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PROJECT
UNIV OF GA
ATHENS GA 30602-0001
jji^l
Vol. 126 Issue No. 23
>+J Legal Organ For Peach County, City of Fort Valley and City Of Byron
Golden Years, Golden Hands
Seniors Sew and Weave Their to
By Victor Kulkosky
News Editor
The ancient arts of sewing and
quilting are flourishing at the Peach
County Senior Center, only lately
with a bit of a “green” touch.
Senior Center regular Alice
Skinner is in the habit of finding
new purposes for stuff most people
throw away. Environmentalists call
this practice “adaptive re-use,” but
for Skinner, it's a way of challenging
herself and keeping occupied. One
dry, a neighbor happened to ask her
if she could make a hat <5ut of plastic
grocery bags.
“A week later, I had it,” she said.
This new craft involves cutting the
bags into strips and then anchoring
them in fabric. Skinner and other
Senior Center participants have made
rugs, purses, shoes and hats from
those ubiquitous plastic bags. Their
creations have even won the ladies
some prizes.
Back in May, they headed to
Macon for Senior Day in the Park,
where participants from nine area
senior centers gathered for a hat and
T-shirt contest. The Peach Senior
Center team won second place with a
hat and handbag set.
On a recent hot and muggy day,
several creative ladies were in the
Former Teacher Clark on Numbers
By Victor Kulkosky
News Editor
Editor's Note: We apologize for
leaving out a portion of last week's
article, “Former Teacher Challenges
Clark on NumbersWe are reprint¬
ing the entire article this week, with
corrections and clarifications sug¬
gested by Susan Henson.
A former Peach County teacher
and Board of Education candidate has
challenged numbers recently cited by
departing Superintendent Dr. Susan
Clark in a recent Leader-Tribune arti
cle. Susan Henson described herself
* in email to this paper as “a concerned
PC citizen and a parent of a PC high
school student who has knowledge
of the high school rules set by the
Georgia Department of Education and
who has on several occasions ques
tioned (with sound research to back
up my concerns) the 'improper imple
mentation' of some of those rules by
the PC BOE and superintendent, Dr.
Susan Clark.”
Dr. Clark is retiring and her last
day as Superintendent will be June
30,2011.
The LT article quoted an email
response from Clark in response to a
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Alice Skinner and Collistine Slaughter show off some of their creations made with mate¬
rial from plastic grocery bags. Creations like these won the Senior Center second place
in a recent contest. Photo by Victor Kulkosky
letter printed in the Macon Telegraph
that suggested very few students who
marched in the Peach County High
School graduation ceremony were eli¬
gible.
Clark's email said 47 of 230 seniors,
or 20%, were not eligible and did
not march in the graduation ceremon,
including 44 who did not pass one or
more sections of the Georgia High
School Graduation Test. The email
said the GHSGT would no longer
^ given and in the future students
would be required to pass End of
Course Tests, which would count for
25% of their course grade.
Clark's email also said that in 2010,
262 students were graduation candi
dates and 16, or 6%. She also wrote
that the school system expected a drop
in graduation numbers because of the
reorganization of the high school,
h article submitted to the LT and
summarized here, Henson challenges
Clark on all the above points other
issues.
Citing information available on the
Georgia Department of Education web
site, Henson wrote that the GHSGT
would still be part of graduation
requirements for a few years and that
passing EOCTs alone would not qual-
Peach County Living Longer Overall
U.S. Ground to Nations
By Victor Kulkosky
News Editor
A major study of life expectancy in
the United States shows Peach County
residents generally living longer, but
along with the nation as a whole, falling
further behind other countries.
The study, “Falling Behind: Life
Expectancy in US Counties from 2000
to 2007 in an International Context,”
uses data compiled by the Institute
for Health Metrics and Evaluation at
the University of Washington. The
study calculated life expectancy in each
county for everyone, men and women,
and black and white men and women.
Along with the study. IHME has
released a data set on life expectancy
in every U.S. County from 1987-2007.
In that time frame, women overall
in Peach County made a slight gain,
increasing their life expectancy from
76.0 years to 763 years. Men did
Continued to page 3
ify students for graduation. Henson
further wrote that the Georgia High
School Writing Test would continue
as a graduation requirement the class
of 2017.
Henson wrote that EOCT scores will
count for 15% of a student's course
grade for the classes of 2012-2014 and
20% beginning with the class of 2015,
and at that date passing the EOCT will
not be a graduation requirement by
itself.
Henson's article also cites discrepan
cies in the graduation numbers cited
in Clark's email and those reported to
the state DOE for the annual Adequate
Yearly Progress report. That report
says PCHS in 2010 graduated 243 of
306 students, or 79.4%, just below the
80% requirement for AYP. The AYP
number is 14.6 percentage points lower
than the 96% number cited by Clark,
Henson wrote.
