CLAYTON COUNTY SCHOOLS
Dr. Edmond Heatley
Annual salary: $230,000
Tenure: 3 years
Students: 51,008
Current school year budget: $565 million
School system’s SAT scores: 1261
Graduation rate: 53.5 percent
FAYETTE COUNTY SCHOOLS
Dr. Jeff Bearden
Annual salary: $153,000
Tenure: 23 months*
Students: 20,463
Current school year budget: $177.34 million
School system’s SAT scores: 1542
Graduation rate: 78.2 percent
* When Bearden leaves on Dec. 31, 2012.
Source: School districts.
For the second time in less than a month, a southside school system is losing its superintendent.
Jeff Bearden will leave the Fayette County School district at the end of the year after the school board voted 4-1 Tuesday in favor of his departure. The decision was termed a “mutual agreement” between Bearden and the school board.
His exit comes on the heels of Clayton County superintendent Edmond Heatley’s Aug. 30 announced resignation. Heatley resigned to pursue a similar job with the Berkeley Unified Schools District in California but he has since backed out after running into new opposition in Berkeley.
Bearden has been chief of the 20,463-student Fayette school district since January 2011. His contract was set to end in December but the school board in June extended through June 2015. Bearden, whose salary is about $153,000 a year, will be paid through 2013.
Bearden was unavailable for comment Thursday. Fayette school board member Bob Todd declined to discuss the decision other than to say, “It was a mutual agreement.”
The Fayette and Clayton departures leave a vacuum in top-level school leadership on the southside at a critical time.
Both Bearden and Heatley ran into trouble with their respective boards and community over their controversial approaches to budgetary matters. Like other school districts, Fayette and Clayton are coping with fewer resources and declining revenues and enrollment.
Bearden drew fire for standing by his recommendations to close Hood Avenue Primary, Fayette Intermediate and Fayette Middle schools in a community that has emotional ties to its schools, even though the district overbuilt to a point where it has some schools sitting empty now. Some school board observers say Bearden wasn’t aggressive enough in balancing the budget and instead relied heavily on cash reserves to address shortfalls.
“Now that we’re backed up against the wall with minimal reserves come the end of this fiscal year … we have to take more drastic action,” said Bob Ross, a Peachtree City resident who has been active in the community on transportation and education issues. “If the school board and superintendent had taken action earlier, we probably wouldn’t have to be so drastic in the coming year.”
The head of the teachers’ group expressed skepticism about Bearden getting paid after he leaves.
“I haven’t heard anybody say that they think it is a good idea to pay about $200,000 [in pay and benefits] to someone who will not be working,” said Joseph Jarrell, a McIntosh High School social studies teacher who is president of the Fayette Professional Association of Georgia Educators. PAGE has 1,300 members, including teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, nurses and secretaries.
“All employees are taking huge pay and benefits cuts this year,” said Jarrell who is earning $300 a month less in pay and benefits. “Morale is abysmal. This certainly creates even more dismay among employees.”
Heatley is credited with helping Clayton regain full accreditation after the system lost it in 2008. But like Bearden, his approach to crafting a workable budget was controversial. He backed off a decision to end middle school sports after community opposition.
But other more personal matters hampered Heatley. The Clayton school board spent more than $40,000 last year to root out the source of a rumor involving an alleged affair between Heatley and a district employee. The probe turned up nothing.
Heatley ended his bid for the Berkeley job after political infighting began over his alleged opposition to a controversial California constitutional amendment on same-sex marriage known as Proposition 8.
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