Ecologist: Many reasons to keep Fernbank Science Center open

I think all of Al’s arguments have already been debunked on “DSW”.

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Wow, Dunwoody mom….if you’re so bitter about someone with advanced science degrees and 20+ years of experience making $90,000 a year, go back to school yourself. Maybe somebody like Mr. Tate will inspire you. It would certainly be an uphill battle though.

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[...] Atlanta Journal Constitution [...]

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Unfortunately, this is falling back into a yea or nay decision on a line item, rather than finding a better way to provide science enrichment; and that’s because this has only gone public with a bit over a month before the deadline. Between the calendar fiasco, and this budgeting nonsense, it’s quite clear that the school district is falling into the classic fallacy of leaving their homework to the last minute.

For example – how much of the value given by Mr Tate is dependent on the FSC building? How much of the cost comes from that? Is there a way to deliver 80% of the value for 20% of the cost?

For a science topic, there doesn’t appear to be much experimenting going on.

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I continue to be amazed at the people who want to save programs that benefit so few students in this school district. DCSD is broke, there are no reserves. Anything and everything that does not benefit EVERY student must take a back seat for the good of all students.

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Would Mr. Tate not willing(sic) to take his expertise into a real-life school building?

What part of “instructors are found in schools throughout the county teaching” did you not understand?

Maybe English classes should precede any interest you take in science.

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I’d love to see a schedule of the schools that Fernbank instructors attended, along with their lesson plans. I have asked for this several times – no response. Let me know when this is available and I will gladly provide my email address.

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As many have pointed out, there is nothing, instruction wise, in the Fernbank facility that cannot be moved to the regular school building. STT is a wonderful program from what I have heard. It should be available to more than 180 students per year.

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Mr. Tate is listed as Biologist II in DCSD Staff Directory. There is also no teacher certification information for Mr. Tate on the GPSC website. Does he actually teach or is he an administrator?

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The media reports that I have seen about Fernbank Science are so skewed. As a district we are facing at least a 73 million deficit this year. The last few years we were also looking at deficits. With each previous deficit regular class size was enlarged and kids and teachers did without.

Last year $50,000 was spent on the entire DeKalb budget for science. I remember watching the board meeting where someone asked if that was for the entire district’s supplies and yes was the answer.

Science enthusiasm begins early, by engaging the children. The science teachers being put back into the regular schools, working with children, exciting teachers, and turning a lack luster district science program would be a better use of funds.

DCSS can no longer be used by adults as a jobs program. We are at a 73 million deficit. Housing prices around Metro Atlanta and the country are not rising!!!!!!! Home values aren’t likely to rise for many, many years, if ever, as its very likely for home values to stay stagnant.

0.6 of one percent from a budget that is facing at least a 73 million dollar short fall, is a lot of money. We need to make severe cuts, so that our children are not placed in even larger classes. We need to make severe cuts, so that we can turn the quality of education around for ALL children and not just those lucky enough to have their name picked for a special program, magnet or theme school and other ways that DeKalb spends more money on one child over another.

Saying that Fernbank is only .6 of one percent of the budget shows that individuals don’t understand budgets, not having enough money to have wants, when needs are suffering. Saying Fernbank is only .6 of one percent of the budget, makes me question Mr. Tate’s intelligence. As we’re not talking five or ten dollars, but MILLIONS of dollars.

The cost of Fernbank is more than salaries. It’s also the transportation costs of busing students back and forth to the center. It’s the upkeep and maintenance of an older building.

For those calling Fernbank a “gem.” Have we been to the same building? Go to Tellus and see a true gem of a science museum. Tellus is a true gem. It has quality exhibits that aren’t decades old.

I really feel that adults are acting like teenagers when it comes to the DeKalb budget. We are in the hole a great deal of money, and no one is really sure how much money we really need to cover the budget. There are no reserves or savings. We are facing two law suits that could cost tax payers even more millions. We have two classes of education in the county. The kids that are able to get chosen for a program and those that are packed into over crowded classrooms in their home schools.

School choice, program choice, any kind of choice is fabulous when the funds are there, but WE ARE BROKE!!!!!!! We can no longer afford these fancy programs that a few kids/families have enjoyed.

Frankly, Dr. Atkinson is a pure disappointment because she is paid a very large salary to make difficult decisions and raising taxes and class size was the easiest decision that she could make and required little thought or planning. Leaders, are supposed to lead. Making difficult decisions, that aren’t going to be popular, and showing the public why this is the best way, is why she is getting paid so much money.

