Minutes - 20031204 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Our democracy deserves that bridges are to be built to find solutions and to eliminate negative discourse. Jeff Song: We live in Chapel Hill. My family has a deep concern about merger. I have two kids in Chapel Hill. One is in Chapel Hill High and he goes to the band in the morning and needs to ride to school every day. And the younger one is at Seawell Elementary and is staying after school. My wife and I are working parents. We work in Raleigh and we spend an extra two hours an the road every day. I have to drop the kids off at school and I come home late around 6:30-7:00 p.m. My wife has to leave at 7:00 a.m. and drive to Raleigh and then came back at 4:30 p.m. in order to pick up kids from school. The merger of the systems will put pressure on our day's schedule. We live an the north side of the Chapel Hill line, and according to the plan, the kids may have to shift far away from home. That means extra hours for kids riding in the car or bus, and the hours could well be used far after school activities, for community services. Then our schedule will become very tight. We may have to leave at 6:00 or 6:30, and that will put extra stress on our family and the kids may not be able to take on any extra activities. Why did we settle in Chapel Hill and work in Raleigh? Because of the stability of the school district, and Wake County doesn't have it and Durham doesn't have it. In Wake County even if you live on the next street to the school, you may not be able to attend the school. I hope you won't put kids in that situation. Choices and competitions -when you go to Wal-Mart, you want to have more choices. Why do you want to take away the choices for us for the public schools? We like the business of the competition since we believe that's a good thing and will benefit the consumers. I believe that keeping the two public school systems will keep the competition and make the schools better instead of making it worse. Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools have made their name recognized in the nation. I believe all of you are proud of it. Please don't destroy it. Kate Fleishman: I didn't really prepare anything since I thought I would be too afraid to speak. I have a North Carolina education, I went to school in the 70's, and I know the atrocious -the good, the bad, and the ugly - of public education. I have a daughter and son-in-law who graduated from Chapel Hill. They think they got excellent educations, and I don't want to take anything at all away from Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. I have younger children who go to County schools and I think that New Hope Elementary is an excellent school. I work as a fundraiser for New Hope School, and we cut out box tops. And every quarter counts and every penny in the penny drive counts. So I can't help but feel resentful when I think of the thousands of dollars more that the Chapel Hill schools have. I outfit myself at the PTA thrift shop, and I started to resent the money that I spend at the thrift shop going to the Chapel Hill schools. There's been a lot of criticism about the boycott and how silly that is. But as an Orange County parent, I started to think about where I buy my groceries. These pennies go into a school and I would like it to benefit my children. A few years ago there was a big crisis about the funding, and I was in this courthouse while children cried about the possibility about losing their specials, their art, their P. E. There's been a lot of statistics about the amount of money and the quality of education. I think that of all the things that make a school wonderful are the people who are in the school that make the school wonderful, and I don't think that the superintendent has much affect. For a long time, we didn't even have a superintendent and I didn't even notice the difference. The teachers and the principals are the people that I am in contact with and they have been excellent in my school. I don't know why people are so afraid of this merger that somehow it's going to ruin everything. I've had children in both districts. I'm a merger. I'm a merger of Chapel Hill.