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One more comment.

From the article "Meanwhile, school administrators are investigating themselves to see whether any staff member intentionally withheld information to cause some of the errors on the original report. State officials have not received any information that would indicate Gwinnett tried to defraud the state. "We just haven't seen any evidence of that," Bennett said. "No teachers have contacted us with a report of something that was not handled or reported by Gwinnett."

No information was withheld. The data were all in the database as a matter of public record. The report is submitted monthly, I believe, and the data had been 'coded' this way for some time. Bust them for improper coding, a decision NOT made by the Supt., but he is a big enough man to take the rap, instead of pushing it off onto his hapless 'Janet Reno'.

Bear in mind, also, that our local Public Safety leaders had an ax to grind here because the school has its own 'safety officers'. That dilutes the power and influence of other parts of the government. This is not all that it reads, especially as written by a reporter from the AJC.

Lastly, the Supt. is a 'Godly Christian' who has prayer with some of his staff members, goes to church, makes public references to God, Christ, and his faith. So, he makes enemies just by holding faith-based principles.

Two of the lingering problems of this "data issue" not mentioned in this article are:

1. Several principals and "resource officers" were deciding amongst themselves not to refer cases to the Gwinnett District Attorney for disposition. These practices would skew the results of the data entered into the indicident statistics beyond what was revealed in the article. This is being investigated by the DA.

2. George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" Education program will drop Federal funding for school districts that have "unsafe" learning environments. The Gwinnett county school district tried to cook the books to make it look like they are under the threshold for the "safe" learning environment and with the new data, Federal funding may be in question for 2004.

The root cause is that there has not been any managed growth in Gwinnett county for the last fourty years and developers do not pay enough impact fees to support the construction of new schools and other infrastructure to keep up with new housing. This is required brand-new schools to be built with extra-large parking lots - not for teacher's cars but for classroom trailers.

I am now paying in excess of $16500.00 per year for my sons private school education when his teacher at Trickum Middle (whose husband is a minister) told her class that democrats were not good christians and were doomed to hell (paraphrased). We are republicans and Christians just not Right-winged Jihadists. Soon after, at our first session with his teachers (within the first 9 weeks) we were informed that he was probably going to fail the 7th grade because he was likely unable to pass the Gateway (since it is practiced constantly during the year, I can't possibly imagine anyone failing). This was Ironic since we had to reschedule because he was in the top 10 in spelling of the entire school and was in the finals. He has done this 3 years in a row, as well as being the top 10 in geography. He was 11 and some of his his skills tested him at the 3rd year level in college. The problem is that he has a learning disability they would not recognize and did not want to deal with. My wife is an educational professional with 15+ years working in higher education, we were both totally dumbfounded at this highly politically and socially charged attitude. My son is truly the child that the Parkview cluster CHOSE to leave behind.