We all need to cowboy up and get over ourselves. ALL of our kids deserve smaller class size and cuts are going to have to be made. We employ more employees in the central office and administration than we truly need. We no longer can afford for some kids to have a more expensive education than others. We can no longer afford to not educate every child to the best of our ability, something that from my vantage point of a former teacher has not happened for some time.

Yes, Mr. Tate, Fernbank Science is something nice to have, so are Acuras, Mercedes, BMWs, and Lexus, but Fernbank Science and along with many other programs are no longer in our budget. I am very sorry if you do not want to go to a general education class, you have the right to look for employment elsewhere, just as the DCSS community has a right to want our tax dollars spent in a more prudent way.

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@Citzen, again, enough, with the PR rhetoric. Please provide me a list of the schools visited with dates and times and classes and lesson plans. This should not be such a difficult thing to do. Unless you can provide some “real” proof of what these instructors do on a daily basis, you have no argument other than the PR spin Marshall and his ilk have provided to you.

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This is public record. Instructors at FSC offer a variety of programs at all grade levels to all schools in Dekalb County. Teachers representing the schools, once a semester, schedule Fernbank Programs for their school. Each school gest equal representation in this scheduling process. Every day of the instructors schedule is filled. To simply list all this information would be impossible to do in this forum. All this information is public. I suggest you contact the Director of Fernbank Science Center and make an appointment to look over all this data to address your concerns.

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The Chattahoochee Nature Center, not only has on-site education programs, it also provides school visits that coincide with the GABOE curriculum requirements. GA Tech has an observatory do they not?

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There are so many other positions and services worthy of consideration for cuts that should precede any of those that provide direct face-to-face instruction. Perhaps the Center should place online it’s calendar of county-wide classroom instruction, indicating schools, instructors, grade levels, and lesson descriptions. It’s not the size of the center’s budget that is of concern. We simply need to cut every service, every position, that does not contribute to daily face-to-face instruction in a measurable way. Then, as our economic situation stabilizes or improves, we can consider what ‘extras’ are now affordable. Science instruction really isn’t an ‘extra.’ If the center truly provides instructors throughout the county for the full calendar year, and that is where 95% of the paid staff spend 95% of their time, then it is money well spent. If the %’s are much lower than that, we need to consider it for the chopping block.

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Are you aware that a physics teacher with 30 years of experience and a phD in physics does. Ot make $90,000 a year of the DCSs salary schedule – not even close to that.

See for yourself. Here is the DeKalb Teacher Salary Schedule:
http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/human-resources/teacher-salary-schedule

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If you want to trim budgets, perhaps you should start here rather than elminating actual educational resources.

http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/report-dekalb-schools-have-1307169.html

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How about making the center self funding? Below the gnat line we have Regional Youth Science Training Centers that operate by subscription so to speak. Each district chooses whether or not to participate and pays a proportional share of the operating cost. It is also my understanding, and I could be misinformed, that the centers themselves are expected to raise funds from grants and private donations. We have had the director of the center in our region speak to our Rotary Club a couple of times. Surely in metro Atlanta $4.7 million dollars can be privately raised by 56 motivated people.

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Bottom line, it can’t afford NOT to have Fernbank Science Center. The roots just don’t prepare for the post “great reset” of the coming century. Investing for the future always takes sacrifice. The ones who choose to do so are the ones who compete and thrive. The rest fall behind.

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Those of you who think the educational services offered by the Science Center can be maintained even without the facility are simply mistaken. The Science Center facility includes instruments (electron microscope, telescopes, spectrometers, and working student microscopes to name a few) which are necessary for teaching science at the modern day level. Several of the subjects (animal ecology, geology, ornithology, entomology) require collections of specimen in order to teach the variation in the natural world. Do you expect each school to be able to afford its own collection? Each individual school cannot have all this, and without 1 location accessible to all students in the entire county, the access to quality education will not be equal across the county.
Furthermore, the Science Center offers a few other programs that have failed to see much spotlight. The first is the science research library. The Science Center maintains a vast library of current primary source scientific literature. No other individual school library subscribes to mainstream science journals. This provides students with the chance to read real science and also allows for a crossover between the equally important skills of reading and science.
Secondly, the Science Center sponsors a vocational horticulture program for students within the county. This program has been directly involved in placing graduates directly into jobs. In a year when the President’s State of the Union address called for strengthening vocational training programs it would be counterproductive to lose this program.

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Al Tate’s wrong. If you look at the DeKalb Tax Assessor’s web site for the address of FSC. The propert owner is DeKalb County BofE – not Fernbank Inc.

If the FSC closes, DCSD still owns the property. Maybe Fernbank, Inc. would like to buy it?

