In the latest sign that Gov. Nathan Deal’s campaign to get voters to approve Amendment 1 is stirring rebellion in his own party, the local GOP in Cherokee County has become the latest group to come out against it.
The Cherokee County Republican Party voted “overwhelmingly” Tuesday to oppose the constitutional amendment that would create a state-run school system, the Opportunity School District. It would take over failing local schools and the local tax money that flows to them to try to improve them.
It is the latest blow from Deal’s own party members and nonaffiliated groups such as the state PTA. More than 40 Georgia school boards, including Cherokee’s and others in Republican strongholds, have come out against it. The voices have become enough of a distraction that the governor stumped for support for Amendment 1 Wednesday at what should have been a triumphant moment.
While touting a trade magazine's selection of Georgia as the top state to do business with, Deal veered into defending the proposal. He talked about Georgia maintaining a number 1 ranking.
“And part of that means we have to have a pipeline of educated children who become educated adults and become employees in the businesses that are coming to our state,” he said.
Deal said the referendum was the only way he could help students in failing schools: “If we don’t give these students — and most of them are minority students — if we don’t give them a chance for a good education, then they are simply going to continue to fall further and further behind.”
The Cherokee County Republican Party resolution, posted on the Cherokee GOP's Facebook page, cut straight to a beloved Republican issue, loss of local control. It says "local control will be eliminated" if voters approve the measure on Nov. 8. Passage would result in "diminishing resources" and won't bring "the needed infusion of state resources for the full support of local" school systems.
Deal and supporters of the referendum, which he pushed through the GOP-controlled General Assembly along mostly partisan lines in 2015, say it will enhance local control by letting parents and teachers make decisions at “chronically failing” schools taken over by the state.
Deal would appoint a new state superintendent — Georgia would then have two — who would decide which schools to take over and then pick who would run the schools. Local taxpayers, meanwhile, would have no say in the use of their money to run and maintain the schools. The proposed change would require the appointed superintendent to consult with local people, but does not delineate their roles or authority.
“That to me is not local control,” Davies said. Though his chapter is bucking the top Republican in the state, Davies said opposition to the passage of the resolution was minimal and muted. Around a dozen committee members were represented, voting either in person or by proxy. Yet there was little discussion about the resolution, except over the technicalities of some of the “verbiage,” he said.
Deal’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The governor has support among charter school advocates.
Andrew Lewis, executive vice president of the Georgia Charter Schools Association, likened the governor’s school proposal to President John F. Kennedy’s moon shot, saying it will likely come with “monumental challenges and demoralizing setbacks” but that children in failing schools deserve “education initiatives as bold as sending a man to the moon and back.”
Lewis said he was speaking for himself and not his organization. The charter schools association could get more members if the amendment passes because the legislation allows the state to take over traditional neighborhood schools and convert them to charter schools run by school governing boards. They’d be appointed by the governor’s handpicked superintendent but would comprise people from the “community,” the legislation says, possibly including parents.
Lewis said opponents criticize the proposal for not providing social services — educators call them “wraparound” services — in the communities where schools are failing yet argue that the community is best suited to fix its educational problems.
“These two arguments contradict each other,” he said. “If the solutions to remedy chronically failing schools are best left to their own communities, then the same argument should be made that the needed wraparound social services for these communities should be best left up to the communities themselves.”
Opponents of the Opportunity School District include the quarter million strong Georgia PTA; and teachers, whose jobs could be at risk since the district could remove them from schools taken over. They say Amendment 1 brings no new money to address the entrenched poverty in the nearly 130 schools targeted for take over. Poverty is a common denominator in poor school performance nationally.
Instead, note the opponents, the Opportunity School District would seize local tax dollars to run schools and would take up to 3 percent for its own administration.
Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed to this article.
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