(UPDATE: The .5 millage rate increase and no modification days proposal passed 5-4 at the Tues. June 7 board meeting.)

A big thank you to local public education advocate and mom Michelle Solomon for the following guest post:

The Savannah-Chatham Board of Education is meeting on Tues. June 7 to consider the school budget and there are a lot of cuts on the table: furloughing teachers, closing schools, or eliminating band and athletic programs. They are also considering a proposal to avoid the cuts by raising property taxes a small amount – about $70/family depending on your property value, which is less than what most people are getting back because of the devaluations. It’s a small amount to pay for so much.

It would help tons if everyone who cares about the schools would send an email ASAP to the members of the Savannah-Chatham Public School Board saying:
– you support the .5 mil property tax increase that Savannah-Chatham Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Lockamy asked for:
– where you live
– your profession
– where your kids go to school
– your own thoughts on the proposed cuts (optional)

Even if your kids are in private school, or you don’t have any kids in school, it would help to send something – actually, it would probably help even more.

Here are the Board emails, plus an email set up to get copies of the letters that someone will hopefully bring to the Board meeting – you can just cut and paste this list: joe.buck@sccpss.com ; julie.wade@sccpss.com ; floyd.adams@sccpss.com ; alexander.luten@sccpss.com ; irene.hines@sccpss.com ; gregory.sapp@sccpss.com ; lori.brady@sccpss.com ; julie.gerbsch@sccpss.com ; ruby.jones@sccpss.com ; forsavannahschools@gmail.com

And even better than all that, if you can go to the Board meeting and speak in support of the schools, that would make a big difference. The meeting is 6pm Tuesday at Whitney Administrative Complex, 2 Laura St.

For background info on this issue:

Savannah Morning News on the tax proposal
Savannah Morning News on the proposed cuts
Savannah Morning News on property tax devaluations

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2011 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Development/Education, Outreach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.