College, career academy grant application submitted; now the wait begins
After an exhaustive effort, including 16 hours of meetings over 45 days and countless other volunteer hours expended, the grant application for the Lamar County College and Career Academy has been presented to the state.
if you will notice none of the current school board members pay alot in property taxes. the board also wastes over 10,000.00 dollars a year on this highly qualified board crap. a title which means aboslutely nothing except that we send them ,on taxpayers money to 2 conferences a year so they can play golf.it would also be interesting to see how many of the teachers and administrators actually live in lamar county and pay property taxes. i bet a large percentage live out of county. board of education you cant compete with the private schools , you spend more per child and get less results. you will never get results either because the government has taken God out of the schools. you teach we evolved from apes, alternate lifestyles, safe sex, etc. and most sane people do not want their children taugh that garbage. i say all parents quit payig their school taxes and send their kids to the private school of their choice. let private schools compete for our children and our money, there is no competition in the public school systems and their answer to everything is spend more taxpayer money. lets put the public schools out of buisness. its time to end this fiasco that are public schools.VOTE TEA PARTY!
Walter Geiger adroitly reported:
"If approved, the grant will bring in $3.16 million in grant funds to begin expansion at LCCHS to house the charter program."
Walter passed to his readers the information presented to him.
Alcars asks... begin expansion. What needs to be expanded at LCCHS? Buildings? New equipment? Isn't there available space at LCCHS?
Alcars BIG QUESTIONS:
Will it be a stand alone project to be funded by tax payers after the initial $3.16 Million seed money is spent on "expansion"? Will there be a yearly need to reapply for "free money" grants?
From the web site http://www.georgiacareeracademies.org/index.php
By Brian A. Knight, Office of the Lt. Governor
"When Governor Purdue signed the FY 2011 State Budget, it included an additional $9 Million in grants for the Career Academy project. These funds will be awarded through the Technical College System of Georgia competitive grant process for new construction or equipment in Career Academies."
I paid attention to Knight's statement, ...$9 Million in grants for the Career Academy project ... new construction or equipment in Career Academies."
Maybe Tracy Bittner can chime in here and let us lesser informed taxpayers know what is planned after the grant is approved.
How will the funds be disbursed? New equipment? What kind?Construction? Bid or no bid? How will this project pay for itself?
We want to FOLLOW THE MONEY!
The curious can give your comprehension skills a work out at the following website. Many ponderings can be assuaged up to a point. At which more confusion may arise from the smoke screen.
http://www.georgiacareeracademies.org/index.php
Once you weave through the political-self-serving-back- slapping-statements presented by Casey Cagle and his cronies, you may come away with additional questions and confusion. Try it!
Quoting Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle from the site.
"I am very excited about our fourth round of grant funds available to expand our career academy network. I am appreciative of the support from the General Assembly and the Governor's appropriation of 9 million dollars for the construction of new academies."
Whew! 9 million for CONSTRUCTION!
It was reported Tracy Bittner bragged about 61 letters of commitment from community stakeholders that were submitted with the grant application.
“To our knowledge, that is the most letters submitted by an applicant this year,” Bittner said.
Hooray! We are going on a smokey train ride! Will any or all of the 61 "stakeholders" get on board this blogging train with Engineer Casey at the throttle and Conducter Tracy Bittner selling tickets?
Us taxpayers need our informational tickets punched before we arrive at our destination of confusion! Don't be ANONYMOUS, be proud!
ALL ABOARD! WATCH YOUR STEP! TOOT TOOT!
Call N. Alcars
"stop the train and let me off before we jump the tracks"
So, to me if it will not increase taxpayer rates one penny or get ANY of its operating budget from the existing school system, then I say great hope it works. If, however, these 60 or so signees want the regular budget to fund a special school for a minority of country residents, then they should be willing to pay the additional costs directly out of their pocket.