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The entire budget process is an exercise in values judgments. I think most taxpayers would choose to cut 300 administrators as recommended by the consultants before closing the FSC because they value the FSC more than the administrators. I think most taxpayers would choose to reduce our overstaffed police/security department before closing the FSC because they do not see the need for such overstaffing. I think most taxpayers would choose to end lthe litigation that has cost us more than $37 million in legal fees before cutting the FSC because it seems doubtful the litigation will result in a winning situation for the school system.

But I think many taxpayers value not increasing class size over keeping the FSC because the Monday-through-Friday, school-house classes are more important than the enrichment offered by the FSC to most DeKalb County students, and the size of these daily classes affects many, many more students than the STT and AP classes offered at the FSC to a lucky few.

In spite of the budget documents relesed by the superintendent and board members, we just don’t know all of the possible areas to cut. It makes FSC — whose annual costs amount to, at a minimum, 6 percent of the $73 million that needs to be cut — an easy target.

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The electron telescope is a piece of outdated technology built in 1972.

FSC helps us attract no new employers and barely touches a small percentage of DeKalb’s top graduates.

FSC needs to not be the DeKalb school systems responsibility. If it is so terrific, raising private funds to keep it open, should not be a problem.

The entire system suffers if class sizes are raised. We cannot tax our way out of a 73 million dollar deficit.

Also, next year, there won’t be money for FSC either. DeKalb is now a poor county, one with far less $ than Fulton, Cobb or Gwinnett. In fact, the tax digests of Fulton and Cobb will start to grow long before DeKalb. Maybe one of those system’s want to take it over? Oh wait, they prefer to spend money on actually schools and in actual classrooms.

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I think the Science Center is fantastic. My son will be a senior in high school this fall and plans to major in biochemistry when he starts college. The Science Center was a big factor in what inspired him to go the science route. The county would be foolish to close it. We need to inspire more of our children to go into the hard sciences.

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More Value Judgements:

Results

Overall, the students in the STT program at the end of their senior year had a science GPA of 3.196 compared to the control group which had a GPA of 2.977, a difference of 7.36 percent. For the subgroup of Black Males, the mean GPA for the STT program was 2.887 in contrast to a mean GPA of 2.426 for the control group, a difference of 19.00 percent. The number of science courses taken by students in the STT program at the end of their senior year was 7.872 compared to 7.588, a difference of 3.74 percent. For the subgroup of Black Males, the mean number of science courses taken was 7.690 compared to the control group which had a mean number of science courses taken of 6.381, a difference of 20.51 percent.

As part of the study a questionnaire was mailed to students in the STT and control groups. The response rate for an initial mailing and a follow-up was 40.8 percent. A univariate analysis of variance for one-within and two-between factors for selected responses on the questionnaire resulted in week non-significance for responses grouped according to the week in which they were received. Among the findings of the questionnaire are 1) STT students are three times as likely to be employed full-time in science or a science-related field as the control, 2) STT students are almost twice as likely to have majored in science in college as the control, and 3) STT students are four times as likely to have received a science award while in college as the control.

Educational and Scientific Importance of the Study

As far as can be determined, there is no science program of this magnitude involving a partnership between a museum and a school system in the United States. Furthermore, the results indicate that the STT program could serve as a model for enhanced science education. Based on these results, a science program patterned after STT will be offered to inner city seventh grade students this summer. In addition, a qualitative research study to assess the STT program in the new Fernbank Museum by the DeKalb School System is under consideration.

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Audience
Fernbank’s primary audience is within a one hour drive and is essentially metro Atlanta, the 11th largest MSA in the United States with a population of 4,112,198 people. Of this area 37% is minority. Inner city Atlanta closer to Fernbank has a larger minority population. Fernbank is six miles east of the center of downtown Atlanta. DeKalb County Schools (one of the Fernbank partnership) enrollment is 76.6% Afro-American, 3.8% Asian, 6.4% Hispanic 2.1% multiracial and 10.8% Caucasian. It is a system where the minority is a majority. The Atlanta school system has a similar demographic. DeKalb and the Atlanta system are the two largest in the Metroplex.

Fernbank is very successful at reaching underserved audiences. Most local families have been to Fernbank if not recently, then when they were in school. As a result our image with underserved populations is a favorable one.

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The ONLY $4.7 million Mr. Tate cites is just in salaries. We need to add transportation costs – 3,200 buses a year – bringing children to their ONCE a YEAR visit to Fernbank. Is he aware that $5,000,000 a year (and that is very conservative) would buy us over 100 teachers certified in science with a Masters degree and at least five years experience teaching science every day in the classroom?

