News Briefs

Georgia guts public schools

Mar 27, 2008 3:26 PM

If there’s a dystopian future for public education modeled anywhere, it’s in Georgia. There, Gov. Sonny Perdue and the GOP-dominated General Assembly are starving schools and school salaries while “they assiduously pump up competing marketplace options such as charters, home and private schools,” one critic says.

Instead of a fair funding formula, right-wing state pols are pushing a bill that will give local school districts flexibility in spending and freedom from state mandates. Among the mandates: teacher salaries, curriculum decisions and class size.

Other measures include creating a state commission that can override locally elected boards of education, forcing local districts to accept charter schools and supporting those schools with their taxes.

And if the schools don’t live up to higher standards, they get privatized.

Meanwhile, the state is not moving from its heavy emphasis on local property taxes, which are neither effective nor fair, to fund schools.

Another bill encourages corporations and individuals to donate money to pay for public school students to attend private schools by offering tax credits for such donations. That’s a back-door tactic for transfering public monies to private schools.

If that weren’t bad enough, there’s an education crisis in Clayton County, the predominantly African-American area south of Atlanta that was the setting for Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind.” Its school district could become the first in the nation since the 1960s to lose accreditation.That loss means ineligibility for state scholarships, restrictions on entering many universities or even difficulty transferring to other high schools for the county’s nearly 53,000 public school students.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the region’s accrediting organization, accuses board members of nepotism, conflicts of interest, micromanagement, lax fiscal responsibility and failure to audit school attendance. Some criticize the board by scapegoating the local independent teachers union for allegedly being “too influential,” and Gov. Perdue wants legislation giving residents the power to oust board members if their district loses accreditation.

Atlanta Journal Constitution, March 13

Los Angeles Times, March 14