The state board of education has approved the Cobb County school district’s move to become an Investing in Educational Excellence (IE2) system.
The board’s vote Thursday officially confirmed Cobb as an IE2 district effective this July and capped a year-long process of gathering public input on the future of Cobb schools.
Cobb education leaders recommended the district convert to the different governance model, aimed at giving school systems more flexibility in how they’re managed. Cobb school board members voted in favor of the model at a meeting last month.
The state is requiring Cobb and Georgia’s other school districts 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 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 system. 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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