Half (49%) of our 8th graders do not know even the most basic science content or concepts. Would 100+ science teachers be more valuable than the 28 Fernbank teachers along with their 28 highly paid non teaching staff?

To those who say this will not be spent for science teachers, you are mistaken. One of Dr. Atkinson’s proposals is to eliminate 200 teaching positions by increasing class sizes by 2 and another proposition is to eliminate 300 teaching positions by increasing class sizes by 3. If closing Fernbank will allow us to keep 100 teaching positions (and it will) many of those will be science teaching positions.

We have around 700 teachers leaving the system each year. The 28 Fernbank instructors will be placed in the schools. The program does not require a musty old building that needs BTW $2,000,000 in renovations to serve students. The STT program only serves 90 tudents a semester out of 95,000 students will reach MORE students if the FSC instructors are housed in the schools.

This discussion is about jobs not sudents. The 28 highly paid non teaching personnel may be cut or if there is a vacant position they apply and qualify for, they may experience a salary decease. Some of the 28 teachers are not certified teachers (what pay scale are they on?). They can get certified. DCSS is not a jobs program. If there is a more effective way to utilize funds so that all students can achieve, the we have an obligation to implement that.

EVERY other metro school system with the exception of DeKalb including systems demographically similar and with more low income students have better science achievement and not ONE of them has a science center.

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John, your numbers demonstrate the excellence of the science center for those lucky few who get to take its classes. (And by the way, SEMAA is gone.)

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John

Who was in the Control Group? I suspect it wasn’t kids who didn’t get into STT, but rather a randomly selected group. Also, please remember that STT severs 200 a kids a year, a whooping 5 percent of a freshman class, if that much.

Are you a parent in DCSS? An employee? My child’s education is being negatively impacted by all the expenditures on frills in DeKalb. She is a science oriented kid, but finds the in-house field trips from the FSC instructors a waste and twice had her out of school field trip to FSC cancelled.

SEMMA’s funding is tenuous and the administration of the program horrible.

I want my child to have the same in-school science opportunities that kids in Fulton and Cobb do. That won’t happen with FSC still on the books.

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DeKalbite –

100 teachers with Master’s degrees and 5 years teaching experience will cost far more than the $5,000,000 you cited above. At just over $43k a year, benefits will cost approximately $14,500 a year per teacher bringing total per teacher cost to just under $60k . (Administrators typically use 1/3 of the actual salary as a means to figure the cost of teacher benefit packages.) The number of teachers would actually be closer to 85.

We are falling behind the rest of the world in math and science. Look at the above pay for a scientist who has chosen to teach as an example!!! When are we going to start valuing education and the ability to compete with the rest of the world. I do not think class sizes should increase but something like the bloated administration of DeKalb has GOT to change. And taxes will HAVE to be increased!!!

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Dunwoody Mom and others who feel the county should merely move the services offered by FSC to the local schools:
Jim Cherry’s vision of Fernbank SCIENCE center was for RESEARCH scientists to give students instruction and an insight into how research is conducted. This is outside the experience of most classroom teachers. In addition, to do some of that research, specialized equipment is needed, e.g., an electron microscope, a telescope, a forest laboratory. It is not possible to take the STT program outside of Fernbank because of the equipment needed…Unless you want to fund individual schools to have the equipment.
No one ever said that education is cheap, but we have dumbed things down enough. As Beck said above, “We are falling behind the rest of the world in math and science”. MOST teachers who teach math and science at the elementary and middle school level (THE most impressionable years) only know enough about the subjects to scratch the surface. Fernbank provides a way to extend this learning in a way that cannot be accomplished at the local school level.

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The last time I checked, a 36″ telescope (largest in the SE) was a bit out the budget for a typical school. Not to mention one of the largest planetariums in the country, an electron microscope, etc….
All of this equipment would be millions to replace or buy new…..and they are not transportable….
And, as stated, most of these programs are specialty programs that the average teacher is not qualified to teach.

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@josh6466, how many DCSD students visit the observatory a year? How many of those went on to careers in science?

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I did, and I know HOSTS of others.
I am sorry that you or your children were never sparked by the sciences, but I assure you that many children and adults are.

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@ John A

DCSS is over $70 mil in debt.
$70 million.

where is the money gonna come from to keep FCS open?
you got a spare 8-9 mil laying around to keep the doors open?

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sell the telescope to a private entity.

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@ Dunwoody Mom, et al….I believe anyone that can’t see the “fight” must be a person(s) that is running for a position??? You are clueless as well as ignorant!

