Muscogee Co.: School Budget Cuts Will Put Us In 'Dire Need'

The Muscogee County School District is scrambling for funding as they await the arrival of several thousand students of military families over the next two years.

School district officials say they’re going to ask the state legislature to exempt them from close to five and a half million dollars in planned cuts for the 2010 budget.

The US Army is closing down its Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and moving 30,000 troops and their families to Fort Benning near Columbus.

James Walker is Vice-Chairman for the Muscogee County School District. He says that move - part of the Army's international Base Relocation and Closure Program - will swamp their classrooms with over 4,000 new students:

"...and when you have that many children, we need school buildings; we need property, we need land to build the school's on; so the bottom line is that we need money to do all of this stuff. If we're going to be cut funds because the state doesn't provide a lot of money for building, we'll just be in dire need of money to get these things done, in order to accommodate the children that are coming."

Walker says the state's already cut close to four million dollars from their '09 budget.

But, the district is not taking any chances. They’re also turning to the Department of Defense, and federal and state departments of education to close the shortfall.

Right now there are 33,000 students in the Muscogee County School District.

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Secret Service investigating threats against Obama

The US Secret Service is investigating reports that high school students in western Georgia posted threatening entries against President-Elect Barack Obama.

The Facebook group is called Not My President. Some of its nearly 400 members attend Columbus High School.

A number of them allegedly made racist and possibly threatening comments against Obama.

Valarie Fuller of The Muscogee County School District:

"There's one thing to have freedom of speech. But there's a whole other thing when you start making threats against president elect – or against anybody. And I think that has to be taken seriously, and under no circumstance will that be tolerated in the school district per se, as far as making threats on anybody here. But like I said, when you have the Secret Service investigating – that's a pretty serious matter."

Fuller says that the school district and the police also investigate such reports.

The principal of Columbus High School refused to comment on the report or the ongoing investigation.

Click here for more GPB News coverage about Barack Obama.

School district ends free school meal

Muscogee County in western Georgia is stopping a free school breakfast program, citing spiraling food costs. The Muscogee County School District started the “Breakfast for All” pilot program last summer.

The program offered a free hot breakfast to the nearly 20,000 students of the district's 34 elementary schools. Just under 10,000 of the students at those schools took part in the program.
Jimmie Barnett directs the school district's nutrition program. She estimates that rising food prices will double the cost-per-plate to $2 dollars:

“Unfortunately, with the rising cost of food, we are going to have to end the program because the revenue we projected will no longer cover the cost of the program.”

Barnett says an existing meal program will still provide free and reduced-cost meals, depending on parents' means.

She says that children who have an at-school breakfast are more alert and get better grades.

Names of Columbus shooting victims released

Columbus Police Command and Control van outside of the emergency room of Doctors Hospital in Columbus, GA., where one of the shootings took place, on Thursday, March 27, 2008. (Dave Bender)

Authorities have identified two of the three victims of Thursday's revenge shooting at Doctors Hospital in Columbus.

Columbus Police Chief Ricky Boren identified the two as 44-year-old Peter D. Wright and 76-year-old James David Baker. A third person who was shot and killed in the attack has not yet been identified.

Wright was shot inside the hospital and Baker was shot and killed a short time later outside, in the hospital's parking lot.

Charles Johnston, who police say shot and killed the three, has been confirmed as having taught for the Muscogee County School District:

"Charles Johnston was a full-time employee for MCSD from September 1973 to December 1973 at Rothschild Junior High (Teacher's Aide) before resigning. In March 1997 he enrolled in the substitute training class and is last listed as receiving pay from the MCSD in May 2007 as a substitute teacher,"

Valerie Fuller, MCSD director of communications said in a statement released Friday.

Click here for more GPB coverage of the shooting attack.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report)

Students expelled over 'noose incident'

Hardaway High School (MCSD)

The Muscogee County School District (MCSD) has expelled two white male Hardaway High School students who allegedly made a rope noose and dropped it in front of two two black female students in an incident on Nov. 6.

