Education-The Main Topic of Montgomery’s State of the City and County Address
Education, was the big talk at Montgomery’s State of the City and County Address Thursday morning.
“We’ve got pockets of excellence but that represents about eight or nine thousand students,” says Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange.
Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange says it’s up to everyone to turn things around for the other 22,000 public school students.
“What we need to do is to make sure that through intervention, through charter, through governance, that we can get people leading this system to really care our kids,” says Strange.
“We can’t sit on the sidelines and continue to blame certain people when we don’t do our part. I’m a big believer that our schools need a lot more money,” says Montgomery County Commission Chairman, Elton Dean.
Strange says he supports the intervention and hopes elected officials, 3 to 5 years from now continue to support the system. Residents say the intervention is a start.
“I’m hoping the state will do their part but that doesn’t always happen. We’ll have to wait and see. With our legislators they could do something. They know they could do something but they are not moving as fast and our children are getting left behind and I don’t like that,” says Montgomery resident Teresa Vickrey.
City leaders say a better school system attract more industry, businesses, and the jobs that come with them.
“We get rumblings particularly from my competitors when they talk about Montgomery-check the education system from a military stand-point we want to be able to attract those quality officers, they all have got kids,” says Strange.
“It’s going to take a lot of people to do it so…My thoughts are if we could get everybody to do it-we can make it happen,” says Montgomery Resident Mac Hollie.
“The kids want it. If go in there and ask any one of them they’ll tell you I wish it was better,” says Vickrey.
Crime is another area that the mayor addressed. Strange says that violent crime is down 26 percent, non-violent crime down 10 percent, making overall crime down 12 percent.
