The threat to revoke the accreditation of Atlanta Public Schools last week was as ominous as a shark fin: Could one unruly school board somehow pull the whole city under?
Shortly after the school system was placed on probation, however, powerful interests in the city and state coalesced into a formidable defensive line. Loss of accreditation, they said, simply can’t happen.
“Come September, we will have an accredited, functioning school system,” state Rep. Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, said of a Sept. 30 deadline facing the school board to improve its governance. “We are all committed we will work our way through this ... issue. That’s the most important message any of us could give.”
But that sense of certainty — one of Georgia’s most visible school systems will not implode — may be about to meet reality. It has happened before, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools did what it hadn’t done in decades and pulled the accreditation of neighboring Clayton County.
That crisis changed Georgia’s laws. And the failures in Atlanta may loom just as large.
“When asked if the APS board has the capacity to get back on track, on its own, the team was told, ‘It’s going to be tough. There is a complete breakdown in trust between board members,’” the SACS report concluded, hinting at the arduous process ahead. “This lack of trust is further complicated by the failure of the board to act in accordance with established procedures and protocols and in a transparent and ethical manner.”
LESSONS FROM CLAYTON
In 2008, Clayton County became the nation’s first school system to lose accreditation in nearly 40 years, undone by unethical behavior that SACS said included micromanaging, misuse of funds, conflict of interest, abuse of power and bid tampering.
“I think Clayton honestly believed we did not have the backbone” to pull its accreditation, said Mark Elgart, president and CEO of AdvancED, which oversees SACS.
But Elgart said the response of the Atlanta leadership team to Tuesday’s SACS report was “180 degrees different than Clayton. They were not defensive. They were very professional. I do believe they left here with a will and determination to do this.”
Of what happened in Clayton, he added, “I think it’s motivating them.”
More than 3,500 students fled Clayton County schools after SACS yanked the system’s accreditation, causing it to lose $23 million in state aid and 300 teachers. Then-Gov. Sonny Perdue removed four school board members for violations of the state’s open meetings act and ethics code and pushed for legislation — passed in amended form last year — to allow the state to exert more control over local school boards.
Elgart said that system’s leaders at the time were defensive from the start and in denial, debating the merits of SACS’ findings.
Clayton regained accreditation in 2009 but has remained on probation for the past two years. It is due for review this spring. Periodic updates by SACS have found progress, citing work by the system’s administrative team, as well as school board members, to win back public confidence.
Atlanta is not in as big a hole, although the consequences are just as serious.
Losing accreditation affects students’ scholarship eligibility, including Georgia’s HOPE scholarship, college acceptances and federal funding. It also could depress property values throughout Atlanta and frighten off companies that are considering a relocation to the area. Some Atlanta parents and students said last week they would not wait to see whether the school district survived its probation, opting to immediately search for alternatives even if it included tuition payments or public schools in neighboring districts.
WHAT APS MUST DO
In a letter to parents, Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall succinctly summed up the report by noting SACS based its decision solely on the board’s governance issues.
Indeed, the report’s release culminated nearly a year of frustration and fighting on the board. Serious challenges, in addition to accreditation, lay ahead. They include an ongoing criminal investigation into test cheating. The board also must seek a replacement for Hall, who announced in November that she will step down in June.
From SACS’ standpoint, the board can ease through a turbulent time by following the rules, both its own and those set by the agency. It must encourage greater consensus beyond the 5-4 split that currently divides the nine-member board. And it must listen, both to its counsel and stakeholders.
“This has a sense of urgency,” Gov. Nathan Deal said last week as he appointed two liaisons to observe the board over the next several months and report back on their work.
The board has until Sept. 30 to make progress on six “required actions” to improve its leadership and performance. It must also submit two progress reports to SACS, the first by May 1 and the second two weeks before its deadline is up. The required actions:
A long-term community engagement plan; mediation among members to resolve communication and personal issues; adherence to board policies, especially those related to ethics and chain of command; engagement on policies that focus on students, teaching and academics; a “transparent” superintendent search that engages the public; and, in conjunction with state lawmakers, a review of the board’s governing charter.
Hall said last week that she and her staff will work with the board as well as SACS to chart each mandate. Both successes and struggles will be documented and presented for review. In a joint statement released late last week, board members pledged to work “hand in hand with SACS and the superintendent to ensure that we are meeting their standards and expectations.”
They also said they will provide regular updates at board meetings and publicly post information on the system’s website.
“There is a plan in place to be successful and provide our children with the best education possible,” Atlanta parent Reide Onley, co-president of the city’s Sutton Middle School, said optimistically of that intensive process, which has to be done under public scrutiny. The question becomes whether board members can stick to it.
They get their first chance Monday, when they take a vote on whether to accept the report. At the meeting, the entire board for the first time will have a chance to question Elgart about the report.
DISCORD GOES PUBLIC
Discord among members became public during the summer. Some blamed poor communication about a burgeoning test-cheating investigation involving 58 city schools. A breakaway group of five members voted to change the board’s rules so it could unseat the chairwoman and vice chairwoman and elect its preferred leaders, a move the state attorney general suggested violated the board’s governing charter. The board’s deposed leaders filed suit in late October to reverse course. After warning the board in October, SACS formally notified the system Nov. 1 that the board’s capacity to govern was “in serious jeopardy.”
Board members settled the suit Nov. 23, agreeing to work with an outside expert in governance. The judge noted that the five-member majority acted lawfully, but the settlement did nothing to bridge the deep divisions among members, nor did it address other actions taken by members. Ultimately, that is why SACS did what it did.
“Every single member admitted they’re at a crisis,” Elgart said Friday of the Atlanta board, responding in part to criticism last week by two lawmakers — state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, and state Rep. Rashad Taylor, D-Atlanta — that the agency had tried to discredit the board majority’s actions and should have dropped the matter.
“They haven’t been able to find a way past it even with the consent order in the courts,” Elgart said.
Written by a team of experienced educators who visited Atlanta Dec. 9-10, the report noted that “the dysfunctional nature of the board can be seen in behaviors such as infighting, bickering, failure to adhere to the system charter, failure to follow in-house legal advice, failure to follow appropriate procurement procedures and using valuable board meeting time to promote private agendas.”
The team reviewed copies of all policies the board has worked on since July 1, among other material. It studied board minutes and videos, including one meeting in October when it took members nearly an hour to agree on their agenda, with back-and-forth arguments over individual items lasting until 1 a.m.
In August, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed made a dramatic late-night appearance before the board to ask for a cooling-off period.
As Reed noted last week, it did not work.
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