I have been a teacher for almost three decades and a parent for 18. I have served on the board of a DeKalb County charter school — the International Community School — and on the board of the tuition-free, private, Global Village School.
After studying the conversion charter petition to create the Druid Hills Charter Cluster, I am appalled at its brazen attempt to create a privately run school funded with taxpayer dollars. I have taken the hours necessary to review the petition, as well as the 235 requests and rationales for waivers from DeKalb’s standards and policies. The petition “talks the talk” of accountability and adherence to guidelines, laws and policies, but its absurd list of waiver requests speaks otherwise. It places all power in the hands of its own, self-selected governing body, a body that was theoretically “elected” in an incredibly flawed voting process.
The DHCC waiver requests include waivers for discipline, claiming to use “positive” disciplinary tactics. That language is well and good, but when I review the petition and waiver requests, I have deep concern that the cluster will use its waiver to oust students who don’t fit its particular bent, which is clearly toward gifted students.
I am concerned that students of color, from low-income families and with disabilities, and students who are English-language learners, will disproportionately find themselves labeled as “discipline problems” rather than true gifts to the world. They’ll be removed, so the cluster can boast of its success. The process is called “push-out” and it has a venerable history, especially here in the South. I speak as a lifelong Southerner and a product of public schools.
The cluster requests a class-size waiver to be "fiscally sustainable." This request is an absurdly slippery slope, for once the cluster realizes the inadequacy of its budget, the rosters for classes that are not gifted, Advanced Placement, or otherwise geared toward students with higher test scores will quite likely balloon to allow the gifted programs to remain small.
Likewise, the cluster wants full authority and autonomy in transportation, including salaries of bus drivers, routes and accessibility. I hear the phrase of “fiscal sustainability” in the background there, and I am acutely aware that transportation could easily suffer from budget concerns and become an issue that excludes working-class children from attending cluster schools, even though the children would be zoned into a particular school.
In the same breath that the cluster requests waivers of all policies relevant to salaries, budget and personnel, it requests waivers from the DeKalb County School District Code of Ethics and Conflict of Interest policies to create its own code of ethics. One need only have his or her eyes open to see this is a field fertile for abuse.
The petition also states that faculty and staff members will be hired or remain in their positions only if they support the charter petition. This requirement is abusive and contradictory to the ability and rights of teachers and staff members to have open discussion about this important petition. Employees at the affected schools have already reported intimidation and silencing.
All of the waiver requests and the descriptions in the petition rely upon one central idea: Trust us. The wording of both documents sounds professional, but the waivers and petition are a sieve of loopholes through which children who do not fit the upper-class norm will be excluded and harmed.
The Druid Hills Charter Cluster talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk. This attempt by a primarily upper-class group of people to filch taxpayer dollars for an ultimately exclusionary private-school endeavor is reprehensible. For the sake of all our children, I urge the DeKalb school board to deny this petition.
