Education today looks very different from 68 years ago. We have become more attuned to individualizing the educational experience of our students to ensure they meet their highest potential. Our teachers are among the most highly educated of our constituents, often holding master’s degrees and beyond.
And we spend more per pupil today, adjusted for inflation, than we ever have. Our schoolhouses have often become second homes for students, with after-school enrichment and intervention programs having students spend more waking hours in school than at home.
Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all, top-down educational policy-making. Education has become too complex and too large, and the needs of our students too diverse and too important.
Today, our educational systems need to be able to flex with the fast-changing needs of our students, to allow schoolhouses to identify the requirements of their learning community and implement a learning experience that will bring out the very best in each student.
But when a school district shows an inability to do so, it begs the question, “Is that district sized and organized properly to serve its students in an effective and far-reaching manner?”
The Georgia Constitution allows consolidating small school systems to maximize financial efficiency and learning opportunities. However, it does not provide for de-consolidating school systems whose super size hinders their ability to provide a quality and equitable education to every student.
We have an opportunity to provide this needed constitutional balance though House Resolution 486, the independent school system constitutional amendment.
The goal of HR 486 is to reintroduce flexibility to the Georgia Constitution and allow for the “right sizing” of school systems in municipalities formed after 2005 (and any other municipalities that share a contiguous border.)
HR 486 gives a voice to these localities and lets them seek independent control of their schools and to “right size” their systems. It provides an opportunity to create a customized school system highly responsive to a learning community’s needs. It focuses funding in a specific and effective manner and brings decision-making close to home.
It helps to ensure the ultimate goal in education: a high-quality learning experience where students can reach their highest potential.
As young as the United States is, our public education history is even more juvenile. We are learning the ropes and constantly working to improve and meet our responsibility of educating, in an equal and effective way, each of our youngest citizens.
Through our brief history of public education, we see that it is full of twists and turns, old and current — all to respond to the changing needs of our student populations and learning expectations.
A state constitutional amendment passed in 1945 capped the number of school districts in Georgia, and prohibited creating any municipally controlled school district from that point forward. The only door left open, as it pertained to school district “creation,” was the consolidation of existing school systems.
Very small school districts are a majority compared to super-sized ones. In fact, the average school district size nationwide is 3,500 students. Fewer than 30 districts in the U.S. house more than 95,000 students, and only 75 districts enroll more than 50,000.
So, on the surface, it appears that school district consolidation merits more attention, seeing that there are so few super-sized districts. But appearances can be deceiving.
When the student populations of Georgia’s largest four school districts are added together — Gwinnett (160,000 students), Cobb (107,000), DeKalb (98,000) and Fulton (92,000) — we find 28 percent of Georgia’s students attend school in one of four county school systems out of 180 state school districts.
When one of these four super districts experiences a “bump in the road” — or worse, a systemwide failure – the risk to the student body by numbers alone is exponentially greater than in a small district.
For example, had DeKalb lost its accreditation, approximately one 1 out of 14 high school graduates in Georgia would have been negatively impacted for college admissions. The gravity of that situation affects not only the future of those graduates; it has a large-scale and direct impact on the state’s economic viability.
