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is too late for Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County residents to be leaders in the merger process across our state. It is not too late for our leadership and the residents of our community to take a leadership position in making it a smooth and positive experience for all of our children and all our residents, acting in a way that shows a desire an the part of everyone to provide for all of our children a great experience. I am very proud to know Moses Carey and to appreciate the courageousness that this step took far him as well as for the remainder of the Board to move forward an this and help the people of this community learn about this process. I encourage you to continue your steadfastness and your courage and to vote for merger. Thank you. Rick Kennedy: My name is Rick Kennedy. I have three girls in Orange County schools. And I just want to step back far a minute and say again that if you want a good example of what happens when you blow past staunch citizen opposition, you are sitting in one. The bond for this school was voted down two to one in Orange County Schaal district. But when you look for people now that say that this was a mistake, you're going to be hard pressed to find many people like that because they know this was the right thing to do. When you look back and see where would we be if we didn't have this school; we have 940 students in this school today. The money we put into our schools make the foundation upon which our children build their futures; it's for our community, it's for our nation. And you can only neglect it for so long and then it all comes crashing down. It may not be there now, but we can get there. And people again and again say that we don't need to invest in schools, and they are wrong. When they compare us to the rest of North Carolina, they're missing the big picture, because our competition does not stop at State borders. It's not nationwide, it's worldwide. You ask one of the 60- tobacco farmers left in Orange County what happened. It wasn't Halifax County, it's worldwide competition. You ask the mill workers what happened, it's worldwide competition. My favorite example, the New York Yankees. The quintessential American sport and American team. Forty-four percent of their players are foreign barn. We face worldwide competition, and we prepare our children as best as we can. It's not education; it's preparation for the competition for the challenges that they will always face. When it comes to the questions that people from Chapel Hill ask, there are two types of questions -the ones that are to clarify, and those you respect when you answer, you try and calm the fears of parents that worry about what's going to happen to their children. And the other type of question is only to obstruct and obscure, to harass and to delay, until the five Commissioners will do what they want. The answer you give them will not matter. It will not change their opinion about merger. And for those questions, you can just keep moving on. You give them an answer and they'll give you half the distance to your goal. The next question, the next answer, half the distance to your goal. And you have the appearance of progress. You will get closer and closer but smaller and smaller steps until you will never get there. And we need to get there. It matters for our kids, for the thousands of kids in Orange County schools that don't have the opportunities, that aren't going to be prepared like they need to be prepared. There are no small steps in great affairs. Merger is a step we need to take to get where we want to go. When we educate, we prepare all of our children, not just same.