Atlanta Public Schools: Board members must grow up, or get out

Prove it. That was essentially the message delivered last week to the collection of splinter groups formally known as the Atlanta Board of Education. As in prove you’re serious about leading like adults should lead — or else.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ decision to place the Atlanta Public Schools on probation does more than put accreditation of the district’s high schools at serious risk. It should finally, and permanently, convince the entire board to forsake squabbling and get about the business they were elected to handle.

As this metro area competes for jobs, we don’t need to be seen nationally as having substandard schools, which is how outsiders unfamiliar with this 28-county region would — however unfairly — view headlines about Atlanta’s troubled schools.

SACS was justified in figuratively cracking board members on the knuckles for antics more suited to playground disputes than the elected governing body for Atlanta’s schools. We can only hope the pattern of poor behavior won’t continue Monday when Mark Elgart, president and CEO of the accrediting body, appears at a school board meeting. Board members must live up to promises that they’re accepting the sanction, learning from it and moving on to higher leadership ground.

People of goodwill have to be tired of the board’s dysfunctional behavior. Members would do well to study — and maybe even publicly read aloud in unison — the following passage from Georgia Senate Bill 84, which writes into law common-sense minimum standards for school boards. “The motivation to serve as a member of a local board of education should be the improvement of schools and academic achievement of all students.” Period.

There’s nothing muddy about the statute’s meaning.

Atlanta needs elected education leaders who want to serve the children — nothing more. Any board member who has an agenda beyond that broad charge needs to cease being part of the problem — or have the decency to immediately resign.

There are other public offices where political games, showboating and self-dealing are tolerated, if not expected and appreciated. Those members angling to use their board seats as an activist steppingstone to other offices need to find some other venue from which to mount their campaigns.

The Atlanta district, given its multiple challenges, including an ongoing cheating scandal and the need to hire a future superintendent, cannot afford a continuation of the recent foolishness that has passed for governance.

It’s imperative that Atlanta’s schoolchildren learn to become productive, skilled citizens who can compete in the global economy that this region is an important part of.

Achieving this societal goal requires a sincere change of heart and attitude on the part of the school board. Parents, citizens and other elected officials should keep close watch on the board to ensure they do just that.

Gov. Nathan Deal got a head start last week on this oversight role by appointing two liaisons between the Gold Dome and the school system. Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams and Beth Beskin, who ran an unsuccessful race for the state Senate in 2010, should closely monitor the board and quickly report any significant signs of backsliding away from promises to begin afresh.

Deal, a lawyer, would do well to start quietly sketching out with others bullet points for proposed legislation that, if needed, would decisively and permanently fix the governance problems at APS. If the liaisons report things haven’t substantially improved in coming weeks, then the General Assembly should act this year.

Among the ideas worth study is reducing the size of the board to seven, or even five, members. Experts say smaller bodies can be more effective, and the concept makes sense.

A more-extreme change would be to bring Atlanta’s schools into the mayor’s purview. That has been done in other big-city school systems and is worth consideration if things fail to improve.

Hopefully, the possible threat of legislative restructuring will help keep the Atlanta board on good behavior. We have our doubts at this point.

There is no doubt, though, that well-run school boards are a necessity, not a luxury. With Clayton County, and now Atlanta’s, schools on probation and SACS preparing to visit DeKalb County schools to assess governance quality there, it’s past time to fix our local school boards.