The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

Opinion

Discussion

Welcome to our online comments feature. To join the discussion, you must first register with Disqus and verify your email address. Once you do, your comments will post automatically. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator.
comments powered by Disqus
August 31, 2010

Letter: Support for Roy Barnes

As president of GAE (Georgia Association of Educators) from 2000-2002, I probably worked more closely with the Barnes administration than any other educator in the state during those years, certainly any classroom teacher.

Yes, things started off poorly with our relationship. The anger teachers felt was real and palpable. But, that is not the complete story.

By early in my term, the Barnes administration realized it had made mistakes and I began to meet at least weekly with his education adviser and often with the governor himself. Our input was sought for the second round of reform and included in the legislation to guarantee teachers a place in promotion-retention decisions, from which the PTA at the time wanted us removed. We worked together to plan out remediation opportunities that would be developed for those who were in danger of failure, improvements to middle schools, enhancement of foreign language programs, increasing alternative school funding, reducing class sizes, millions for new schools and more. I remember being called to explain why a proposed 4.25 percent raise was being reduced to 4 percent. How times have changed.

All was not perfect, but contrast that with the last eight years. Teacher organizations totally left out of any discussion, furloughs, layoffs, ever expanding vouchers, billions in cuts, elimination of National Board, elimination of class size limits and more. Politics is not perfect and neither is any one candidate. Both of the gubernatorial candidates have records. Despite the shading by the Deal campaign, both sought the GAE endorsement. GAE made the correct decision. This is an election about the very survival of public education in Georgia. Roy Barnes has learned from his mistakes; he has a plan to move forward. Congressman Deal did not even value education enough to produce a plan, even for his primary runoff battle. I wholeheartedly endorse Roy Barnes.

Ralph Noble

Eastbrook Middle School

GAE president 2000-2002

 

Text Only
Opinion