Payback to Cherokee schools by local lawmakers: Will governor provide the knock-out punch?
The chair of the Cherokee County Board of Education is asking the governor to veto House Bill 978, which is one of the most surprising and invasive pieces of local legislation this session. I am uncertain why a GOP-led body would violate its less government/local control mantra to meddle in a county with a darn good school system.
This bill has already drawn fire from SACS, the accrediting agency that oversees Cherokee schools.
I doubt Cherokee will get much help from Nathan Deal, who often takes a see no evil, hear no evil posture with the Legislature, but this bill does strike at the heart of much of what the governor professes to believe about the rights of local voters to decide their representation.
HB 978 has been described as payback to the Cherokee school board for nixing a charter school application, which again surprises me as there were legitimate concerns about the project.
I think the lesson here is that politicians of any party will violate their own foundational beliefs to make a point and punish an adversary. (I think in school it is called bullying.)
March 30, 2012
The Honorable Governor Nathan Deal,
On behalf of the Cherokee County School Board and as Chairman of the School Board, I again respectfully request that you veto House Bill 978, which I have learned was submitted to you for your signature on March 29, 2012.
As I have stated in my two previous requests, this bill is not the will of the School Board or the public.
The School Board last fall unanimously adopted a Legislative Program that was presented to the Delegation; the first priority in that program was to maintain the current governance model. The School Board, also at a public meeting last year, by a super majority, approved a reapportionment map and sent it to the Delegation.
There is no need for you to sign HB 978 and change the posts and the governance model. A 2002 court case over the same issue in Cobb County determined there is no legal requirement for the Legislature to reapportion when elections are at-large, as they currently are for our School Board. The Delegation’s efforts to redraw the lines to put two incumbents into the same post and to limit how many School Board members voters get to elect are not only obviously political payback, they are also unnecessary.
My greatest concern with this entire situation is protecting the future of our system and the families that rely on it. If House Bill 978 becomes law, it will threaten the past decade of success experienced by the Cherokee County School District, which has been achieved largely in part as a result of the current governance model; and the bill also potentially jeopardizes our School District’s accreditation, which currently is at the highest level attainable by a school system.
I respectfully request that you veto HB 978.
Sincerely,
Mike Chapman
Chairman, Cherokee County Board of Education
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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56 comments Add your comment
Don H
March 31st, 2012
9:37 pm
@Jane W — Yes, that’s the Democrat-Big Labor connection. You’ve nailed it. I think most union types were aware of it even before films like “Waiting for Superman” spelled it out.
Beverly Fraud
April 1st, 2012
4:54 am
To all the “Waiting for Superman” fans out there:
You want teachers to be Superman?
REMOVE THE KYPTONITE from the classroom learning environment and let teachers TEACH!
catlady
April 1st, 2012
8:16 am
IS there ANY HOPE that the voters of Cherokee, and the voters of this state, will spit out these corrupt legislators (and others) who are running this state into the ground? I don’t think so; the R is more powerful than actually THINKING about things!
Do the Dems do better? Maybe not, but they don’t CLAIM to be holy, don’t CLAIM to be for smaller government/less interference.
pleasebeserious
April 1st, 2012
11:45 am
Would someone please tell me what is so wonderful about the Cherokee County schools? I found them to be average at best. I have since put all of my children in private school. The teachers are much better and don’t complain as much as the teachers responding to this article. I guess you have to leave the south to really understand.
MovedFromGA
April 1st, 2012
10:10 pm
Charter schools are not always better. Look at what we have here in Florida: FOR PROFIT charters springing up all over. Many have had to be closed down due to the terrible conditions, after they received plenty of taxpayer money. One school in Orlando was so mismanaged that it didn’t even have textbooks for over half the year. Lunch was pizza in boxes brought in each day and thrown on the table. The students lost almost an entire year’s worth of learning at this school. Most of the “for profit” charters want to open where conditions are best (like Cherokee County!). This way, they can siphon off the best of the best students. If charters are the answer, then why do they often get even lower standardized test scores than the nearby public schools? I used to live in Hall County and one of the charters there (Sardis) was much lower CRCT scores than the surrounding schools. The same thing is shown in my current county in Florida (with the for-profit charter AND the local charter conversion elementary school). FL also has the A-F school rating sytem. The for profit charter here (Charter Schools USA) scored a “C” for the first 4 years it was open! (meanwhile, it enrolled almost zero free/reduced lunch or minority students).
MovedFromGA
April 1st, 2012
10:23 pm
By the way, we saw the same kind of “payback politics” here in Florida regarding one of our high performing school districts. Lawmakers tried to slap them down by banning them from closing schools. Talk about removing local control! How can we cut billions from education in Florida and then turn around and try to micromanage from Tallahassee? By the way, that district (Seminole) was rated 7th best in Florida on our standardized test scores (FCAT). I think they know what they are doing! And of course, the charters are desperate to get in there. If the charter can’t even produce a valid business plan, it should go back to the drawing board. We had one trying to open in my county, but they can’t even submit a site location in over a year! Meanwhile, we are funneling millions in tax dollars for construction to charters, and zero once again for the public schools (from the state of FL). There is big money to be siphoned off from education. The next opportunity is testing. Pearson testing in FL is making hundreds of millions from our new Value-added teacher eval system. We are developing a test for every single subject in every single grade. Think about the cost to develop those tests AND then to update, administer, and score then every year (ALL funded by the taxpayer). We’re talking about kindergarten students being forced to take a multiple choice TEST for PE. If they don’t score high enough, the coach is FIRED. Folks in GA, please keep an eye on this stuff. Our youngest learners in FL are being overtested (7 tests a WEEK in 1st grade now). My teacher friends say the kids are “shutting down”. They are fed endless PowerPoint presentations (first graders!) and just have to memorize for the BIG test. My son is in K and he is already drilling multiple choice questions. I really want to move back to GA to escape this testing madness, but there really is nowhere to hide! Oh and lawmakers in FL just changed the scoring in December so that HALF of our 3rd graders now will FAIL the FCAT in April. Yep, we had “too many passing” so now we need to label more kids (and schools) as “failures”. Funny how FL is still in the toilet with jobs (all we have are service workers). Nobody wants to locate a business or HQ here – we are a joke!