Let board run schools
I may not like everything the Atlanta school board does, but I didn’t elect Gov. Nathan Deal, Mayor Kasim Reed or Rep. Ed Lindsey to run schools. Don’t they have enough to keep them busy? If Deal is going to spend time fixing Atlanta schools, maybe the school board can try to solve the state’s unemployment problem.
Mary Carson, Atlanta
Deal, Reed ignore voters
As a lifelong resident of Atlanta, I am horrified and dismayed by our current state of affairs. Our school board is dysfunctional. But so are our city and state governments. Atlanta has a pension crisis thanks to the largesse of our council. Fulton County and Atlanta are suffering from an eroding tax base and squabbling over how to divvy up the spoils between new municipalities and unincorporated areas.
The state is led by a gentleman whose business acumen is lacking and a group of people who try to blast government at every turn, but will gleefully legislate us into oblivion.
Next, according to the exposé in the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we have SACS and the unmitigated gall of its CEO to suggest that the house is on fire and demand that something be done about it (to his liking, of course). And, most absurdly, he can send his fire crew in for a small fee. Hello, is anybody home? What chutzpah.
Then we have the keystone cops represented by Mayor Kasim Reed and his plea for the passage of SB 79 (giving the governor authority to remove school board members on his whim). How convenient that our governor seems to take an acute interest in the ability to displace a duly elected school board. Who would’ve thunk it? The governor and the mayor working to undo the votes of the same people who put them into office. Shame, shame, shame. Douglas C. Hollis, Atlanta
We need school nurses
For many children, a school nurse would have been the only health professional they would have seen next year. Thanks to the Georgia GOP’s quest for an ever decreasing tax burden, children are going to suffer and some may die. That sounds like an exaggeration, but when there is a medical emergency at a school and a kid needs an injection of insulin, or EpiPen, or a situation arises in which time is critical, the school nurse is the first responder, the life saver.
This and so many other programs that help people could have been salvaged if the Legislature had only raised the taxes of the wealthy, but instead they sought just the opposite. As I understand the Republican ideology, the rich don’t have enough and the rest of us don’t suffer enough.
Don McAdam, Sandy Springs
Class size not a panacea
The state Board of Education has now allowed local districts to be exempted from class size requirements to save money. This news may alarm people, and skepticism is warranted any time measures are taken that could impair learning.
Lowering class size is routinely cheered by politicians and residents alike, but few realize such an action could have unintended consequences. Whenever significant class size cuts are enacted, more classes are created and more teachers are needed to cover the additional classes. The additional teachers are not necessarily good teachers and, on average, will have less classroom experience. Also, more jobs are open at schools in better areas, naturally leading some of the best teachers to move from underperforming schools in poor areas.
Class size is demonstrably important, but it does not deserve the primary focus that it sometimes receives. While residents should be skeptical any time actions are taken that could negatively impact learning in our public schools, the current class size policy of the state board does not necessarily have to generate concern.
Brad Cone, Decatur
