The head of an influential school-accrediting agency assured Clayton County residents Monday night his agency was not picking on the school system when he it sent a warning letter to officials in September.
“The letter was to try to help the system,” Mark Elgart, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools told about 90 residents, including several of the nine school board members, at an informational session at Clayton State University in Morrow. “We want the school system to be vibrant and successful.”
The informational meeting followed a school board meeting in Joneboro.
While Clayton’s accreditation isn’t in jeopardy Elghart said, the school board and the system has a lot of work to do. “To be honest, you still have a ways to go to get the kind of school system for your children so that they will be ready for the future.”
Elgart sent the letter based on reports he’d received about divisiveness among board members and outside influences.
He told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before the meeting Clayton’s problems have been ongoing for at least a decade.
“The issues extend beyond one board. The current board did not create them but they have yet to distance themselves from the issues,” he said. He said the issues include being influenced by outside groups and factions within the community that are imposing their individual agendas. He would not identify those factions.
Eva Jane Bunkley of Riverdale brought her two elementary school boys with her to the meeting. “We have a very vested interest in what’s going on. We just don’t like being in the dark, we like to know what’ going on,” she said before the meeting.
Afterward, she noted the meeting was informative and enlightening, but added she is “concerned about what power we (community members) have in the process moving froward.”
Elgart’s appearance is the first public attempt by the Southern Association to quell renewed fears of problems for the beleaguered southside school district. Clayton lost its accreditation in 2008 and is still feeling the effects of that loss. Thousands of students and their families fled the county which also lost $20 million in federal school funding because of the accreditation loss. Home values have plummeted draining up a major source of revenue for the school system’s budget.
Just as the community felt it was emerging from the accreditation problems, a letter from Elgart surfaced in September causing near-panic. In the letter sent to now-departed schools superintendent Edmond Heatley, Elgart warned that the school board’s division and micromanaging “could put your school system’s current and future accreditation in jeopardy.”
County officials quickly swung into damage control. Mayors of the county’s seven cities rallied together, offering support to the school board, part of a vow they made in 2008 to keep the school district from ever losing its accreditation again. The renewed SACS scrutiny has sent fear throughout the business and educational ranks as well as the general community. The district has until Jan. 15 to respond to the letter. Jackson met with Elgart to get a better understanding of the intent of the letter.
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