Orange County NC Website
reference to the report from Dr. Grumet and said that the proof is in the pudding. He is a <br />28-year employee of Duke, and they have outcomes oriented everything. He said that it <br />is evident from this report that OCS outcomes are significantly poorer than the CHCCS <br />outcomes. He thinks it is imperative to raise the outcomes of the OCS. He said that the <br />divergence starts in the middle schools and it carries on in the high schools. The SAT <br />scores are higher in CHCCS and the dropout rate for OC5 is higher. The OCS dropout <br />rate is in fact higher than the State average. He said that he would not mind paying <br />extra taxes for education. <br />Anita Hawks is a CHCCS teacher and an OCS parent. She asked for equal <br />funding far bath school systems. She said that the difference she sees is the needs of <br />the children in the two systems. She asked the County Commissioners to fully fund the <br />needs of all of the children. She said that it was ironic that in the early 90's the County <br />did away with the Spanish program in OCS and now the school system is asking for it <br />back because of the increase in the Latino population. In the CHCCS, there will be a <br />loss of some Spanish teachers and teacher assistants and she is concerned about this. <br />She is also concerned about the difference in socioeconomic class. She lives in Orange <br />County because she cannot afford to live in Chapel Hill. She challenged the County <br />Commissioners to figure out a way to pay for everything in the budget. She suggested <br />taxing some of the larger companies more, such as Wal-Mart. <br />Roger Smith spoke on behalf of Orange Congregations in Mission. He thanked <br />the County Commissioners for their past support and asked for continued support in the <br />future. He said that they are anon-profit and they survive by getting funding. <br />Jane McIver is a first grade teacher at Central Elementary School in OCS. She <br />said that this year the schaol system began a new pragram to assign each school a <br />family specialist or social worker. Because this is a new pragram, she is recommending <br />that the County Commissioners fully fund the budget request so that this program can <br />continue. She said that this position directly affects children. She gave examples of <br />interventions the family specialist has worked on at Central. <br />Tony Kane is an OCS parent. He said that one of the things that struck him was <br />the fact that the County conducted the study to look at the discrepancies in the school <br />systems and received recommendations. He has a hard time understanding that if there <br />are discrepancies and the recommendation says to get more social workers, and the <br />school budget includes it, but the County does not fund it. He said that there are a lot of <br />children in the OCS that do not have support at home, and this needs to be addressed. <br />He asked for full funding of the OCS budget. <br />Nancy Grebenkempor is a resident of Orange County and a school psychologist <br />at Grady Brown Elementary. She said that they are at a bare bones budget and have <br />minimal support staff. She said that recently the school system has made major cuts in <br />services and in positions to handicapped children. These cuts will impact significantly <br />the services that are provided. She works in a room with fuse baxes. She thinks that in <br />these times with mental health services being cut, education becoming a much more <br />demanding field, and budget cuts being made, that the budget needs to be funded fully <br />for both school systems. <br />Susan Clifford is a Health Educator at Orange County Health Department. She <br />is fluent in Spanish and works with the Latino immigrant community to help improve their <br />access to health and safety information. She spoke on behalf of County employees. <br />She loves her jab and coworkers. She is thankful, as a new mother, far the excellent <br />medical and dental benefits provided by the County. Also, she is concerned about her <br />personal finances because she provides the main income for her family. She feels the <br />difference when the employees do not get cost-of-living or in-range increases. It is hard <br />far her to ignore the higher-paying private and University research jobs in this area, but <br />