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No, KC, what’s ignorant is increasing class size and keeping open an aging facility that serves few of DCSD students.

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Oh, and one more thing–when I attended STT, I was living in Lithonia. Super-elite.

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@ Krista

so, you got 5 mil to pay the bills for this year?
DeKalb doesn’t.

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Dunwoody Mom – Until DeKalb can somehow afford the resources to offer such programs in every school (which is really another discussion all together), why do we have to shut down the one place students *can* get this sort of exposure?

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Dunwoody Mom and Bootney Farnsworth,

The people don’t care about the debt DCSS is in. They don’t realize that even if DCSS cut out every extra person (something that I believe should be done immediately), that we still can’t cover the 73 million in debt we are currently in. Or that the 73 million is a very conservative number and it probably is much more. They don’t care that there is no money for a true emergency and that we’ll face this same problem again next year, and the year after.

I have come to the conclusion that parents supporting Fernbank, Montessori, DCA, Magnet programs, Theme Schools, and All choice programs, are as big of a problem as the school board and superintendent who don’t want to face the trouble we are in.

How big do the classes have to be before they are too big? How bad do the scores have to be, before we as a community demand better for our kids? Fernbank has fine programs, just as a BMW is a fine automobile, but I can’t afford a BMW and DCSS can’t afford Fernbank.

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There is a class, AP physics C (calculus based), that is offered after school at FSC. This class is offered at Chamblee HS, but in no other schools. You know why? Because there are not enough kids at any other HS to fill the class so it can’t be offered. The class at FSC is filled with kids from many schools in the county,who are headed off to MIT, GA Tech, U of Chicago, to name a few. There are other similar classes at FSC. The average science teacher in DCSS is not up to speed to teach these classes. Luckily, we have teachers atFSC who can teach these classes, open to ALL students in DeKalb high schools, and at a central location.

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“How big do the classes have to be before they are too big? How bad do the scores have to be, before we as a community demand better for our kids?”

DeKalb is truly a “Tale of Two School Systems”.

Most of the low achievement is in the low income Title 1 schools, mainly located in South DeKalb. A student in a Title 1 school in Gwinnett, Fulton, Cobb, Decatur City, Marietta City, Rockdale, APS, or Clayton has a much better opportunity to master the content of language arts, science, math and social studies.

http://dekalbschoolwatch.blogspot.com/2011/07/dcss-title-1-schools-and-ayp-shell-game.html

Who has stood up for the low income students in our Title 1 schools? Certainly not Fernbank supporters. They choose to completely ignore the fact that these students are the ones who have consistently not mastered the most basic science content. These students will not attain science achievement on par with the other metro systems from the one or twice a year FSC visits. DeKalb needs to make changes for the sake of our MANY low income students who are struggling with science content mastery.

Look at the 2011 science scores for DeKalb:
Science % FAILED by Grade Level
3rd grade – 30.9%
4th grade – 33.6%
5th grade – 35.2%
6th grade – 42.2%
7th grade – 31.9%
8th grade – 49.9%
Almost half of our 8th graders do not know the most basic concepts in science. We have experienced a steep decline in science achievement.

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Teacher Reader — If the teacher inspired me, or the content inspired me, I kept the materials from that class, whether it was STT or a class that took place in my local school. Learning has been important to me from a young age, and my parents encouraged my intellectual curiosity. The most valuable asset any school system has is its families–families who are willing to go to bat for their children. Families who encourage their children to value learning. I think it’s unfair to say that passionate parents are the problem. We need *more* passionate parents.

Passionate parents.
Passionate educators.
Passionate students.

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Dunwoody Mom – Did you read what Ms. Peterson wrote? They bring materials/equipment that aren’t provided at her school. Should Ms. Peterson purchase the equipment herself? Have you priced laboratory equipment lately? Ms Peterson never said that she only wanted quality science instruction for a select few.

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@ Dunwoody mom, my neighbor is FSC teacher and he spends at least 3 days a week in schools mostly in south DeKalb. He lugs carloads of equipment in his personal vehicle which he unloads by himself. While at these schools, he rarely has a break (no planning period) and he is rarely home before 7 pm. He goes to very single high school and middle school in the county, multiple times a year. His FSC colleagues do the same. I”m sure the travel records are all available at the science center.

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wow! @dunwoody mom. where did I say that I want poor quality? You missed my points. 1) Closing FSC means we loose the equipment. Put the microscope at Chamblee? You would love that. 2). If a FSC instructor sees 90 students (using block schedule numbers) and then teaches 25 AP students EVERYDAY, for a semester, they provide instruction for over 800 students. Cutting FSC will not put the money into the science classrooms. The 4.7 KK does not equal class size additions so its not a par trade argument.

