Would Dunwoody parents be in support of a private company setting up a charter school in the city of Dunwoody? Depends on the grade level, I guess. Imagine sending your kid to an office building with a floor converted into a school, down near Perimeter Mall. Or perhaps in a renovated building in Brook Run. Your kid would receive a quality education from certified instructors, without much interference from DeKalb County School System.
How does it work? Who pays?
Right now DeKalb School System gets a certain dollar amount per student. I do not know the amount but be sure it is more than enough to educate a child and provide a safe environment (a school, be it a traditional school building or a converted office building).
The state allows charter schools and funding is distributed to the charter school based on enrollment. Depending upon where those kids live, their local district is not issued the funding to educate that child.
What if that money could be assigned to your child then distributed to a charter school (not a typical private school like Marist) instead of say Peachtree Middle School?
I envision a privately run charter school in Dunwoody, serving grades 6-12. The school would be open to city of Dunwoody residents, upon qualifying. The parents would also be required to chip in at the school, perhaps with tutoring, guest lecturing, etc. I'll volunteer to be the school's principal for the first year. Al T. will be the boy's basketball coach and Sustainable Pattie will teach horticulture. Arts Festival Lady of course teaches art class, and General Shortal will be our Civics teacher. Farmer Bob will teach public speaking.
Currently there is a home school type program in Georgia that 'takes' money from DeKalb if you enroll your student in said program. The school is virtual and called GVA. The curriculum is a mix of state required stuff (too bad for that) and content developed by K12, a private company that develops school curriculum. But virtual schooling is not for everyone.
There is a case in the courts now involving the Gwinnett School Board versus Georgia's superintendent of schools and a few other folks. The Gwinnett educators don't want competition for 'their' tax dollars. They (as do all other state school boards) prefer the monopoly system whereas the county/state collects money from everyone then passes that money back to the local school systems.
I'd like to see a true voucher system in place; one allowing for parents to choose between traditional government operated schools, a private charter school, a religious based school, or a home-based education.
Here is one link on the issue. And another link. Here's a final link with lots of interesting (and informing) comments on the Gwinnett issue.
Posts
20 comments:
FWIW - you can go to the state doe and run revenue reports by county -
http://app.doe.k12.ga.us/ows-bin/owa/fin_pack_revenue.display_proc
Basically, in 2008 DCSS collected
543,013,211.99 Local Rev plus
417,623,041.76 State Rev plus
50,533,143.57 Fed Rev
totaling
1,011,169,397.32 (yes, that's a Billion $)
or
10,232.95 per FTE (Full time student)
=======
Personally - if I were you - I would work with my state reps to change the law (currently it states that no new school systems can be created) then break away from DCSS and control every school in your city! The Dunwoody School System -- hasta lavista DCSS!
But that's just me.
To have a Dunwoody School District would be awesome, but I think adding a new district would require an amendment to the state constitution. That's not easy to do.
Principal Rick,
Please feed the kids food for lunch. Real food. The kind with nutrients. No country fried "steak" or GM corn dogs, please. Ketchup does NOT count as a vegetable.
--Rebecca
PS: I will apply for the English/Math position.
Rick: Can we please have guaranteed daily recess (minimum 15 minutes) that is not given as a reward nor taken away as a punishment? According to Principal Jonathan Clark last night at the Dunwoody Elementary School coffee, "recess is against board policy" and when asked if the 9 and 10-year old elementary school children at Dunwoody Elementary get guaranteed daily recess, he said, point blank, "No, they don't." FYI, there is a petition right now to make daily recess board policy--please go here to see a summary of research in support of recess and join the 475 parents who have already signed it: http://www.petitiononline.com/recess09/petition.html
As for food at the school, you're in luck, Rebecca. The USDA just yesterday announced an initiative to connect children to where their food comes from and provide more local food in school lunches. See here: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/09/0441.xml
GVA actually doesn't get local dollars. It was actually attached to a state approved charter school, Odyssey, in the rush to get it open. It didn't make AYP the first year and there were some questions about academic performance so it wasn't approved to be a commission school yet. The K12 people (the organization that runs the virtual part) knows that they need to figure out a reasonable amount of revenue to expect from local dollars. Given the lawsuit, I am certain K12 will wait until the suit is settled to pursue the commission status.
I am fairly certain that Gwinnett will probably prevail. Our state constitution is pretty tightly worded about school control issues. That said, the rather sneaky way the Commission works might pass legal muster. Time will tell.
Without local dollars, state approved charters operate on about 4K dollars per student the state contribution. As Ivy Prep will tell you, it isn't doable for a long time especially for schools in the metro area.
As it stands today, the state is not allowing start up charter schools (which is what this would be -- private is the wrong word) to have such tightly defined attendance zones. Ivy Prep and Odyssey (GVA) have the entire state as their attendance zone. In addition, admission must be by lottery if more students apply than spaces available.
I know of communities who have been told this by the GADOE staff. Apparently the feds, which give the money for charter school grants, have cracked down on this issue nationally.
The state requires charters to be innovative and to be offering something "different" that the local education agency. What has happened, which was one of the hopes of the founder of the charter movement, is that local schools have copied/been inspired by some charter schools. For example, in GA, the original International Baccalaureate programs were in charters, but more and more traditional schools now offer IB. But this has made it tougher for new charter petitioners in GA. Lots of things that were unique/unusual/innovate even 5 years ago are not routine in public schools.
themommy, thanks for all that info.
