“Charter school amendment is the epitome of small government.”
Many folks are submitting opinion pieces on the Nov. 6 charter school amendment vote. I am going to start running these pieces as the vote draws nearer.
Here is one in favor of the amendment from Virginia Galloway, state director of the Americans for Prosperity, a group formed in Georgia in 2006 “to promote economic freedom, less taxation, spending and regulation at the local, state and federal level.”
By Virginia Galloway
The State School Superintendent claims that he is conservative and is opposing the Charter School Amendment on Nov. 6 because it creates bureaucracy. I’m a firm believer in limited government and work hard against the encroachment of big government policies on our daily lives. And if you’re like me, you know it happens all too often.
But the simple truth is, the charter school amendment is the epitome of small government because it ultimately gives parents more power and freedom to choose the best education for their children.
The bureaucracy Barge refers to is the charter school commission, declared unconstitutional last year by a 4-3 vote of the Georgia Supreme Court. The commissionallowed groups of parents to start their own public schools, if they could submit a viable charter plan. Before the commission was created, charter schools were rarely available in Georgia because local school boards routinely turned down virtually all applications.
At its peak, the commission had seven unpaid commissioners and five paid staff. The commissioners were from all over the state and were not compensated for mileage to and from their meetings in Atlanta. At one of its last meetings, the commission voted to cut its revenues by one-third.
That doesn’t sound like big government to me. In fact, Washington, DC, should take a lesson from the Peach State’s former commission.
More importantly, what if you send your child to a traditional public school? What bureaucracy manages your child’s education?
“Local” public schools face oversight from the U.S. Department of Education, the Georgia State Department of Education, regional education offices, local school boards and their central office staff, and local school councils.
There are over 4,000 employees at the U.S. DOE. In fiscal year 2011, the state DOE had about 1,200 employees who were paid a total of $50 million in salary and almost $2.5 million in travel costs, according to open.georgia.gov.
Additionally, local school systems typically have 5, 7, or 9-member school boards. These boards employ administrators in their central offices and administrators in individual schools. According to the DOE, school systems in Georgia spent a total of $1.6 billion on general administration and school administration. This works out to $1,000 per student.
(Fiscal Note: If school boards could cut these administrative expenses by 20 percent, then we could give every Georgia teacher a $3,000 raise or give property taxpayers some relief. According to the Georgia DOE, per student spending on public school bureaucracy has more than doubled between 1996 and 2011.)
Finally, there are RESAs, Regional Education Service Agencies. There are 16 RESAs in Georgia.
RESAs are a layer of government between the state DOE and local school systems. RESAs have directors whose salaries average $100,000 and received about $4,000 per person in travel, according to open.georgia.gov. Not counting teachers of special needs students in regional schools, RESAs employ over 600 employees who are paid $27,000,000 in salary and over $1,000,000 in travel.
If your child attends a traditional public school, there are about 7,500 bureaucrats plus another $1.6 billion in local bureaucracy governing your child and your child’s teacher.
Bureaucracy by definition is a system of administration marked by rigidity, red tape, and proliferation. That makes the current traditional school a bureaucratic nightmare.
It’s apparent why Georgia’s chief school bureaucrat does not want to give you the option to send your child to a charter school by recreating an alternate authorizer— it removes a fraction of the power of his massive, multi-tiered bureaucracy.
Vote for small government and getting government out of private decisions, like how to best educate your children. Vote yes for the 5,000 plus Georgia students on charter school waiting lists. Vote yes for the charter school amendment on Nov. 6.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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73 comments Add your comment
Pride and Joy
September 24th, 2012
9:42 pm
John Konop you ask a good question “But why would anyone support an unelected board to make financial decisions over a local school board accountable to voters?”
Because some local BOEs are criminal and idiots. Look at the debacle in Dekalb, Clayton and APS. Those elected local BOEs can’t educate kids at 14K per kid per year. THAT is a crime.
