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doing in educating our children. There are plenty of those factors
out there that demonstrate that we are not doing as efficient job
as we ought to be doing, and if we don't do a better job, then
those factors are going to continue to increase and they are going
to cost the taxpayers a lot more money. To me, he said, that's
competition enough.
Doug Madison said low income individuals cannot afford private
schools. That's the discrimination you are seeing as we speak, he
said. It was questioned if low income would be able to afford
private schools with a voucher system.
Skip McCall said he thought we have to look at schools that
are effective, whether they are private or public. We need to
learn to know and take some of their ideas and concepts and apply
them to their system and help them to become more effective and
more efficient. He thinks the competition is there, he said,
against societal problems and social ills that come with people
being uneducated.
Doug Madison said that analogy is a lot like saying that J. C.
Penney is in competition with Joe's Bar and Grill because they are
both after sales. I don't think there is parallel to the
com
have a direct
competition you are etitor to the Iredell- talking
aeYou
sville SchoolSystem. The Christian
school is not a competitor to the Iredell-Statesville School System
because it is very select in what it can do, and the kid that goes
to the Christian School, the parents have already paid their taxes
and then they are paying an additional tuition to send them there.
That is not competition. It is very limited as to who can actually
afford to do that.
Mr. Long said that it was their job to make a public school
system that everybody would want to go to, not to have one that
everybody doesn't want to go to.
Mr. Boone used an analogy of General Motors to make a point
about competition in the schools.
Mr. Long said the reason people are going to the private
schools is not because of better education but because they want to
segregate the rich from the not -so -rich. Commissioner Boone said
a voucher system would allow the not -so -rich the same option that
the rich have now. Mr. Long did not think there was any way to get
around the system to compete with the cost. Mr. Boone said the
Christian school is doing it for about 1/3 the cost of the public
school. People are going to those.
Commissioner Johnson said he would take issue with something
that has been said about education solving a lot of the problems
like teen-age pregnancies, and that type of thing. There was a
discussion of what is moral decisions and economic decisions.
Commissioner Johnson said there has been a lot of talk about
re -instituting prayer in public schools, re -instituting morals back
into public education, and as a private citizen, if there is some
legislation that allows prayer in public schools and they do allow
you to display the Ten Commandments and they do allow to teach
these things. Are you willing to provide that moral leadership?
Mr. Long said the county commissioners would have to pay for it.
Mr. Long said the school system has gone right up to the wall
with prayer. They have done everything they can to allow prayer in
school. If the wall is pushed back some more, they will be right
up against it again. Commissioner Boone said he thinks the school
system has done all it can with the prayer situation, given what
they have had to work with.
Skip McCall said that by legislating morality, this country is
so diverse in its perception and interpretation of morality that