The story so far
After DeKalb County’s school system was placed on probation by an accrediting agency, Gov. Nathan deal suspended six of the nine members. On Tuesday, five of the six replacement school board members were sworn in. Joyce Morley, who was out of town, was to be sworn in later.
What’s next
The six newly appointed school board members will join the three school board members who began their terms in January for a meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at school board headquarters. The suspended board members will be busy, too, deciding whether to petition Deal to get their seats back. They can file requests later this month. Meanwhile, a lawsuit they filed against Deal is making its way through the courts. U.S. District Judge Richard Story set a deadline of last Thursday for the two sides to submit questions to him for the Georgia Supreme Court to consider.
Around Christmas, Karen Carter invited some women to her home near Lakeside High School for a high-minded civics discussion.
She planned a dialogue about the lessons in the movie “Lincoln,” but the conversation quickly shifted to a dire local concern: the DeKalb County school board.
“I said, ‘The public doesn’t know how this board should operate, and the board doesn’t know,’ ” said Sara Fountain, one of the half-dozen or so women there. “All of a sudden, Karen says, ‘That’s what we need to do! We need to take this on as a project.’ ”
They mounted a campaign to educate voters and recruit better candidates, but it turned out that no election was needed.
Gov. Nathan Deal suspended two-thirds of the school board this month and asked the public for nominations to replace them. Carter’s friends urged her to apply. She and 402 others did, and last week Deal picked her and five others to oversee the district until the 2014 elections.
They join three board members who took office in January. Now, all nine must coalesce to restore public confidence and address concerns of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The private oversight agency, citing financial mismanagement and nepotism, placed the 99,000-student district on probation in December and threatened to strip accreditation.
Deal’s move was resisted by the suspended board members, who have sued in federal court.
It’s difficult to assess how well his six appointees will work as a group. They come from disparate backgrounds and are mostly unknown within the tight circle of DeKalb parent activists.
Only Thaddeus Mayfield, a Lithonia man who runs a business-development firm and chaired a committee that oversaw a major redistricting several years ago, is well known among parents. Lynn Deutsch, of Dunwoody, was vice chairwoman of the committee. The issue elicited angry emotions from parents whose schools were on the closure list.
“He was very calm, very collected,” said Deutsch, now a Dunwoody city commissioner. “He showed he was a seasoned leader. He doesn’t get his feathers ruffled easily.”
That could be a strength on a school board that was dinged by SACS for a lack of professionalism. Bickering was common during public meetings, the agency noted in a scalding report.
Other Deal appointees have earned reputations in other realms.
Like Carter, David Campbell participated in Leadership DeKalb. He rose to prominence there, chairing the board. Fountain, the former director of Leadership DeKalb, said Campbell, of Lithonia, was selected as leader because of his background in accounting.
“The man understands finance and budgets, and he also has a real agreeable style,” Fountain said. She described the senior manager at Georgia Power as “low-key” and “not a loud, pushy kind of person” — someone who could build consensus on the school board.
That would surely earn points with SACS, which likes school boards that present a dignified, unified front.
Deal’s three other appointees have backgrounds in business, counseling and science.
John Coleman, a native of Columbus who lives in Brookhaven and is a strategic planner for finance firm Invesco, has a Harvard MBA and has written extensively about leadership. He’s authored or co-authored a couple of books and posted numerous articles online.
The topics tend toward advice on learning, work and home-life balance. A book he co-authored about young leaders earned praise from one reviewer as “passionate” and “earnest.” His articles for the Harvard Business Review blog have titles like “11 Books Every Young Leader Must Read”.
Coleman, 31, is “a big thinker,” said Brin Enterkin, the 22-year-old founder of a nonprofit called The African Soup. The group provides food, education, shelter, medical care and micro-loans for children in Uganda, and Coleman is on the executive board.
“He was able to make our strategy realistic,” Enterkin said. “He was able to say your mission is noble to feed a million children in five years, but let’s make it realistic and feed 10,000 in five years.”
Joyce Morley has numerous degrees and credentials. She was a dean of students in Rochester City Schools in New York and an associate professor at Clark Atlanta University. She’s taken on a diversity of other roles. On her Twitter account (Dr. Joyce Morley@DrJoyceTheLuvDr), she describes herself as an author, radio and TV personality, motivational and keynote speaker, psychotherapist, relationship expert and all-around life “coach.”
The Stone Mountain woman said she’s often been encouraged to run for public office and is eager to collaborate with the school board.
Michael Erwin, 42, finished a Ph.D. in biological science five years ago and worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Services. The Navy veteran has since taken a teaching job at Georgia Gwinnett College. The Decatur-area man is the only Deal appointee with a personal stake: He’s got a child attending a DeKalb school, and a toddler. “I want to make sure they get the best education they can get,” he said.
Thomas Mundie, Dean of Science and Technology at Georgia Gwinnett College said Erwin, who has taught primarily freshman biology at the school for three years, is a good choice for the board. “He’s a good teacher and a leader on campus” who is involved with a handful of committees whose topics range from science to innovation in teaching techniques, said Mundie.
Several of the others — Campbell, 54, Mayfield, 57, and Morley, 61 — have grown children who attended system schools. Coleman is expecting a child. Carter, 50, is a widow with no children. “But she loves kids, and she works with them really well,” said Fountain. Among the projects Carter took on at Leadership DeKalb was a fundraiser so youth members could have a retreat.
Deal neutralized a brewing racial issue by mirroring the makeup of the board members he suspended, five of whom were black. Only Coleman is white. The mission he gave his appointees: regain full accreditation.
Observers have noted the deep resumes of Deal’s appointees, but Miriam Carver, a nationally-reputed governance trainer based in DeKalb, said qualifications matter less than mission.
Carver has worked with school boards across Georgia, and said many suffer the same flaws as the old DeKalb board.
“It’s pretty deadly the trivia they get into and they miss the big question,” Carver said. Instead of the daily minutiae, board members should be asking what skills and knowledge today’s kindergartners will need two decades from now, then setting expectations and milestones for their superintendent.
Qualifications matter, Carver said, “but it also matters what these people are told their job is.”
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