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Krista Reed, I’ve taught classes of 36-40 kids before. It’s hard to inspire or to be inspired when you barely have enough room to write or have a seat. Unless you’ve had this experience you have no idea of what you are talking about. From a teacher stand point, how can one inspire or be passionate when you know what you’re being asked to do is impossible and even if you worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week, you wouldn’t be able to keep up. Teachers with over crowded classes are barely hanging on, and praying that their students learn something that year.

Large Class Size make for students, teacher and parents who become desensitized to learning and get turned off, because anyone in this situation knows that those in charge could care less about them.

No one should have any fancy programs no matter how good they are, until every child in DeKalb is in a classroom with a reasonable class size, so that a teacher can inspire, be creative, and do the job that they are paid to do. Currently our class sizes makes our teachers glorified babysitters who are very well paid.

No on is knocking the programs that Fernbank offers, it’s just that we are in debt and have much bigger problems in our district that need our immediate attention. Have students pay for these programs if they/their parents want them to take them, but stop taking away from the average class, so that a few get quality, while the majority get screwed. We cannot afford Fernbank or the other programs that cost more per student to educate and leave the majority of children in DeKalb failing.

A public school system is supposed to be EDUCATING ALL OF ITS STUDENTS, and not just those fortunate to make the cut for one of the many special programs offered in DCSS. As a county we can not be a tail of two education opportunities, the have and have nots.

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Every other comment is Dunwoody Mom…Do you have anything else better to do with your time??

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Enter your comments here

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Again, great program. Why do you need a separate building for this? Wouldn’t Ms. Huffman’s offerings be a good fit for the programs taught at Cross Keys? Also, a growing number of high schools are housing their own robotics programs.

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I am saddened that people can talk negatively about the great work that FSC does and not even know one thing about it (looking at you Dunwoody Mom). It obvious that many of these folks have not even met one FSC scientist/teacher. It is also obvious that many people have not even stepped one foot on the premises. It needs some updating, but falling apart, that is quite an exaggeration there.

The only valid point FSC detractors have made is the cost and can we afford it. The answer is yes, but we have to get our priorities straight. I cannot support any cuts to FSC until everything else has been cut. Our priorities should be 1) math 2) science and 3) reading. That is it. Everything else is fluff, though I can see some use for the Arts. I feel for teachers who have to put up with a class full of 30-40 students but you know what, college professors do it all the time (if the students are lucky) and some get paid LESS than what you make (looking at you Teacher Reader). Ever take a freshman/sophmore course at a major university? Try 100 students. It seems you are trying to blame FSC for your failings. I remember my great teachers in school and also remember my horrible uninspired one, you don’t seem like the former type.

I am a scientist and I cannot do the work the FSC faculty does. I think they deserve every penny for doing research AND inspiring kids. I know this because I have met Al, he is a passionate dedicated individual. He is running all around the county working with kids all over the district, giving classes, helping with science projects, fighting for kids against the bureaucracy, and more importantly inspiring them. There is no way, no way he works a regular work week. On top of all that he runs Exploring Nature with Your Child Class which runs from 6:30 to whenever it ends. The man is amazing. If indeed he gets 90K, he is a steal. My 8 year old son knows more about nature than I ever did before we met Al. It is truly a family event at my household and even my 5 year old loves his class. How exclusive is this class you say? All you have to do is show up, thats it. The truth is that people, like Dunwoody Mom, whine and whine but really know nothing. If you are so interested in the itinerary of Al Tate I am sure he can take out his little well worn appointment book, and give you a day to day hour by hour reading. You now where to find him, if you are truly interested, but you won’t because you don’t really want to know. You just like typing away, all day apparently.

About this curriculum idea and “does it meet standards” and so on and so on. What a joke. It is an invention to fool people who know nothing about science and provide jobs for administrators. All it breeds is group think and uninspired kids. Take a look at Science or Nature magazine (the premier scientific journals) and you will see opinion after opinion, study after study saying the same thing. What we are doing is wrong and urging our leaders to rethink how we approach science. The Chinese have moved on from rote memorisation to follow the US model, whereas the US has moved backward to follow the old broken Chinese model. Ridiculous! FSC is not a luxury.

We should be arguing on closing the center, but how can we get MORE kids to the center.

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I’m sorry that you feel the need to resort to personal attacks on me and others who are asking the “hard questions” about FSC. So far, we’ve received little to no hard evidence as to why FSC should stay open. So far, I’ve seen nothing of these FSC programs that could not be moved into existing facilities and the obviously qualified FSC personnel that could be assigned to our schools and provide many more students with the top-notch science experience that a small number of students have received to date. I make no apologies for my support to close FSC and move these programs into the schools, if appropriate and affordable.

