On the last week for Cobb County schools, I am sitting in Pebblebrook High School's Center for Excellence in the Performing Arts in Mableton watching a dozen talented male dancers, all of whom principal Regina Montgomery believes will have professional dance careers.

It is a fabulous, state-of-the-art facility, better than the performing arts facilities at most small colleges.

On the last day for Atlanta public schools, I am walking the halls of Tech High, a 4-year-old charter school built as an elementary school in 1922 that is in constant need of repair. In addition to rent of $36,000 per year, maintenance is another $250,000. "When you look at these pipes, they burst," said Kelly McCutcheon, executive vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a think tank that conceived of Tech High and supports it financially. "We plan on breaking even next year," said McCutcheon, though the foundation has to raise almost $500,000 this year to support it, down from $1.326 million in the 2005-2006 school year. The Atlanta system will spend about $8,500 per student for the 250 who attend Tech High, but includes no money for maintenance, transportation, nutrition or administrative functions.

McCutcheon estimates that charter schools, like Tech High, get about 60 percent of the funding provided other public schools. It could become self-supporting with 500 students.

The temptation is to compare Pebblebrook and Tech High, to suggest, as Georgians have for generations, that the superior education is possible only with superior facilities and equipment. Facilities do matter. But Tech High is among those that convince me a superior school is shared desire to excel and a connection between teachers and students, facilities notwithstanding.

In a setting that should be a distraction, students at Tech High outperform their APS peers on the Georgia high school graduation test, with 98.1 percent passing, compared with 93.7 for the system as a whole. Its first graduating class of 44 students this year has an average 1,397 SAT score, second-highest in the APS system. The school takes all applicants from the city.

All but three of its graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges or two-year technical schools. One of those three chose to join the Army before pursuing college. Three will enroll at Georgia Tech.

Walking the halls with Barbara Christmas, former head of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE), who serves as Tech High's CEO, is like walking into a family reunion. We're not meeting just the best and the brightest; students selected to put the best possible face on the school.

She stops them as they walk by and relates a shared experience —- the students from inner-city Atlanta who traveled by bus to Collins, in rural Tattnall County, to spend time in her home. For one student, it was his first time to see live chickens and pecan trees in a grove.

Kalina Harrison, a rising senior, waiting for a ride home, is asked about the school. "Tech High is a good school, and we have a great science teacher," she says, flowing into a testimonial, as many other students do, to praise a particular teacher.

The 18 faculty members are special. While they are intentionally paid slightly more than other APS teachers, they were subjected to extensive interviews to make certain that they shared the school's purpose. "If your child comes to this school," says Christmas, "your child's chance of having a great teacher is 100 percent."

Most impressive in the student body is that they look you in the eye and chat comfortably. They exude self-confidence, the kind that comes from knowing stuff, not from being taught self-esteem. It's a disciplined, focused school, with a strict dress code. "Here we know them and love them and want them to be successful," said Christmas. About 75 percent to 80 percent are on free or reduced-price lunch; about that many take MARTA to the school on Boulevard, and "we pay for the MARTA ticket," she said.

In a 1922 elementary school, there is the connection and a shared determination to succeed. Tech High works. Walk the halls and you feel it. Talk to students and you know it.

> Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday.

jwooten@ajc.com