After his sudden resignation last month, the principal of North Atlanta High School offered a stark explanation: “I am a ‘can do’ person and could not continue to work in a ‘You can’t’ system,” Howard “Gene” Taylor told parents and students in a letter.
Taylor rescinded his resignation after talking to Atlanta Public Schools leaders about the challenges facing principals and finding them open to suggestions. Those discussions with leadership, said Taylor, “were a game changer for me.”
The game needs to change in APS, a district still rebuilding after a test cheating scandal that led to the indictments of 35 educators earlier this year, including former Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall. The fate of Atlanta schools and their checkered reform history matter beyond the city’s borders; Atlanta remains the heartbeat of the state, and the condition of its schools has implications for the state’s economy and its reputation.
Voters will have the opportunity to shape that change in the November election when all nine Atlanta school board seats are up for grabs. Fortunately, the election has attracted a crowded field, and voters have choices.
Voters ought to look for candidates who understand the job, which is not running the schools or running interference for parents unhappy with Johnny’s teachers or grades. Voters have soft spots for mavericks, but the most notorious school board meltdowns of recent years — see DeKalb and Clayton — resulted from the failure of board members to coalesce around their chief responsibilities of approving policy, hiring superintendents and creating goals for the district.
While candidates don’t have to have been fixtures at board meetings or at their local schools, they ought to be familiar with the board’s duties and their schools.
And candidates ought to have something to offer about student achievement beyond, “We need to raise it.” Beware candidates whose ideas require lots of money. There is none. Don’t believe candidates who swear that they’ll find some under the floor boards or in an old suit jacket.
Think carefully about freighting a board with current or retired school employees. And avoid candidates whose families rely on APS for their livelihoods. Or who will themselves depend on the board paycheck to keep on the lights.
The Nov. 5 election will determine more than the composition of the school board. One of the first responsibilities of the new board will be the hiring of a superintendent to replace Erroll B. Davis, who assumed control of Atlanta’s 100 schools in 2011 after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigation of CRCT cheating was substantiated by a state audit.
A former chancellor of the University System of Georgia, Davis was coaxed out of retirement to run APS and is credited with stabilizing the district. Bringing his background as a CEO to bear, Davis streamlined business practices, including consolidating HR functions and creating a process to evaluate legal risks.
While Davis takes stands when he becomes aware of a problem, he’s been criticized for only acting when a crisis forces his hand.
Davis accepted the job in an interim role, which may have made him reluctant to charge up every hill. He never moved far forward on longstanding complaints that the APS central office was a knot of red tape, out of touch with the schoolhouses and unresponsive to educators in the field.
For example, in reviewing emails from North Atlanta High through a Georgia Open Records request, the AJC found that the principal couldn’t hire a science teacher weeks after the school year started. Nor could he get prompt responses from the central office or get the hall floors of his new $147 million school cleaned.
Along with an obstinate and ingrained bureaucracy, Davis’ successor will confront a district marked by extremes. In state exams this year, APS students saw some of the largest year-to-year gains in the metro area. However, a wide gap persists between the performance of its affluent students, most of whom are white, — whose test scores are among Georgia’s best — and its African-American majority, most of whom come from low-income households with histories of educational achievement.
Despite decades of reforms, ballyhooed new programs and millions in grants, the graduation rate in Atlanta hovers around 51 percent. Enrollment continues to fall, although there are bright spots — a middle-class resurgence is increasing class rolls in some APS clusters.
The school board must find a leader who promises more than reform. Atlanta has had decades of reform. What it needs is change.