The decision was taken at a two-hour MCSD tribunal held on Thursday, according to spokesperson Valerie Fuller. A statement released by Fuller said the board found the students guilty of:

• Rule 1 Disruption and Interference with School
• Rule 5 Verbal Assault, Physical Assault, Disrespectful Conduct of Students
• Rule 12 Acts of Misconduct
  

according to the parent-student handbook. The students have the right to appeal the decision.

Click here for previous GPB coverage of this story.

Two Columbus students suspended for 'noose incident'

Hardaway High School (MCSD)

Two Columbus high school pupils, both white males, are accused of dropping a rope noose before two black female students. The two female pupils are in their senior and freshman year.

The Muscogee County School District says the students have been suspended for ten days following the incident, which took place at the school's gym on Tuesday.

School District spokesperson Valarie Fuller says officials consider the incident, "intolerable."

"One of the students who tied, or apparently tied or made the noose, said he was making a 'painter's knot,"

Fuller says. She does not believe the two have a record of similar behavior at the school in the past, but added that she was awaiting confirmation. She says the two female students,

"...reported in the police report that they didn't feel any threat, of any sort."

Fuller stressed that the two accused youths were not charged with criminal activity.

Hardaway Prinicpal Matt Bell held a meeting with faculty to explain the details of the incident. Fuller says teachers discussed the incident with students during what the school calls a daily "Character Minute." Counselors are available for pupils, Fuller says, and

The accused white students are in their junior and sophomore year. They will appear before a panel of educators at a school district tribunal, on November 15.

MCSD Superintendent John Phillips told reporters:

"Obviously we are not going to allow that behavior in our school system for one minute. We obviously take this very serious and will not tolerate any act of this nature. Whether the intent was in a joking way or not, that is absolutely not acceptable in our school district."

According to the school's online Student - Parent Discipline and Guidance handbook, if the incident is considered a threat, it could possibly be considered as a "Level II," or a "Level III Violation," depending on the tribunal's conclusions. The handbook says that Level III violations may incur up to and including:

"Criminal prosecution

Assignment to Rose Hill Alternative School.

Expulsion from the Muscogee County School District (which could include permanent expulsion).

Click here for more GPB News coverage of educational affairs.

Columbus remembers 9/11

CSU students singing national anthem at clock tower.
(Dave Bender)

Columbus State University's historic clock tower rang out at noon Tuesday as faculty, students and city residents gathered to remember the grim events of September 11, 2001.

Tony Oxford, president of National Security Associates is a security specialist who spent several weeks working with recovery crews at the World Trade Center site after the attacks. He told GPB News that the recovery operations left a deep impression on him:

“It was a very humbling experience, a life-changing experience, and it gives us an appreciation for America, what America stands for and why we live here - and why we continue to fight to keep America what it is today.”

An honor guard of Columbus fire and law-enforcement officials stood at attention near relics of the attacks, at an extensive multimedia exhibition.

Honor guard at attention near steel remains recovered from WTC site. (Dave Bender)

A central display featured a torn and twisted steel column recovered from the base of one of the twin towers.

A table featuring documents and relics from the attack on the Pentagon was set out in memory of Marjorie Champion Salamone, a Defense Department employee who was killed in that suicide attack. Salamone grew up in Pine Mt., and attended Troup High School.

"God Bless Fort Benning" flag. (Dave Bender)
A support group called, "God Bless Fort Benning," hung a commemorative 26-by-32-foot American flag in front on the exhibit's venue at The Cunningham Center. 700 children of service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed the panels of patriotic messages.

Busloads of high school students from Muscogee County schools attended the events, which included educational displays; community public safety exhibits and demonstrations; videos, artifacts and stories from “Ground Zero” in New York; musical performances. A vigil at 8 p.m. and military fly-over at 8:15 p.m are to close the exhibit, according to a university statement.

Col State 9/11 page.