LAST WEEK: SHOULD DEKALB SCHOOLS HAVE PLAN BEFORE GIVEN $500 MILLION FOR IMPROVEMENTS?
The DeKalb County School District will ask taxpayers to fund a half-million dollar school improvement plan, but the details aren’t settled yet. Officials say they want to get community input before drafting the plan and want the funding source in place first. Critics argue that’s like handing over a blank check with no accountability. We asked readers their opinion.
Here are some responses:
In the past, DeKalb County School District's SPLOST project lists have been determined by politics. There has never been an effort to ensure that facility assessments have been accurate. Because of this, issues such as the shameful Cross Keys overcrowding have festered. This time, DCSD wants to take the time to create a project list based on objective data (Facility Condition Assessments, Facility Educational Adequacy Assessments, projected population shifts and site capacity numbers), and gather an unprecedented amount of community feedback to be sure the list is correct. This process cannot be rushed. Superintendent Green has spent the last year proving his integrity. I trust him to follow the plan he has outlined and to develop the most accurate project list DeKalb has ever seen. This will take time, but it will be worth it to have it done right. — Allyson Gevertz
DeKalb County should have a regular plan to touch these schools up every seven years. This should have been part of the plan years ago. They should be ashamed of themselves! My stepdaughter is at Stone Mountain Elementary and to be honest the school needs to be condemned it's so raggedy. They need to stop playing games and do something now with these schools. How is it that Redan can get some funds and other schools can't? — LaToya Giddens
Which of their relations will they be giving the money to? — Michael C. Lennon
The property value in DeKalb is going up and they want to fool us into selling our houses. They dont care about us. The school board dosen't fund the improvements, Republicans always cutting funding and shrinking the tax base. No wonder this state is near last in education and people lack critical thinking skills. — Malik Abdullah
To attend a Cobb County Board of Education meeting or to read the Cobb County School District’s newsletter or website, you would think there are no problems in the schools.
However, AJC reporter Rose French wrote recently that Cobb leads the metro area in school fights and disorderly conduct.
She based her reporting on information from the Georgia Department of Education for the 2014-15 school year.
There were 19,010 reported incidents that resulted in disciplinary action in Cobb.
DeKalb had the second-highest figure among metro Atlanta schools with 15,069.
That doesn’t even count “verbal confrontations, tussles or other minor confrontations,” according to the state definition of fighting which does mean “mutual participation in a fight involving physical violence where there is no one main offender and no major injury.”
Violations may be recorded in student disciplinary records and may be used in student disciplinary hearings in their school, according to the school district’s Student Code of Conduct.
In-school isolation, out-of-school suspension, restitution, the district’s Alternative Education Program, loss of parking privileges, a bus behavior contract, temporary or permanent expulsion and criminal penalties are among the consequences.
Students may attend the Gaining Results in Intervention and Prevention Program, consisting of one four-hour Saturday session attended by the student and the parent, or another approved program to possibly reduce their suspension by three days.
What do you think needs to be done to reduce the number of these disruptive incidents in Cobb County schools? Are school officials doing enough? What should the school board be doing? Send comments to CommunityNews@ajc.com.
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