Atlanta schools’ travel tab high

By Rich McKay

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

While school systems are cutting jobs or furloughing teachers to shore up withering budgets, Atlanta Public Schools has spent more than twice as much money per student on travel as most other metro districts.

Atlanta spent more than $1.4 million on travel in 2008-09, the latest year from which complete data was available. That works out to $28.77 per student, far higher than neighboring DeKalb County and more than double per pupil what Clayton, Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties spent on travel, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found.

And Atlanta was slated to spend even more in 2009-2010 — about $1.8 million, a 28 percent jump.

Atlanta public school officials say travel is important so teachers can get the training they need and bring new skills and insights to the classroom. Much of the travel represents teachers going to education conferences, district officials said.

But budget hawks and many parents say travel spending can easily be trimmed, especially if the choice is between plane tickets and educators’ jobs.

“It looks like they’re just squandering money,” said Atlanta parent Shawnna Hayes-Tavares. “I have four children in the system, from second grade to the 11th. You know I want our teachers to be the best. But if they’re cutting back on folks, then they shouldn’t be jetting around anywhere.”

Kathy Augustine, Atlanta’s deputy superintendent for classroom instruction, defended the spending as a vital contributor to the achievement gains made among the districts’ 48,000 students in more than 100 schools.

“We spend a lot of money on professional development,” Augustine said. “But you have to understand the importance of continuous teacher development. It’s vital for our children to continue to achieve.”

She pointed to gains recently tallied among APS students in the fourth and eighth grades’ reading scores between 2002 and 2008, as reported by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a program often called the “Nation’s Report Card.” Yet only a small, school-selected sample of students ever take that test.

Atlanta’s travel tab would cover the annual salary of about 45 teachers, based on an average Georgia starting salary for teachers of about $31,000. That’s particularly relevant because Atlanta gave non-renewal notices to 36 teachers this year and is expecting to make reductions of 400 staffers through attrition and retirement to cover a $67 million budget gap.

Amid mounting criticism of Atlanta Public Schools’ management — from suspicions of widespread cheating on standardized tests to allegations of favoritism in its awarding of technology contracts — the AJC looked at the district’s travel spending and compared it to the five largest metro area school systems.

The AJC found:

● Atlanta spent more than $118,000 in taxpayer money to send 68 faculty members to a Success for All Foundation conference in January, four hours’ drive away in Nashville. The foundation is a Baltimore-based nonprofit focused on education development and research on the best classroom strategies.

● The district spent nearly $30,000 in March and April 2009 for two conferences in New York City, including about $2,000 spent in two days for a limousine company. School records show the money paid for a private shuttle company to take 22 teachers from Times Square to schools in Queens, and to Brooklyn for the Institute for Student Achievement conference. The New York metro commuter train fares cost about $2 per person.

● Other trips included education conferences in tourist-friendly Jekyll Island, Las Vegas and Orlando.

● Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall outspent most of her Georgia counterparts in travel, coming in seventh out of 180 state superintendents with a $10,000 tab, according to the state’s Department of Audits and Accounts. The school district confirmed Hall’s travel tab, but provided almost no details about where the money was spent.

Atlanta spokesman Keith Bromery did offer some insight into why Hall’s travel bill ranked high among her peers.

“The size of the district is not directly related to the amount of travel a superintendent undertakes,” Bromery wrote in an e-mail to the AJC. He said Hall’s decade at the district’s helm has put her in national demand as a speaker and a member of national education committees, including the executive committee of the American Association of School Administrators; the board of the Council of the Great City Schools, where she is chair-elect; and the Harvard University Urban Superintendents Program Advisory Board, which she chairs. Such positions call for her to travel around the country, Bromery said.

In metro Atlanta, only DeKalb County’s recently dismissed Superintendent Crawford Lewis came close to Hall, spending more than $9,000 on travel. Clayton County’s former Superintendent John Thompson spent less than $2,000 that same year. Cobb’s Fred Sanderson spent less than $500.

“It is a matter of our philosophy,” said Cobb schools spokesman Jay Dillon. “In these difficult economic times, we feel it’s critical for all public officials to show restraint when spending tax money.”

Dillon said for the current year, Sanderson hasn’t spent any public funds on travel. He paid his own way, about $500, to attend the Georgia School Superintendents Association conference in April.

An AJC analysis of Atlanta records as well as data from Georgia’s Department of Audits and Accounts showed that Atlanta has outspent all metro districts on a per pupil basis and nearly all in overall travel dollars despite being smaller than the five closest county school districts.

Most of the APS travel money was spent on out-of-town trips for teacher and staff development conferences on reading, math and science, as well as techniques to better motivate students, especially those from poor neighborhoods. More than 76 percent of APS’ students come from families at or below the poverty line, as measured by those receiving free or reduced-price school meals.

Compared to Clayton County, an area school system with similar demographics including many students receiving free or reduced-price lunches, Atlanta spent far more on travel. Clayton spent about a third as much, $560,000 total, or about $11.60 per student in 2008-09.