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@ Fern, the demand is that EVERY student gets a chance to receive a quality education. Right now we are failing too many of our kids and they don’t have a shot if they are stuck in their neighborhood school in over sized classes. Do you see that other counties do not have such a center or such programs and yet, are providing a better quality education for the students as a whole?

If your child gets to take part in this program, than it’s not of importance to you. However, as a tax payer, I want all of our children to have the opportunity to a quality education. No not everyone participates in sports, but the opportunity is there and anyone can practice and suit up and try. This is not so when it comes to the choice programs. Many kids who qualify for these programs never have a chance because their names were not drawn in the lottery.

When you are 73 million or more in debt, more programs than Fernbank need to be stopped. And yes, all personnel who are not absolutely necessary also need to go. I want the district to be running in a fiscally responsible way, something that is not currently happening and hasn’t happened for some time. Raising taxes is not going to fix any problems, but just prolong the agony and make the agony worse.

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So, I guess FSC is saved. I am beyond disappointed in this BOE.

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Let’s all just take a deep breath and acknowledge that my wife is correct. Can’t any of you see that it is totally viable to move all of the existing equipment and manpower to the local schools, as well as train all of the teachers to teach the students a much higher-level curriculum than they are currently capable? I mean…come on………. Math and science can’t be THAT important.

Hey Honey…Is dinner ready yet??

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I apologise if I offended, Al is a good man, and I admire him as a scientist and an educator. Now with that off my chest, I would also like to bring up dismantling FSC.

Google “Core Facility”. You will see that any major and research based universities have core facilities. This is what FSC is. It is the core facility for Dekalb County Public Schools. The universities have found out very quickly that centralising equipment, maintenance, and specialised people to run them are far, far more cheaper than having duplication of resources. Which is what many people here are advocating. If the board truly wants to shut down our “core facility” than they should do a cost analysis. Is it really cheaper to buy x amount of dissecting microscopes, regular microscopes, petri dishes, media, etc. etc. etc., for all schools or have a centralised repository? Our Core facility, Fernbank Science Center. I think the answer will surprise everyone. Scientific equipment and reagents are very, very expensive. What luck that our county had the foresight to have our own “Core Facility”. There is definitely the transportation cost, and I think we should think and come up with a solution for it. I think belittling and caling FSC a luxury when they are an example of what is done right in Dekalb county is simply wrong.

Does FSC needs to change to become more cost-effective? Certainly. Restructuring? Yes. Dismantling it? No!

For any parents out there: Having met the faculty, I am certain if you need help they will help you. I certainly will not hesitate to ask for their help when the time arrives.

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Last comment here, but Dekalb Parent & GT Prof nailed it

G’night.

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@Dunwoody Mom – who said FSC is the only path to GT & MIT? Please read what I wrote again – without FSC, we will lose some kids who would have been inspired and prepared. I take it you were never inspired yourself to pursue a career in science?

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YAY!! Fernbank has been saved…Let’s move on!

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Tell that to the students who will be sitting in classes of 38 and the teachers who will be attempting to teach them.

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I am completely surprised at the attacks on the Fernbank Science Center. “It’s a luxury, we can’t afford it!” “It’s old, and need a lot of upkeep.” “it has old equipment, and who cares anyway?” “Oh gee, Of course Mr. Tate wants to keep his millions” (okay, so I paraphrase.)

It may not be cheap to keep the Science Center open, but it is certainly worth it. Cut funding in other areas – evenly – across the county. Administration jobs, or even a few extra high paying “executive” jobs should go before thinking of cutting one of the top Scientific learning centers in the State.

Yes, the County is in fiscal trouble, but they should have acted long before this to prepare for it. They used up all of their reserve this year, and knew it.

Unfortunately, the ones who say “hey, I only learned up to the 9th grade, so who needs to graduate?” (again, I exaggerate, but not much based on reading these comments) seem to be winning this fight. It is sad to see this trend, but. . . there it is.

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Again, closing FSC doesn’t mean that the science resources will be dispersed throughout the county to serve ALL students. It means either than the FSC teachers will be laid off, or that they will displace science teachers who already have contracts for the coming school year.

Either way, science and our children LOSE!

How about mothballing some of the exhibits at FSC this next year to save some $$? Sure, it’s not optimal but it’s better than the “all or nothing” options.