As far as offering something different, our charter could offer recess, fresh produce for lunch, and no socialist-driven dress code.
It's obvious that if the people want more school choice, in the form of new schools (perhaps via new school districts) we'll need state legislators (and a lot of them) to back the movement.
The brand new, $53 million Tucker high school is about to open -- as a charter. Ask anyone you may know who is in the know in Tucker how they've gone about it -- if you're serious. I've heard it takes buy-in from parents and teachers which is why it hasn't been done at Lakeside. (Too much disagreement in that building. Some of us call it "controlled chaos".)
However -- what's a little change to the state constitution? Haven't your legislators done that once already? I wasn't that big of a deal was it?
I'd still try to break off and make your own school system. It's the only way to run your schools the way you wish.
Sorry to be such a blog-hog. I just have strong feelings on this topic.
If you made Dunwoody HS a charter, you could return it to a 7 period day and save a whole lot of money (you only have to offer students 28 credits, not 32.)
If you made your own school system, you could even lower DHS's graduation requirements to match the state's (23 credits instead of DeKalb's 24). Again, saving a bunch of dinero and saving kids from having to take so many random electives.
Half of your seniors could probably go for dual enrollment at GPC and graduate HS with all of their core college credits. (Real ones, not ones dependent on passing an AYP exam.)
Based on my experience, when a traditional county operated school switches to a charter school, yet is still operated by the county, not much changes.
I agree that a new school district is the preferred option. If Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Johns Creek (N Fulton) get their wish and form Milton County and then set up Milton County School District, Dunwoody will lose families with kids immediately.
I'm surprised Fran Millar or Dan Weber has not introduced legislation to allow the creation of new school districts.
Dunwoody should look for a simple solution like Decatur, GA which controls it own school system. http://www.decatur-city.k12.ga.us/ You pay more in property taxes, but local superintendant, control, food, programs, etc. They have five elementary schools, one middle and one high, pop. is 28.5K. Don't know if they are working out, but worth a serious look as they are similar in size and scope as Dunwoody is.
I would rather see Dunwoody and any other interested areas of North DeKalb secede and join the Milton County movement. Then we could be part of the Milton County School District, as well as the many other benefits of a non-DeKalb anything.
contact Dan Weber if you want to be part of the Milton County effort. Lsst time I asked Dan about it he did not think 'they' were interested in having Dunwoody join as it would make 'their' effort more difficult. I disagree, but I'm not a senator.
Send him a letter and let us know what he says back.
It would be nice if some how, some way, Dunwoody could gain control of its schools. Clearly, the size of DCSS makes it inefficient, in and of itself. It's amazing what can be done in a small school system - I saw it firsthand with the schools I attended growing up in the 'burbs of Houston.
That system now has 41,800 students (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_Independent_School_District)but still manages to funnel money and resources back to the classroom.
www.dunwoodyusa.org
Rick:
I know you are currently a home school guy and your main interest here is in breaking or getting around the monopoly that gov't schools have on our tax dollars -- NTTAWWT (sans sarcasm!).
Along with those thoughts, working on improving the gov't schools we already have is something that is closer to the community, in terms of time and current impact.
I am writing this really just to endorse everything written above by Cerebration, who has put a lot of effort into writing/thinking/digging into our DCSS schools.
Cere: "I'd still try to break off and make your own school system. It's the only way to run your schools the way you wish."
skb: Number 1 on the hit parade, but will take a lot of political effort/muscle. (like a real voucher system, getting our own Dunwoody School System feels kinda distant)
Cere: "If you made Dunwoody HS a charter, you could return it to a 7 period day"
skb: the 4 period block schedule is awful; is a time-waster for students; hinders math and foreign language learning; hinders band/orch programs; is the result of management-by-changing-things-so-we-can-say-we-are-doing-something-and-keep-the-heat-off.
Cere: "you could even lower DHS's graduation requirements to match the state's 23 credits" and "half of your seniors could probably go for dual enrollment at GPC and graduate HS with all of their core college credits."
skb: hear, hear - the GPC dual-enrollment has worked great for our kids (and more courses would've been better) and saves direct dough, the dough you pay for keeping them in college longer.
Good ideas all, Cerebration.
Anybody here know if Dr. Harris is pursuing getting DHS out of block-schedule-jail and back to the 7 period day?
Rick said: "'they' were (not) interested in having Dunwoody join as it would make 'their' effort more difficult. I disagree, but I'm not a senator."
Forming Milton County north of the river now means a direct fight with Fulton voters and their elected reps. If they have the muscle to beat them then even Sandy Springs south of the river can join the new county (though the history isn't really there) because they haven't added any new opponents.
Getting Dunwoody into a new Milton County would mean you would have to fight the DeKalb voters and their elected reps, too.
Putting us in the package definitely would make the Milton County political fight harder. and we would not have any history at all as justification -- defending the "why" of Dunwoody in Milton County would be sticky.
Anybody here know if Dr. Harris is pursuing getting DHS out of block-schedule-jail and back to the 7 period day?
I do not know Dr. Harris' view on the block, but it seems from his comments at the DCPC and ELPC that Dr. Lewis is beginning to "see the light" with regards to the block schedule. I'm hopeful we'll see the end of the 4-period.
Vouchers are a great idea!
Just remember to keep up the accountability of No Child Left Behind! We have to be sure we are getting out (tax) money worth.How else did we know for sure that the public schools were doing such a poor job before all the testing. So lets go voucher for any type of school you want as long as the school complies with the NCLB state testing requirements!
Post a Comment