Friday, July 18, 2008
Opinion

New Clayton County School Board has a chance to get it right

 

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Schoolchildren review a lesson. Last week’s elections may spell “good news” for Clayton County students.
By Diane Loupe

In a sluggish housing market, pity the poor Clayton County homeowner trying to sell.

The shenanigans of the Clayton County School Board have got to rule out anyone with school-age children from considering a purchase in that county. Without the means to attend a private school, your children are stuck in the Clayton County school system morass. Although there surely are good and dedicated teachers still in the system, many more are leaving.

The 52,800-student district may be the first Georgia system ever to claim the dubious honor of losing accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, or SACS. That group termed the board “fatally flawed” in a Feb. 15 report recommending that accreditation be revoked, citing problems similar to those that had landed the school system in trouble five years ago. In the past two decades, only two other school districts in the nation have been so dishonored: Hartford, Conn., and Duval County, Fla.

Losing accreditation would make graduates ineligible for lottery-funded HOPE scholarships, although state legislators have already tried to create a loophole to help students around that. And competitive colleges will eye with suspicion, if not outright rejection, the application of any students from an unaccredited district.

Although SACS has given the district until Sept. 1 to shape up, the board has hardly demonstrated the kind of leadership and competence necessary to avert this crisis.

Sadly for the students, the exodus of good teachers and administrators has begun. SACS noted back in February that the district was having a hard time recruiting educators, and the problem can only have gotten worse. Area school districts are already snapping up the best of Clayton’s teachers.

Some board members did the honorable thing and resigned. Unhappily, the ones who didn’t went out and hired a pricy new superintendent, John Thompson, whose idea of a brilliant move was to OK spending $80,000 reprinting diplomas because they didn’t have his signature, but those of the previous superintendent and board chairman. Handing students blank diplomas only drew attention to his folly. Thankfully, printing company Herff Jones agreed to waive the printing fees for reprinted diplomas, and let’s assume they aren’t expecting any favoritism in future contracts. A state watchdog group filed an ethics complaint against Thompson for improper conduct—a complaint, by the way, that cannot be processed yet, because Thompson isn’t certified to teach in Georgia.

The latest folly foisted upon the students is school uniforms for elementary and some middle school students. Throwing uniforms on the kids is a good way to seem like you’re doing something, without actually doing much at all. Can teacher-led prayer, spanking or other controversial educational chestnuts be far behind?

Now, I’ve got nothing against school uniforms. I wore one while attending Catholic schools in my native Louisiana. But I’m certain the quality of my schooling had less to do with the six-gore navy pleated skirt and white shirt I wore, and more to do with my love of reading and my teachers’ expectations that I would do my homework and behave myself.

Sadly, doing homework and behaving themselves are things that Clayton County School Board members don’t seem to have mastered. Instead, we’re treated to the spectacle of Board Chairwoman Michelle Strong, who voted on a pay raise for her husband, a graduation coach in Clayton Public Schools, even though her vote to hire her husband in the first place was cited by SACS as nepotism and a conflict of interest.

To be fair, Clayton has made some moves in the right direction. The board kicked off member Norreese Haynes after police found he’d lived outside the county for two years. SACS criticized conflicts of interest by Haynes, who serves as executive director of the Metro Association of Classroom Educators, but still voted for raises for union members and against companies his union doesn’t support.

The board wasted $1 million by canceling a contract for Kaplan Core Curriculum early, because the curriculum was not endorsed by Mr. Haynes’ union. Thus, the system didn’t have a clear curriculum for the rest of the year, despite evidence that the new curriculum had substantially boosted the abilities of rising first-graders. Haynes had the gall to sue the board to try to keep his seat.

Five Clayton County residents, including a retired teacher and the former district attorney, asked Gov. Sonny Perdue to remove the remaining school board members: Mrs. Strong; Lois Baines-Hunter; Yolanda Everett; Rod Johnson (cited by SACS for voting for a raise to benefit his teacher wife); and Sandra Scott, accused of trying to get a Morrow football coach fired after he refused to hand over game tapes of her son.

The citizens complained that the members had violated the state’s ethics codes and put the district’s accreditation at risk by illegally closing meetings and failing to maintain secure and adequate student records. The Clayton County Commission previously urged the remaining school board members to resign. Gov. Perdue forwarded the complaint to Judge Michael Malihi of the Office of State Administrative Hearings. Malihi is scheduled to hear arguments in the case Aug. 12 and 13.

So, with the stakes so high, and seven school board seats up for grabs, one would think that voters would have lined up at the polls last Tuesday.

Nope. Only about 12 percent of registered voters turned out to cast ballots for 31school board candidates competing for seven seats. Two seats were not up for election this year. One wonders what it would have taken to get voters to care. Hand out lottery tickets?

The good news is that last Tuesday’s elections brought some much-needed new blood. Lois Hunter received only 21 percent of the vote in District 2, 303 votes less than leader Wanda D Smith. The only districts to retain their current representatives were Districts 1 (Strong) and 9 (Sandra Scott), whose seats weren’t up for reelection. This is welcome news—a new school board is the system’s best hope.

But there’s much work yet to be done. And if you don’t live in Clayton County, or don’t have school-age children, don’t think for a minute that you couldn’t find yourself in the same mess. School boards famously fly under the radar screens of local news media more interested in flashier, sexier, bloodier items. Make sure you, or somebody in your community, is keeping an eye on what’s going on in your local school system, or you may find yourself in the lamentable condition of Clayton County.

Your children—and the value of your home—depend on it. SP

Freelance writer Diane Loupe is filling in for vacationing news editor Stephanie Ramage.