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harmed and that the tax is too much burden for us. Please don't forget that what makes <br />the City district so great are those families who dedicate their lives to their children's <br />education, not the money spent from the County or the City. Merger will hurt the school <br />district in the long run. Thank you. <br />Weihua Xie: I'm a parent from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. We all know that <br />bath school districts are wonderful systems and highly funded as the top districts among <br />117 districts in North Carolina. Salving funding differences in order to remove the <br />education quality difference between two systems is a misconception, because there is <br />no correlation between school costs and student performance. The mast significant and <br />consistent finding in the research is the strong family involvement and student <br />achievement. Overall, the quality of education is the combination of school funding, <br />curriculum, teachers, PTA, volunteers, and diligent and consistent nurturing of parents. <br />Fundamentally, family positive nurturing and student self-motivation is a lifetime <br />guarantee for student academic performance and career success no matter where they <br />live. Chapel Hill City schools has the good reputation of education quality because <br />many families prepare and want this family nurturing environment even before we move <br />in that district. Why do not keep this tradition? The long bus driving from merger will be <br />very difficult for our working parents to be actively involved in our children's education. <br />We do believe that the smaller school system is able to maximize the best interest of <br />each individual district based on student population and life goals. Furthermore, the <br />competition between the two school systems even has the positive impact to improve <br />bath school education qualities. A simple example is like two kids compared to one kid <br />growing up in one family. There is mare competition with two kids, so both kids get <br />benefits from that. <br />We do hear the differences in education; however, these differences could be <br />reassessed by the County school system itself through well designing curriculum or <br />offering courses based on most needs. Or it could be modified through more <br />collaboration between two school systems. So the effort to help County school students <br />should not impact City school students from merger. <br />Merger is not the answer to improve County schools. We support well-assessed efforts <br />to improve the schools and we welcome the Commissioners' proposals to seriously <br />investigate alternatives and how to improve schools without merger. <br />In the conclusion, no merger decision will have the best results for the greatest number <br />of students. Thank you. <br />Kathy Hartkapf: Good evening. I'm Kathy Hartkopf and I live here in Hillsborough. <br />While doing a little shopping at the beautiful new Southern Season store, I was <br />particularly struck by the divisiveness that the merger debate has created. We have <br />calls of social justice, slanderous attack letters, dear friendships forever possibly <br />splintered. An ill-conceived boycott heralded by a school board member in a group with <br />the acronym ROB Chapel Hill. The leading pro-merger advocate is up on criminal <br />charges and about to go to court for removing campaign signs of a candidate who had <br />dared to state that he was opposed to merger. We even have had a burning recycle bin. <br />Were all of these situations caused by the merger debate? It would seem so. If not, at <br />the very least, the public seems to believe so. You chase to use your voter-given power <br />to begin this process. You alone must choose to use your voter-given power to end it. <br />Will ending this debate now completely end the divisiveness? Probably not. Will that <br />