I was invited to speak at the 2008 Annual Fall Conference at the Michigan School Board Association (MASB) in Traverse, Michigan. I am a member of the veteran’s school board, author of several books on leadership and school management, and also a former columnist and editor of the American School Board magazine. I talked about the art of school management, and my presentations were well received.
I was born in South Georgia and sent there my whole life. I have no draw, but I have a slight accent; slightly at home, perhaps more pronounced (by comparison) in Michigan. After one of my performances, I collapsed, wandering into the resort's gift shop. It had an outstanding Life choice - a good good, and some of them were even sold. I enjoyed watching and said, “No, thanks” to her suggestions to help me. In addition to these three words, I only said the following: “Yes, I need XL” and “Thank you for your help”, until I started to leave.
She said, "You have a wonderful accent."
"I have no accent at home, just outside the South."
She laughed and asked, "Are you from Tidewater?"
Telling about the conversation later in Georgia, my youngest son of my sage-acre suggested that my accent was more “Okefenokee, that Tidewater”. He did not mean it as a compliment.
My ancestors were some of those early English settlers in the Tidwater Virginia region, but they were as restless as they had long been to the South and the West. For Michigan’s ears, I suppose one southern accent sounds like another. However, for the Southerners, “swamps” and “knolls” are akin to and are NOT an accent you want to talk with.
Accents are different, but the problems that school districts face are very similar. Georgia and Michigan have a mixture of large urban areas (Detroit and Atlanta metro) and rural areas. In both countries, large urban areas receive the lion's share of attention (and funding). Rural school districts are struggling with all of America. Our politicians neglect rural students, this neglect is not benign, it translates generations into poverty. Although none of our leaders voiced any unkind intentions, their actions were consistently formulated: "These children have no meaning."
They matter. Their children matter, and their grandchildren matter. Nevertheless, we inexplicably follow the course that modern Snopes, Benseys and Waldens will create. (These are “white trash” southerners appearing on the Eskin Caldwell highway). We can do better, and we should.
In recent years, the boundaries of one or our most forgotten regions have changed. This is the Wiregrass region, and at an early stage it covered almost all of southern Georgia, most of southeastern Alabama and Panhandle Florida. Some today believe that these are just a few districts in the extreme southern part of our state, as well as several in Alabama and Florida. Boundary lines that will satisfy the majority begin just below Macon, Georgia, following the Line Fall westward to Montgomery, Alabama, turn south towards Panhandle and then east to Lake City, Florida. There, the border turns to the north, running in general proximity to the river Suvanni and the western edge of the swamp of Okefenoki. In an inaccurate place over Oquefenokia, the border bends northwest and heads back to Macon.
There are no major cities in this region, but Dothan, Enterprise, and Troy in Alabama are large population centers; Albany, Americus, Thomasville, Tifton, Valdosta and Vidalia in Georgia; and Marianna and Tallahassee in Florida. Everyone — and everyone in between — suffers from extremely high levels of poverty. Today, as in the whole history of Georgia, the Wiregrass region is probably a place of relative isolation, in which there are no economic opportunities, especially compared to the “other Georgia” - the Atlanta metro and northern counties.
Aristida stricta, native tall grass, than for eons covered with rattlesnakes and quails, now protects children with disabilities from the point of view of Atlanta politicians. Their relative invisibility makes these children vulnerable and easily ignored. Even in the informal case that all their parents, grandparents and other relatives were on Election Day, their presentation could not come close to that of a typical child from Northern Georgia. So, as a regressive or fixed tax, which is more burdensome for the poor, the “savings savings” Georgians continue to cause damage to rural systems far more than their rich counterparts in northern Georgia. And no one cares.
Maybe we should create non-commercial and commercials, such as other areas of the third world? With photos of cute, wide-eyed children and inscriptions that read: "For just a dollar a day, you can help the enchanting child" or "Order Grande instead of Venti this morning and use the difference to help bring up the child from" I guarantee that we are lucky more than approach politicians. With increasing impunity, since they left him, they systematically shift most of the state’s constitutional obligation to educate their pupil to a local taxpayer. They did not pay attention to the voters and ignored the location of the most vulnerable citizens of Georgia.
Never before have I considered my condition cruel or insensitive, but I cannot lose any other explanation. How else can we explain intentional neglect — especially when the consequences of such neglect are more significant than they ever were? Our actions (or transactions) today will lead to significant consequences in the future.
Similar situations exist in our country. Whether our students participate in Tidewater, Okefenokee, Yat, Boontling, Appalachian English, Florida Cracker, Wawarsing, Yooper or any of the dozens of regional dialects, funding for public education has reached a critical point. We must speak with one voice — with one wonderful combination of dialects — and demand that our politician fulfill his moral and constitutional obligations to educate our children.
