The details
- Purpose Built Schools, a nonprofit affiliated with Atlanta's Drew Charter School, would manage Slater and Thomasville Heights Elementary, Price Middle and Carver High schools. Purpose Built would run Thomasville Heights in the 2016-17 school year and phase the other schools in over time.
- Kindezi, a charter school with two Atlanta campuses, would operate Gideons Elementary starting in the 2017-18 school year.
- Bethune Elementary would close. Its students would attend a new K-8 school on the Kennedy Middle School campus.
- Venetian Hills Elementary would close. Its students would attend school on the Connally Elementary campus.
- Woodson Primary would close. Its students would attend school on the Grove Park Intermediate campus
In a school gym in west Atlanta, where a banner on the wall told students, “Dare to Dream,” Atlanta school superintendent Meria Carstarphen made one of her final public pitches for her ambitious plan to turn around some of the city’s worst schools.
She wants to hire charter school groups to manage five schools; close three other schools, including some that are already succeeding by Atlanta standards; and pour millions into low-performing schools to hire tutors, train teachers and possibly extend the school day or year.
The Atlanta Public Schools board will vote on the plan Monday.
The vote comes a month after Carstarphen released key details of the plan, a month packed with dozens of meetings with parents, staff and community leaders.
And it comes against a ticking-time-bomb backdrop: If voters approve Governor Nathan Deal's Opportunity School District plan this fall, dozens of Atlanta schools could be up for potential state control. The state could run the schools itself, close them or turn them into charter schools. Erin Hames, the Deal adviser who helped create the Opportunity School District plan, now consults for Atlanta Public Schools.
The proposal the board will consider Monday is pretty much it, Carstarphen said.
“We don’t have a lot of Plan Bs,” she said during a meeting this week at Woodson Primary School.
Gov. Deal has said Atlanta should be "appreciative" of Carstarphen's plan.
“I think efforts like the Atlanta public school system is making will indicate that their schools should be shielded if they are making progress and if they’re trying to make progress,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Atlanta Federation of Teachers opposes the plan.
Under Carstarphen’s plan, about 300 teachers and other staff would have to reapply for their jobs for the coming school year. At the schools to be operated by charter groups, those groups would be in charge of hiring. Staff would no longer be Atlanta Public Schools employees.
The educators at Woodson Primary, one of the schools slated for closure, are “Super Bowl” caliber, said Steve Kamerschen, who volunteers at the school.
“They’re that good,” he said. “I hate to see a Super Bowl team broken up.”
District officials say they've tweaked the plan in response to concerns from parents, staff and alumni. Teachers who lose their positions during the transition will get priority during the hiring process for other schools, Carstarphen said Friday on WABE's A Closer Look.
“We did change that to allow them to be in the pool first and be selected first,” she said.
School board chairman Courtney English said “I have been supportive of the plan and expect my colleagues will be as well.”
Board member Leslie Grant, who represents most of the schools that would be put under outside management, declined to comment on the plan in response to a question from the AJC. At-large board member Cynthia Briscoe Brown said earlier this week she was “leaning more towards yes than no.”
But even board approval of Carstarphen's plan won't ensure it all actually happens as proposed. There's the budget for next year to be determined, new staff to be recruited and a local sales tax to fund building improvements that will go before voters this spring.
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