Cobb County education leaders are recommending the district convert to a different governance model aimed at giving school systems more flexibility in how they’re managed.
Interim Superintendent Chris Ragsdale says school board members should choose the IE2 model, or Investing in Educational Excellence. Board members are expected to vote on the issue at Thursday night's meeting.
Cobb and Georgia’s other school districts are required by the state to declare a “system of flexibility option” by July 1, 2015, or risk defaulting to what is referred to as a “status quo” system.
Without declaring and notifying the state of a selected flexibility framework, Cobb would risk jeopardizing a possible $44 million dollars in savings, according to Cobb school officials.
Georgia districts have a big financial incentive to pursue either charter status or IE2. They can reject either option, but doing so and choosing "status quo" may cause them to lose money-saving waivers that have allowed them to exceed state caps on class sizes and cut attendance calendars below the minimum 180 days. The waivers, popular during the recession, are still used in most of Georgia's 180 districts as a way to balance budgets.
Gwinnett County schools, Georgia’s biggest district, chose IE2 in 2009. Fulton, Georgia’s fourth-largest district, is in the third year of its charter. It is the biggest school system in the state to get that status.
In charter systems, officials must re-engineer central offices to support decision-making by local school governance councils. Under IE2 there’s no requirement for those governance councils. Both types of systems get waivers.
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