Vote ahead on running Georgia’s lagging schools

When Georgia’s schools got their last state report cards, more than a hundred got an “F,” including about a dozen in the midstate.

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and his supporters are asking Georgia voters to approve a new kind of intervention in some of those schools: state management, which they say will rescue students from chronically failing schools and a higher risk of dropping out, joblessness and prison.

But it’s got a lot of opponents in educators and others, who see the state bypassing local school boards, communities and parents, and without a solid plan.

Georgia voters are being asked to approve what’s called an “Opportunity School District.” If voters approve the OSD amendment, that means Georgia could temporarily take over schools run by elected city or county boards, if those schools have failed a measure called the College and Career Ready Performance Index for three years. The governor would appoint an OSD leader to decide which schools to target, and could choose up to 20 a year, capped at running 100 at a time.

Thirteen Bibb schools made the OSD-eligible list in May, though the state still separately counts some schools that have recently been consolidated.

The elementary schools are: Brookdale, Bruce, Burghard and Rice (both merged into Southfield), Hartley, Ingram/Pye, King-Danforth (merged into Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), Riley and Williams.

The middle schools are Ballard Hudson and Bloomfield (merged into Ballard-Hudson), and Appling. The only Bibb high school on the list is Southwest.

Twiggs County High School and Dublin’s Saxon Heights school also are on the OSD-eligible list.

A teacher’s view

But plenty of folks in education complain that they are squeezed between the challenges of teaching students from families who don’t have a lot of resources, and a state that changes rules and shortchanges schools.

Williams Elementary School teacher B.J. Shepherd said he’s scared because he doesn’t know what the state wants to do with him or the third-graders he calls “my kids.” He wants to know what appointees from outside the neighborhood can do that he and veteran teachers have not already tried.

“Everybody seems quick to blame the teacher,” Shepherd said. Meanwhile, he said, he’s scored by how well his students do on tests, some referencing things they’ve never seen, such as test questions about “a beach.” And some of his students, he said, have survival on their mind, not long division.

Some children, he said, “have seen more that morning than I’ve seen in my life.”

When lawyer Daryl Morton, who’s also the treasurer of the Bibb County Board of Education, looks at the OSD idea, he says he doesn’t see what its supporters promise.

“Read the fine print and when you do, you’ll see the bill doesn’t do what it says in the ballot question,” said Morton.

What he foresees is someone being sent from Atlanta without any knowledge of what the board has tried or is doing now, of the rocky tenure of the previous superintendent, or with any extra funding.

“With OSD, all you’re really doing is changing who runs the school,” said Morton. “There’s nothing in the law that has any sort of educational innovation, something that they’re going to do different that’s going to achieve a different result.”

But folks who support the OSD say what happens in each school will depend on what they find when they get there.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy. It’s going to be very individual for these schools and what got them there in the first place,” said Alyssa Botts, spokeswoman for Opportunity for All Georgia Students, a campaign group formed for the vote.

In other places that have tried this kind of intervention, she said, there’s been a focus on effective teachers and stronger leaders.

Success elsewhere, support in Georgia

Another group, GeorgiaCAN, supports the OSD. For about five years, the nonprofit has been working on education issues in the state. Its executive director, Michael O’Sullivan, said that in states that are targeting failing schools, a core piece of success is giving schools and principals more autonomy to run the school and create programs.

“After-school and tutoring are the ones that are most cited,” he said.

But he also there are other things that have been successful in other places: hiring a great principal if one is lacking, addressing staffing or morale problems, making sure staff has training, and having the flexibility to say “yes” to nonprofit partners.

But Morton said Bibb is making improvements — it’s signed a state contract that allows it more flexibility, it’s making earlier interventions to get kids reading better and disciplining kids within school instead of kicking them out. And Morton had nothing but praise for a relatively new hire, Superintendent Curtis Jones.

“We’re seeing improvements,” said Morton. “It’s going to take time. The proof may be 10 years down the line … because what you’re looking at is improving graduation rates.”

Georgia PTA President Lisa-Marie Haygood agrees that some schools are struggling, but OSD does not address the causes, said Haygood at a September news conference, detailing why her organziation is against it. On average, she said, test scores are an indicator of household income: the higher the income, the higher the test results. And the schools on the list are in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Georgia.

“We need to look holistically at the issues impeding student achievement in these school communities,” Haygood said.

Or as Shepherd, the teacher, put it: “Kids need so much more than the education we’re teaching.”

Does spending help?

And then there’s school spending.

The roughly $8.9 billion that the state is budgeting for the Georgia Department of Education this year is bigger than last year, but that’s still not the full amount that state law recommends.

But Botts said the OSD-eligible schools already get more funding.

“These schools are already among the highest funded in the state and it’s not being reciprocated in improvement,” Botts said.

“It doesn’t make sense to put more and more tax money into a system that’s shown itself incapable of success, without there being any sort of accountability,” she said.

But it looks like a tough fight. The coalition against includes groups like the Georgia Association of Educators, a large professional group. Some school boards, like Bibb, have formally voted to oppose it. And a group of opponents are trying to sue state leaders, saying that the question on the ballot is misleading.

Both pro- and anti-OSD groups have set up campaign vehicles and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars with which to woo voters.

The question will appear on all fall ballots as Amendment 1. Early in-person voting starts Monday. Election Day is Nov. 8.

This story was originally published October 15, 2016 at 7:24 PM with the headline "Vote ahead on running Georgia’s lagging schools."