Cobb County, which runs the state’s second-largest school system, spent less overall on travel, at $1.17 million for the same school year.

Details on Atlanta’s travel spending are spotty because the district provided the AJC with incomplete information even after more than three weeks of public records requests. Such information is supposed to be available to the public under Georgia’s open records laws.

Bromery said those records weren’t kept in a single location and that he had no way to estimate how long it might take to gather that data.

He said Atlanta’s travel spending is “driven by the district’s primary educational mission of escalating student academic performance.”

Lyndsey Collins, a science teacher at Atlanta’s Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy, said her two trips to National Science Teachers Association conferences were worthwhile.

From one session, Collins, 25, brought back a preserved fetal pig that she used in anatomy lessons. Her students nicknamed it “bacon” because it’s a pig on a plate.

“The kids get really excited when they see it,” Collins said. “It’s like that ‘wow’ factor. They can’t believe I have a pig in my closet. It’s showing them something real and they really pay attention.”

“From my experience, it’s money well spent.”

In DeKalb County, Everett Patrick, principal of Martin Luther King Jr. High School, went to several conferences this year, including a $7,000 trip for four nights in Las Vegas with four staffers for the National Council on Educating Black Children .

“We got the idea to infuse the nonviolence teachings of Martin Luther King to help inspire the kids toward better behavior,” he said. “Better behavior leads to better performance for the students.”

But travel, critics argue, is among the easiest spending to reduce or eliminate. More than a year ago Gov. Sonny Perdue singled out travel expenses, including conference attendance, as something all state agencies should cut.

University of Georgia education professor Janna Dresden, whose specialty is teacher training and ongoing development, said it’s not easy to say conferences are worth the money.

“You could sit in a big conference room in your own district or you could fly across America to sit in another room,” she said. “Either one of them could be a fantastic learning experience or either one could be a big waste of time and money.”

John Sherman, a retired businessman and the president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, is not convinced travel is needed for teachers to get training.

“If they need an expert to train their teachers, why not just buy one ticket? Fly that expert here instead of sending so many teachers out of town,” said Sherman.

“Our money is being wasted, or at the very least, not spent wisely,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a serious recession.”

Staff writer Heather Vogell contributed to this article.

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APS vs. counties

Travel figures below are for the 2008-2009 school year, the latest available from Georgia’s Department of Audits and Accounts . The Title 1 federal grant money spent or budgeted travel figures are for the 2009-2010 school year, the latest available from the school districts.

Atlanta Public Schools

Travel ’08-’09: $1.4 million

Per student: $28.77

Title 1 travel ’09-’10: $411,598

Per student: $8.43

Enrollment ’08-’09: 48,147

Potential cuts: 400

Clayton County Schools

Travel ’08-’09: $568,577

Per student: $11.66

Title 1 travel ’09-’10: $96,844

Per student: $1.90

Enrollment ’08-’09: 48,749

Potential cuts: 114

Cobb County Schools:

Travel ’08-’09: $1.17 million

Per student: $11.04

Title 1 travel ’09-’10: $175,400

Per student: $1.65

Enrollment ’08-’09: 106,079

Potential cuts579

DeKalb County Schools

Travel ’08-’09: $1.73 million

Per student: $17.90

Title 1 travel ’09-’10: $364,990

Per student: $3.76

Enrollment ’08-’09: 96,907

Potential cuts: 105

Fulton County Schools

Travel ’08-’09: $956,200

Per student: $11.07

Title 1 travel ’09-’10: $29,000

Per student: 33 cents

Enrollment ’08-’09: 86,380

Potential cuts: 200 to 250

Gwinnett County Schools

Travel ’08-’09: $1.52 million

Per student: $9.70

Title 1 travel ’09-’10: $337,870

Per student: $2.15

Enrollment ’08-’09: 156,484

Potential cuts: 150

Note: The Title 1 travel expenditures were calculated based on 2009-10 student enrollment figures.

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How we got the story

The AJC asked for an extensive rundown on APS’ travel spending for 2008-09 and 2009-10, including breakdowns on the top spenders, Superintendent Beverly Hall’s most expensive trips and a delineation on what exactly she spent the money on.

Despite three weeks of requests, Atlanta did not provide most of the information apart from a smattering of trip costs, although the requested information is open to public inspection upon request. Atlanta does provide much of the information to the state Department of Audits and Accounts, from which the AJC acquired the data for 2008-09. The 2009-10 information won’t be available from the state until later this year. Georgia’s travel database does not break down the information on a per-trip basis.

Atlanta offered up a few broad examples of what the district spent in the last school year on a handful of trips. The AJC acquired some details on specific trips through a separate review of purchase card spending.

The AJC got the budgeted 2009-10 Title I spending from the state Department of Education. Title 1 money comes from a federal grant program aimed at improving the education and test scores at schools that have a high percentage of children from poor families. Some of the money can be used to send teachers to conferences, but the Title 1 program doesn’t mandate that it be spent that way. The Title 1 figures are an incomplete picture but provide the best available district-to-district comparison for 2010.