John Konop
September 24th, 2012
9:46 pm
Prof,
No problem, you a very bright person who post commen
john Konop
September 24th, 2012
9:47 pm
no probl
John Konop
September 24th, 2012
9:48 pm
Prof,
No prob
Pat and Mike
September 24th, 2012
9:52 pm
@3schoolkids
Chamblee Charter High School, Chamblee, GA is a charter school whose charter petition was completed by a group of parents and teachers. It took about a year to complete and was overwhelmingly approved by parents and teachers, separately, in a secure secret ballot. Students in Chamblee Charter High School were previously enrolled in a local public school serving the community: Chamblee High School.
John Konop
September 24th, 2012
9:55 pm
Prof,
Sorry I am having problems with my iPod. My point is that this issue is not as simple as pro charter vs anti carter. There is an emerging group that is pro tax payer, and this amendment has created alliances against it from non traditional partners via how it is set up with lack of controls. I am sure as bright as you are, you get my point. Please do keep posting comments, they are very thoughtful.
alpharetta mom
September 24th, 2012
10:07 pm
Virginia,
Looks like you had to make a deal with the devil (our bi-polar legislators) to get what you want – complete privatization of education, on this one. How are the bumbling idiots doing for you? Have they even read the bill? Can they defend the non-substance in it? Could you please tell them to stop telling everyone that there is not a current appeals process for charter parents denied by a local board. Could you please tell them to stop saying that a charter petitioner needs local denial before applying to the proposed commission.Could you please tell them to stop yackking about parental involvement when the phrase isn’t even in the bill – it was in the last one. Could you please tell legislators who want welfare recipients to pee in a cup that telling everyone that they now feel they should all have their own school regardless of zipcode sounds like the big lie that it is? Could you please pass the word along that we actually still remember that we have the right to vote and make a difference in our communities now that we can see very clearly what the alternative is? Please Virginia, we are just not buying it.
long time educator
September 24th, 2012
10:43 pm
The solution is to get a new school board. That is the epitomy of local control. Run for school board. Convince the public with the logic of your ideas. It subverts democracy, that when you don’t want to go to the trouble to use the democratic system already in place, or your arguments are not convincing, you look for a way around the system. I find this deplorable in the same way I found Obama’s back door “Dream Act” deferment a very undemocratic solution because he could not convince Congress to pass a law.
crankee-yankee
September 24th, 2012
11:26 pm
Her statement is the epitome of twisting facts to make a political point. How else can you equate state control over a local district as “local control”?
Teacher Reader
September 25th, 2012
8:27 am
After yesterday’s vote by the school board of DCSS to give 4 administrators a raise after they voted against it in July, I am 100% for charter schools. At least if a charter school pulls the stuff that the DCSS pulls, they would only be in existence until the end of their charter which is 5 years in length. There is little that can be done with the incompetence that makes up DCSS. Also, if a charter school doesn’t have the kids to support it, which will usually happen because it’s not a quality school, it will be forced to close.
Our public schools need competition. I watched charter schools open around the Pittsburgh region and watched school districts finally improve because the charter school offered a far superior product. And no the charter schools didn’t get all the good kids, in fact the opposite is true, they received many kids with disabilities and kids who were constantly in trouble because the schools weren’t meeting the kids needs.
Another view on charter amendment: Goal in Georgia ought to be cooperation, not competition. | Get Schooled
September 25th, 2012
9:25 am
[...] Yesterday’s piece urged support of the amendment. This essay argues the opposite. [...]
John Konop
September 25th, 2012
10:33 am
Is this what we want? Should the goal be to make it easier to set up a charter school?
….Florida’s charter school law, which makes it easy to open charter schools and difficult to monitor them, has spurred a multimillion dollar industry and a school boom — all while leading to chronic governance problems and a higher-than-average rate of school failure.
Nationally, about 12 percent of all charter schools that have opened in the past two decades have shut down, according to the National Resource Center on Charter School Finance & Governance. In Florida, the failure rate is double, state records show.
The bulk of charter school problems have surfaced in states like Florida that have “a large number of charter schools and rapid growth,” said Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University who studies the charter school industry. In many cases, Miron said, the agencies charged with oversight were underfunded.
Experts say some of the problems, both financial and academic, could be avoided if charter school authorizers were stricter in issuing school charters. (In Florida, local school districts and colleges can authorize charter schools.)
“Florida has one of the most liberal laws as far as establishing a charter school goes,” said Jeffrey Grove, a research associate for the nonpartisan Southern Regional Educational Board.
