This summer, DeKalb County’s new school Superintendent Michael Thurmond met with Lynn Cherry Grant, the daughter of an iconic figure in the history of the now-troubled school district. He left her deeply impressed.
Months earlier, Thurmond, the third superintendent in three years, was called in to pull the district from a tailspin. DeKalb was at risk of losing accreditation, the governor was about to remove most of the school board, there was talk of secession in parts of the county and a former superintendent was headed for trial in a corruption scandal.
Grant’s father, Jim Cherry, was the superintendent who lifted the district to national recognition after World War II, and Thurmond wanted to know more about that time. “He said, ‘Tell me about your father; I keep hearing his name,’ ” Grant recalled. “He said the history of the system was forgotten. He wanted people of the system to remember the past.”
Grant, a former school board member herself, said Thurmond, a veteran politician and former state labor commissioner, seemed like the “right person at the right time” for the district. She senses he doesn’t have much time, though. “If we don’t see improvement,” she said, “the Republicans will have their way and we’ll see vouchers and separate systems. More and more, people will go that route of separation.”
Last week, Pat Reid, the district’s former chief operating officer, was convicted of racketeering and theft in connection with a school construction scandal that also brought down former Superintendent Crawford Lewis. Reid’s former husband was also convicted of racketeering but Lewis pleaded to a lesser charge of obstruction before testifying for the prosecution.
Esteem for the system has been plummeting, and the convictions don’t appear to have boosted confidence.
More and more parents seem driven to either move out of the system or build some sort of firewall between their neighborhood and the central office. Many families shopping for homes simply avoid DeKalb.
“They’re going to go to North Fulton or East Cobb because they want better schools,” said Dona Cardenas, a real estate agent in DeKalb. “I’m tired of losing business.”
DeKalb’s reputation also took a body blow when the county’s CEO, Burrell Ellis, was accused of shaking down county vendors for campaign contributions. The governor suspended him from office, and his case is still pending.
For some, such as North DeKalb parent Molly Bardsley, even the justice system itself is suspect. She was disappointed that Lewis got off with a misdemeanor, but pleasantly surprised that prosecutors were able to make the felony charges stick against Reid and Pope.
“I’m surprised that they were able to get a conviction,” she said. “Why? Because it’s DeKalb County.”
Corruption and self-serving bureaucracy are assumed by many parents, who have long used the pejorative term “friends and family” when talking about the school district administration. It refers to an alleged network of employees and power brokers who care more about preserving their high-paying jobs than educating kids.
Reid’s conviction confirmed those suspicions for Dunwoody parent Rick Callihan.
“This would not have happened in a Cobb County or Cherokee County or a Forsyth County,” Callihan said. “I don’t think the nepotism is as deep there.”
Those places are also different from DeKalb in another salient way: Their populations are largely white. DeKalb is majority black, and race has long contributed to political friction, dating from before the court-ordered desegregation busing programs that started under Superintendent Cherry.
But DeKalb’s racial mix is not reflected in the schools. The county is more than a third white, yet only a tenth of the student body is.
Deepening distrust of the system led parents in Central DeKalb to push this year for a “charter cluster,” a designation that basically would have allowed a group of schools near Emory University to be run independently of the school district while using the district’s tax dollars.
The idea was shot down earlier this month in a 5-4 vote, largely along racial lines, with the three whites on the school board on the losing side.
The cluster defeat could fuel efforts to incorporate new cities in North and Central DeKalb. Supporters of the proposed city of Lakeside last week released a feasibility study from the University of Georgia saying it could exist off the tax base within its borders and not need a tax increase. At least three other cities are also being proposed.
Under the current state constitution, new cities don't have control over schools, but Tom Taylor, a Republican state representative from Dunwoody, said the defeat of the cluster proposal is giving momentum to a resolution he introduced to change that.
Opponents of his call for a constitutional amendment told him, “Why not start a cluster?” But, he said, “the recent decision makes the only alternative to create our own system. My theory is the status quo won’t do.”
Taylor has been accused of trying to carve out white school districts. "But Dunwoody High School is minority white," he said.
Though the charter cluster idea was popular in some areas, it wasn’t universally so, especially in largely black South DeKalb.
Kirste Young, a parent there, said she was glad the proposal was rejected. She likened the cluster proposal to the effort to carve out an independent school district in Dunwoody. “It was just a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” she said.
Even so, she isn’t a fan of the status quo. She said DeKalb is too big and slow-moving to address deeply needed reforms. She called it “The Beast.”
She was disappointed that Lewis, the former superintendent, got off with a misdemeanor plea, but said the trial was a distraction from the real issue: the state of education.
“Our students aren’t learning how to think,” she said. “It’s just discouraging.”
Jason Lary, who heads an effort to create a new city of Stonecrest, on the county’s southeast side, is largely happy with the schools. A son attends Arabia Mountain High School, where “we have smart kids and dedicated parents.”
Thurmond wasn’t just using his visit with Grant for a history lesson. He was also arming himself with facts he later used to publicly criticize the charter cluster idea.
Thurmond later told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he feared a return to the 1940s, when the county was carved into 15 smaller school districts. “The quality was low, ” he said. “There was little consistency.”
Grant, too, wants to prevent the system “from falling into six or seven different camps.” She said Thurmond must precisely identify problems and call for concrete solutions.
The downward trajectory of trust and results may be hard to stop.
“The test scores have been telling us bad news for a long time,” she said, adding that the issue has gotten personal.
“I have a 5-year-old old granddaughter, and that’s a question that her parents are having: Should we go private or to the local schools,” said Jim Cherry’s daughter. “In my opinion, people are scared to death their children will not get a good education from the DeKalb County schools.”
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