IN-DEPTH COVERAGE
How education fares in a community affects more than students and teachers. Economic well-being and quality of life also can see fallout from a decline in the status of schools. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution continues its coverage of metro school systems amid concerns over accreditation.
The new superintendent and school board in DeKalb County wasted little time in erasing a well-known, and much-maligned, imprint of the former administration: the so-called “balanced” attendance calendar.
The board voted 9-0 Monday to scrap the calendar until at least fall 2014, which borrows from summer vacation to create more time off in fall and spring.
Former Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson had contended that DeKalb’s 99,000 students forgot too much information over summer break and would benefit academically from a shorter one.
But parents hated it, making their opinions clear in a school district survey. That lack of public support was highlighted Monday when a top staffer working for Atkinson’s successor, interim Superintendent Mike Thurmond, asked the school board not to implement the balanced calendar next fall as planned, and instead keep the current calendar.
Kathleen Howe, the deputy superintendent who was in charge of curriculum and instruction under Atkinson and still is under Thurmond, oversaw the calendar change and the process that led to it. She said it was rushed, flawed and controversial.
“There were issues with the process used to explore the change to a balanced calendar,” Howe said. “There was a sense that the process wasn’t authentic” and that the outcome was “a done deal” from the start. She also said the research the school district relied upon to justify the change was “inconclusive.”
Bob Freeman, a Dunwoody parent who served on a panel tapped by Atkinson to study the calendar proposal and make a recommendation, said in an interview that he felt parents’ voices were ignored.
“There was loud opposition,” said Freeman, who has a child at Dunwoody High. “Dr. Atkinson was pushing an agenda that did not come out of the calendar committee.” He predicted parents will be happy about the reversion to the traditional calendar.
Teacher James Lavender told the school board that he and his colleagues at Lakeside High also had no say in the change. “I did not get a vote and none of my colleagues got a vote. I thought that was very inappropriate.”
Also Monday, the board heard an update from finance chief Mike Perrone, who said that in recent months the school district has been spending more than budgeted. That’s why the administration imposed a freeze on most hiring and spending last month, he said.
Perrone said that over the past couple of months expenditures were two-tenths to three-tenths of a percentage point over budget, which translates to several million dollars. He said lawyers contributed to the problem: DeKalb budgeted $10.5 million this year for legal costs, but the district is on track to spend $400,000 more than that.
Thurmond said he hopes to rein in legal expenses. “We know we can’t afford it,” he said.
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