Florida law also is hands-off when it comes to existing charter schools, giving operators the power to run schools with little oversight from the state or local school districts. Districts can close a charter school, but only if the school is in extreme financial distress or chronically low performing. Other than that, there is little a district can do when academic, financial or governance problems arise.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/10/v-fullstory/2541157/how-some-states-rein-in-charter.html#storylink=cpy
AlreadySheared
September 25th, 2012
11:25 am
This whole discussion is engendered by a bs framework. The tax money paid to educate a kid should follow the kid – to his local school, a charter school, a private school, wherever.
Imagine the state of college education in America if federal and state funding for a student was locked into the college or university the student lived closest to – ridiculous.
Ros Dalton
September 25th, 2012
12:08 pm
Ugh. Corporate shills spreading doublespeak about more government minus local accountability being equal to smaller government? You know there’s a lot of money at stake when they start trying to convince you that ‘up’ means ‘down.’
Let’s face it, this amendment will pass because the average voter is completely uninterested and votes ‘yes’ by default. Precedent makes this clear. There’s no need for this kind of humiliatingly disingenuous advertising. Yes, all OUR schools are going to lose a little money so the Lt. Governor’s nephew can reap a few bribes, but not as much the state wonks have been stealing away every year for a decade anyway. Now they’re using the very inadequacy they created to justify removing more money from the system!
Education funding is being destroyed in the state of Georgia. I personally hope the score drop with the adoption of common core is going to shock some lackadaisical parents, voters, and school administrators into doing something meaningful about it. This legislation is disappointing but won’t have as big an impact as it appears, it really just gives a few of the politician’s favorite friends the chance to hand out some candy in the form of a few million dollars to corporate clients and what’s a few million more mismanaged when education is underfunded by billions?
2kidsinschool
September 25th, 2012
4:51 pm
I can’t wait to vote no on this in November. Taking control and money from our local schools to the state of Georgia is certainly a disaster in the making. Isn’t their too much bureaucracy already?
Virginia Galloway
September 26th, 2012
12:03 am
First of all, those of you who refuse to use your real name are so very brave for the personal attacks on those of us who do. I hope you’re proud. “Prof” and others, I’ve lived in GA all my life, paid school taxes for the entire 18 years I homeschooled my children at my own expense, and have worked in the GA chapter of Americans For Prosperity for 6 years. I’ve been involved in the school choice movement in GA for two decades. So who’s a “carpetbagger?” How silly. Let’s focus on doing what’s best for GA students – even if our opinions differ on what that looks like.
One Teacher's Voice
September 26th, 2012
12:16 am
Foolish Teachers and Parents…You keep voting for them…..I did too…but never again….
Here is what your Republican government reps. have done to ‘make education better’ for the past ten years.
1. Take more money out of the public schools. That will make them better.
2. Increase the class sizes of public schools. Those test scores will go up and education will improve.
3. Have more testing. Those tests will make the teachers better, and who needs to teach when we have day after day of testing, meetings about testing, and test preparation.
4. Add laws and rules that make the public schools worse and then blame the teachers when students don’t perform well on the tests that they want to use for a basis of pay and school performance.
5. Use those same scores to explain failing schools to usher in charter schools.
IT’S BRILLIANT! They are heading towards the outsourcing of teachers and public education by the decisions that they, your Republican representatives of Georgia, have made for the past ten years.
We keep voting for them, and they keep damaging the classrooms of our kids.
I voted straight Republican in the last election as I have for every election, but it will never happen again.
We are being duped by the Republicans WE are voting into office.
John Konop
September 26th, 2012
1:56 pm
Virginia,
In Cherokee county we obviously have good schools. The schools board rejected the charter school because it did not offer any material extra options for education in Cherokee and also other concerns…..
The state overruled the local school district. We than had an election and the pro charter candidate lost for chair of the board seat by a lot, Janet Reed a school board member that rejected the charter school won.
As a said I get how charter schools are needed in some areas, and if they offer something extra. But if the local voters say no, and we have good schools, why should the state be able to force in a charter school? This makes no fiscal sense, especially when we have other places in the state that really need the help!
