Minutes 05-29-2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Steven Jones is part of the Ephesus Elementary School improvement team. He thanked the Commissioners for their service. He said one of the great values of this community is its schools, and failing to fund the school budget requests will have a major impact on the education of their children. He said everyone wants to maintain their schools as the best in the state, and fully funding these requests will send a message to their parents that they matter. He said strong stewardship from school management has gotten rid of the "fat", and lack of full funding will mean cuts that impact students. He asked the Board of County Commissioners to fund their schools. Jill Simon is a parent at Frank Porter Graham, and she thanked the Board for their support of education. She listed the successes and accomplishments that have been made through past funding. She asked the Board to be creative with their budget in order to fully fund the schools this year. Adrian Vrouwenveldor thanked the Board for their service. He said everyone owes it to themselves to make good public education available. He said good education makes for strong contributing citizens, and good schools help attract good, high paying employers, which leads to a better community. He said it is our responsibility and duty to support our schools and our teachers. He said good public education must be the community's highest priority, and he is willing to pay higher taxes to insure this. Angie Shatas said she recognizes that the Board's job is not easy. She is a parent of a middle school child at Phillips and two who have already graduated, and she is here to ask for full funding of the schools. She said education drives growth, and the County's economic strength is dependent on high quality schools. She said State funding is inadequate, and she asked the Board to be creative in order to pick up the slack. She encouraged the Board to increase taxes if this is needed. She said this is a price that she and other citizens are ready to pay. Eileen Regan read from the following written comments: From: Carrboro Elementary School Improvement Team Presented at tonight's meeting by: Eileen Regan, teacher/member of CES SIT The Carrboro Elementary School Improvement Team is in favor of full funding for city and county education budgets. It is critical that our schools maintain all of our current educational programs and services. The CES SIT understands that other county services are experiencing funding cuts. Educational and social program cuts have a direct impact on all families and, in particular, our most fragile families. We know that finding ways to raise revenues are difficult because it can disproportionately affect these same communities. Our story at CES demonstrates for you the changing demographic and community issues. We recognize the struggle for the smaller number of revenues, and your difficult role in allocating shrinking funds for essential programs that are facing increased demands. However, we need commissioners to understand that these same families are increasingly relying on our school's support to maintain quality of life for their children as well as provide educational excellence. Each year that funding is cut to community programs, schools have increased their efforts and outreach to help meet these essential needs. This has been done through new community parent-education initiatives, expanded responsibilities for the social worker and counseling staff, and increased workloads for our EC specialists, literacy coaches, interventionists and teacher assistants. I am a reading specialist at Carrboro Elementary as well as a member of the Carrboro SIT. As a reading specialist, I teach children daily who must work very hard to develop academic literacy when their families are struggling. All of my students have the potential to become successful students and productive citizens. If we want to continue to have a strong, vibrant and