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To those who say that the $4.7 Million saved by closing FSC could be used to hire 100 highly qualified science teachers: hiring 100 highly qualified science teachers would indeed be wonderful. But it’s not going to happen. Given the budget shortfall, ZERO science teachers will be hired to replace or compensate for the loss of the FSC. Also, I do know a little about what goes on in the public schools, and I’ve met (and helped train) some science teachers. I have grave doubts that many highly qualified science teachers would want to teach in our schools without support and without resources. We do have some great, dedicated science teachers. And we have some “science” teachers who do not have the qualifications, and show up a half-day late (or miss entire days) for a training session that they are paid to attend. FSC helps support the good ones, and partially compensates for the others. Some people obviously see the FSC and the highly qualified staff as an expensive luxury. The truth is that good science education is EXPENSIVE – a facility like FSC makes good science education more EFFICIENT – more bang for the money.

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Fernbank may be saved for now but others will be axed. WATCH.

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“FSC enhances the experience for all students, and is one of the few doors that allow less privileged students to see science in a way that their home schools and regular science teachers cannot (because the schools and teachers lack the resources)”

So why are these our science achievement scores?
Look at the 2011 science scores for DeKalb:
Science % FAILED by Grade Level
3rd grade – 30.9%
4th grade – 33.6%
5th grade – 35.2%
6th grade – 42.2%
7th grade – 31.9%
8th grade – 49.9%
Almost half of our 8th graders do not know the most basic concepts in science.

And the students with the lowest scores – the low income students in the Title 1 schools.

Fernbank’s one or two visits a year will not help our low income students. This center is diverting funding from the science classrooms and ensuring the poor science achievement of our low income students. If their teachers had reasonable class sizes and more than 50 cents a child per year in science equipment and supplies, perhaps this achievement gap could turn around. The money spent on Fernbank Science Center would buy us 100 highly qualified science teachers. That is what would enhance the experience for all students.

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It saddens me to read the statements made here. It is because of these actions, statements and beliefs that Georgia has such an abysmal educational record. I really need to leave this state while i still have a mind…

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Again,I think FSC is a great program, I just think it should be funded in partnership with Emory and Ga Tech and/or through grants (e..g. self funded) and not funded through the DCSS general operating budget.

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“At best, if a partnership between the two could ever be salvaged, they would be able to only support a portion of what FSC offers.”

And that would be the 28 instructors – not the 28 admin and support.

Regarding displacing classroom teachers, many of the Fernbank staff are not certified teachers – including the author of this post – so they could not even teach in the schools except under a provisional certificate. The uncertified teachers would be paid half of what they currently make and have 3 years to get teacher certification.

Actually, DeKalb is predicted to have 700 teachers leave the system this year. Although Dr Atkinson is eliminating teaching positions by not filling a portion of these positions, there is still plenty of room to absorb the instructors that are certified teachers from Fernbank Science Center.

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Fernbank Science Center has had years and years to form a private partnership. In 2010 they were considered for cuts while hundreds of teaching positions in the regular classrooms were being eliminated. Once the Fernbank community rode to their rescue, it was business as usual. Absolutely NOTHING was done to transition the center to a non profit. It was so much easier to stay top heavy and do things the way they have always been done spending most of the science dollars in DeKalb while having NO responsibility for students’ science achievement.

Now it is two years later and the economy in DeKalb is so much worse, the students’ science achievement is so much worse and hundreds more teaching positions in the regular classrooms (many of them who were teaching science daily to their students) have been eliminated. And Fernbank is still not one inch further to being self sustaining.

Not sure what NPR has to do with this discussion unless you are implying not supporting every special program is synonymous with conservatism. I’m a liberal Democrat so please don’t frame this debate as liberal versus conservative. If you would go into the schools in south DeKalb and see the abysmal science education conditions for teachers and students, you would understand why cost centers that do not improve the achievement for MOST students need to be cut or eliminated. Science teachers in the regular education classrooms are digging into their pockets to provide equipment and supplies as they try to teach science content in increasingly difficult conditions. Contrast their compensation and support with Fernbank Science Center instructors, many of which are not even certified teachers.

Students have run out of time. They need reasonable class sizes with competent science teachers and abundant access to science equipment and supplies. Dollars need to flow to the regular education classrooms. Who will stand up for our low income students who so desperately need the individual attention and engaged learning that can ONLY happen in the regular education classroom with DAILY science instruction?

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What kind of low down creep writes something nasty about Al Tate and then signs someone else’s name? I am the real Mac Sudduth and Al is fine teacher and a good person. He’s also a much better writer than the villian who is too cowardly to use his or her real name.
William Mac Sudduth

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