Cherokee SAT Scores Surpass State, Nation
…..The Cherokee County School District had the highest SAT district average in the state for the 2011-12 school year….
http://canton-ga.patch.com/articles/ccsd-s-sat-district-average-highest-in-georgia
bigbill
September 26th, 2012
1:58 pm
I am concerned that the description of Americans for Prosperity is described above as merely being: “a group formed in Georgia in 2006 ‘to promote economic freedom, less taxation, spending, and regulation at the local, state, and federal level.’” It is more, so much more. It is a front for the billionaire radical right-wing Republican (and libertarian) Koch brothers. I respectfully suggest that folks read the following report from a unit of the Center for Media and Democracy to obtain a better perspective on who Americans for Prosperity, their Georgia state director Virginia Galloway and the Koch brothers are and what they are up to:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Prosperity
bigbill
September 26th, 2012
3:28 pm
Virginia Galloway certainly has the right to express her views. And we certainly have the right to ask questions about Ms. Galloway, the organization she works for, and what this organization has been doing since it was founded. I refer to the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity. Virginia Galloway is the director of Americans for Prosperity – Georgia. Art Pope is the national director for Americans for Prosperity. This right-wing, arch-conservative Republican North Carolina millionaire businessman has had a huge impact (one could argue, a huge negative impact) on the concept of traditional public schools and universities in North Carolina. He was outraged over progressive (and successful) efforts to address severe economic disparities that plagued one large public school system in North Carolina, the Wake County School System. This school system is still reeling from Pope’s influence in engineering a major political change in the political makeup of the school board and the undoing of efforts to alleviate economic disparities holding back the advancement of so many students from lower income families and neighborhoods. Pope undertook to change the political makeup of the board from Democrat to Republican. He succeeded. What next occurred is described in a 2011 New Yorker Magazine article about him as follows: “Last year Pope garnered national attention when North Carolina Democrats accused Pope of engineering, in 2009, the re-segregation of public schools in Wake County, which includes Raleigh.” The Republican-controlled board hired former Army General Tony Tata to oversee this process. When the voters reinstated a Democrat-controlled board last Fall, they tried to work with Superintendent Tata to undo much of the damage done under the Republican-controlled board. It did not work.Yesterday, the Wake County Democratic majority on the board voted to terminate his contract. Tata, a former Army General and Republican Fox News political commentator (also previously CFO of the DC school system under Michele Rhee), apparently was reluctant give up his determination to push the Republican right-wing “education reform” agenda so popular with the Koch brothers and Virginia Galloway. The New Yorker article about Pope is entitled: “A Reporter at Large – State for Sale – A conservative multi-millionaire has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds.” by Jane Mayer, October 10, 2011.Click here for the article:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer
I urge folks to read this article and learn how the Koch brothers and their North Carolina multi-millionaire pal Art Pope (now national director of the Koch brothers AFP and thus Virginia Galloway’s boss) have cut a swath of confusion and mistrust in the North Carolina world of public education. Do we need this in Georgia? No, we don’t. Tell Virginia Galloway, the Koch brothers, and AFP that we vote NO on the Georgia charter school constitutional amendment and the AFP program for “education reform.”
bigbill
September 26th, 2012
3:40 pm
To follow up on my two comments on AFP’s Virginia Galloway, the Koch brothers and Art Pope above, I cannot recommend strongly that folks watch this eleven minute excellent documentary on the Koch brothers attempts (working with Art Pope) to desegregate the Wake County school system. Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJhjCbwo8
It speaks volumes.
Dianne
September 27th, 2012
10:12 pm
bigbill,
It speaks volumes to me…that you would direct us to articles and youtube videos attacking the Libertarian Koch brothers that were published/produced by groups funded by George Soros, one of the richest men in the world who has set out to destroy America. Couldn’t those pieces be just a little biased?
Charter schools amendment: It is “T-SPLOST of education.” | Get Schooled
October 1st, 2012
10:17 am
[...] print AJC ran a pro/con today on the charter schools amendment. The pro was the essay I posted last week by Virginia Galloway. Here is the con by local businessman Sean Murphy. (Later today, I will post a piece by two Georgia [...]