"... if the AYP report is correct and
Dr. Clark is claiming the Class of 2011
has a total of 230 potential graduates
with 47 or 20% not meeting all require
ments, what is the number that will be
reported in AYP when it comes out?"
Henson wrote.
She also disagreed with Clark on
the reason for the drop in graduation
Life Expectancy in Peach and Neighboring Counties, 1987-2007
[ [1987_ Men iPEACH 67.9 CRAWFORD MACON HOUSTON
67.4 67.2 70.5
White _ 70 70 77L4
j 70.2
[Bio cir 16378 N/A 64 66
Women 76 76J 7 75.4 T7TJ
j White 78.4 78.1 78.1 ""[78.6
Black 73.1 72.8 72.9 73.7
2007/Gain-loss
:M»n "72797+279 i 70.6/+3.2 7°.67+2.7 169.27+2.0 ‘ 74.2/+3.7
_ 72.47 " 175.47+3.7
pB- White + 2.4 72.37+2.1
6679/+3.1 N/A 66-4/+S.4 70.2/+42
Women T7O7+07 76.6/+0.5 j 76.2/+0T8~~ T 79.6/+1.9
White * 787AW 7827+0.1 80.67+i
Black t 73.67+0.5 73.37+0.5 73.87+0.9 79.0/ -0 9 { 76.37+ 2.5 .8 ‘
i
Source: Institute lor Health Metrics and Evaluation: http:/7wwwl>ealthmetncsan<i^
Chart compiled by Victor Kulkosky
percentage. She wrote that the PCHS
class of 2011 had three opportunities to
take the GHSGT before the reorganiza
tion of the high school into academies
in the 2010-2011 school year.
“What was most probably the cause
of the'expected drop in scores'was the
implementation of the four day school
week in the 2009/2010 school year,”
Henson wrote,
Henson summarized the lengthy
dispute between the Peach County
Schools and the state DOE over the
requirement for “seat time,” a measure
of how much time students are actu
ally in class. She wrote that she made
a presentation to the BOE in October
2009 explaining how, in her view, the
schools were failing to meet seat-time
requirements. She wrote that after her
presentation, she received an email
from Dr. Clark offering a 'half-baked'
plan to count 'before and after school
tutoring hours' as part of their plan to
meet the seat time requirement along
with no ringing of the tardy bell so
that no time for class change would be
deducted from the instructional day.
The practice of not ringing a tardy bell
during the school day is referred to by
Dr. Clark as 'seamless instruction,
(“Half-baked” is Henson's term.)
comfortably air-conditioned Senior
Center in South Peach Park in Fort
Valley. Collistine Slaughter was
cutting mostly white grocery bags
into strips, with a row of partial¬
ly finished creations lined up in
front of her. At other end of the
table, Alice Streeter was making
a hat. Somewhere, she had man¬
aged to scrounge up a lot of black
and gold plastic. Her hands moved
over, under and around the fabric,
sometimes blurring as she worked
the plastic through the strands of
the stiff material that would soon
become a hat.
At the same table, Irene Streeter
concentrated on the more traditional
craft of quilting. With quiet inten¬
sity, she sewed together a pattern
of squares and rectangles, alternat¬
ing between royal blue and small,
multicolored flowers. Behind her,
Elizabeth Collier worked on a quilt
of light pink with darker bunched
together one moment and then
spreading wide apart as she threaded
needles and pulled tight long strands
of thread.
Nearby, Willie P. Anderson had
the room all to herself. Her quilt,
which appeared to be doing double
duty as it draped warmly over her
waist and
Continued to page 7
Henson wrote that no waiver for seat
time requirements was ever applied for
or granted.
“The community was lead to believe
that the instructional seat time 'plan'
was all approved by the Georgia
Department of Education,” Henson
wrote. She cited an article in the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution from the
summer of 2010 that reported PCHS
seniors had been at risk of not get¬
ting credit until the state BOE gave
a waiver so the graduating seniors
could go to colleges that had already
accepted them.
Henson wrote that the schools are
still using the same approach to count¬
ing seat-time, even though state policy
“plainly states that class-change time
cannot be counted as instructional
time.”
Henson's article concluded: “So for
all our sakes, I hope that in July we
don't wake up to read on the front page
of a newspaper, 'Peach County High
School Denied Credit Due to Short
Seat Time Hours Again! - Will They
Ever Leant to Do the Math?”
Readers interested in Susan Henson's
complete article, which is about 2,000
words long, may email her at hen
sonse@bellsouth.net.