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3. Public Hearina* *At Public Hearings, Commissioners traditionally do not comment in order to allow citizens to have the maximum time to express opinions. Speakers may only sign up for themselves. The maximum speaking time allotted will be 3- minuteslper speaker. Robert Ferguson: Good evening. My name is Robert Ferguson. I am a resident of Carrboro, and I have a son in middle school. I think there are some very positive aspects of the November 11t" proposals by the Commissioners. I think it's a good idea to create an educational task farce comprised of education experts. Although it's not totally clear what the role of such a task force would be, I think it is wise to have education experts influence district decisions, because it reduces the probability that the decision is being overly influenced by politics, emotion, or ideology. It's also very positive to propose collaboration between the two districts. We will all benefit from concrete, reliable, collaborative projects that can be implemented soon. That's important. I am, however, opposed to merger for several reasons. First, bigger is not better. Smaller systems are more user-friendly and more conducive to parent involvement. Parent involvement is a very valuable asset in education. Second, all alternatives to merger are less expensive than merger itself. Third, in my opinion, capital savings claims by proponents of merger are unrealistic. Finally, capital savings are not worth it if they result in children having to give up family time and instruction time for longer bus rides. I hope this decision is ultimately based on facts and reasoning rather than too much emotion or preconceived opinions. Thank you. Mark Peters: I am speaking to you tonight on behalf of the Sewell Elementary SGC. We commend the Commissioners for hearing the concerns of their constituents and for creating proposals, which address these concerns. The SGC has the following input regarding the November 11t" proposals. We support in principle the idea of a task force to find the most effective ways for the two systems to cooperate. However, we are concerned that the goals and the boundaries of the task force have not yet been defined sufficiently far us to agree or disagree to this approach. We also share concerns voiced by the City school board that a task force might be composed primarily of graduate students who have no stake in the outcome and have significantly less credentials and experience than professors and current employees of the school systems. We support the efforts to quickly begin closing the funding inequity gap, particularly as Ms. Gordon has proposed. We have many questions regarding the combined central office facility, and would like to know more details about the goals and benefits of such a proposal. The pre-K facilities should be located throughout the County and not in a central location. We appose Mr. Carey's recommendation that a vote on merger occur in February 2004. And finally, we would like to request that all Commissioner candidates put their position on merger on the public record in a notarized letter prior to the May primary election. David Gerlach: To those wha oppose merger or equate property values and school district reputations with providing equal educational opportunities, I offer the following paraphrase. When, at some future date, history sits in judgment on each one of us, recording whether we, during our brief span of service, upheld our responsibility to our children and our community, our success or failure in whatever capacity we may have served will be measured by our answers to four questions. First, were we truly citizens of courage, with courage to stand up to our opponents, as well as caurage to stand up