ed Class sizes will increase by 2

Showing their continued defiance of the public's cry for a transparent government, the board removed the final vote tally from the electronic screen above their heads, infuriating spectators in the live audience and those watching the streaming video from computers at home or work. 

For more details, see the article in the AJC.

Remember:  Vote NO on the "telecommunications towers" question on your ballot, July 31.  Tell friends and neighbors to do the same as it may be one way to let your representatives know that your precinct is aware of the issue and against it for your local community or school.

2 comments:

  1. I do not understand how these elected officials (or any elected official for that matter) is allowed to make any type of or keep anything secret from the public. Why do we as a people continue to allow them to essentially continue rape us?-Kiersty

    ReplyDelete
  2. After some investigating I discovered why the BOE did not mention cell towers as part of the budget talks. The Dekalb BOE put out an separate document entitled "Technology plan 2012-2015" shortly after the 'contract' was signed. -kiersty

    ReplyDelete

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