A unanimous committee recommendation Wednesday should put Decatur schools into the history books, while Marietta — squeaking by with a 3-2 recommendation — could face more scrutiny as the full state Board of Education votes Thursday whether they will become two of Georgia's first charter school systems.

The metro Atlanta school districts and two others in Georgia are trying to join Warren County, a tiny three-school system that last month won board approval to pilot what state officials hope will be a nationally recognized effort to free local systems from red tape.

On Wednesday, the board's charter schools committee voted 4-1 to recommend a third system, Gainesville city, for approval. And while the committee tabled the application from a fourth district, Chattahoochee County, the full state school board on Thursday will be free to vote on Chattahoochee's request. State school Supt. Kathy Cox has recommended that it be denied.

The application process took nearly a year to complete and was made possible by a year-old state law that allows entire school systems to seek charter status and operate relatively free of state control.

The law is unique nationally. Expanding on the concept of individual charter schools, it exempts charter systems from many of the state laws and practices applicable to conventional school districts.

In exchange, charter systems must demonstrate progress or risk losing their special status. What that progress should be is spelled out in a charter, or contract, written by the system and approved by the state.

For example, the state dictates how many hours in class or "seat" time students must have to earn credit. Decatur says that, as a charter district, it would also find ways for students to earn credit based on knowledge.

Wednesday's recommendations came only after state school board members last month stunned local school officials with sometimes sharp criticism about their plans of having parents and staff help lead individual schools within their proposed charter districts.

The board approved Warren County's application but tabled those form Decatur, Marietta and Gainesville. Some board members indicated that they didn't think the systems were being innovative enough, and that parents and staff needed more power over matters that included finances and hiring.

The systems responded in recent weeks by stating their intent to give the community more power than ever over such local school matters.

How picky have state officials been?

"This petition has much use of [the word] 'may,'" charter committee Chairwoman Linda Zechmann said Wednesday of Marietta's application, which she voted against. "It would be much stronger to use 'shall' or 'will.'"

Still, Zechmann, as well as other state officials and charter supporters, noted they were covering new ground and that hiccups — or disagreements — were to be expected as they figured out how to make the charter systems law work.

"I think it's all a matter of change," said Mark Whitlock, a Coweta County banker and charter school founder who leads the state's charter advisory committee, which reviewed the charter system applications. "We're all trying to figure out how to best do this. It takes a while to work this through."