I'm back from vacation and, having just spent a week at the beach with 12 kids under one roof, I am not surprised to be drawn to this AJC education story:

"Atlanta charter schools won a victory to preserve their public education funding Monday when the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the city's school system can't make charters share in the burden of paying off a giant pension debt.

"The state's highest court decided that the amount of money charter schools receive is set by state law, and Atlanta Public Schools can't reduce their funding to pay for system-wide expenses like the pension liability.

"The decision leaves Atlanta's traditional public schools having to pay off an old pension liability that has ballooned to about $550 million.

"It also sustains the city's charter public schools, which argued that their growth could be stunted if they had less money to work with."

As I have previously explained, APS will continue to fund its traditional schools at a higher per-pupil rate than its charter schools even after this decision. The charter schools didn't exist when the pension debt was accumulated, and their employees don't participate in this particular pension plan.

And as the AJC's news side and I have both explained from different angles, APS spends millions of dollars a year more on administrators and other non-teaching staff than its peers and enrollment figures suggest is necessary. That's the first place to look for the money the district needs to pay down its pension debt.

After all, if MARTA can make the tough decisions...