Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog debated the decision by the Druid Hills Charter Cluster to give up its battle with the DeKalb County schools. A new state law allows a group of public schools to band together as an autonomous “cluster” with its own governing body. Schools in the Druid Hills area were attempting to become the first cluster but said in a scathing letter last week that DeKalb schools doomed their efforts. Here is a sampling of comments:
Bu2: I support the Charter Cluster and think most of what they said is right, but they desperately need somebody with a little perspective so they don't just sound like a group of whiny, paranoid children. I don't see anything beneficial coming from writing this letter.
Howdy: I think so many in DeKalb County just want any alternative to the DeKalb County School District. But I also think the Druid Hills Charter Cluster Petition was well-written by very sharp people who could have managed a very good school system. That's probably the issue; the leadership of the DCSD knew the same thing and saw it as a real threat to their "empire."
Always Ready: Let the city of Decatur annex Druid Hills. Go, Red Devils.
Starik: A reasonable deal would be this: Atlanta would annex the Druid Hills area, possibly all the way to a border negotiated with Decatur. Fulton County could let Milton County and all those nasty GOP people go. Fulton County would lose a lot of Republican votes and gain a lot of Democrats; why would Fulton Democrats be in opposition?
The Deal: If a portion of Druid Hills goes into Atlanta, then DeKalb has to figure out what to do with the rest. This is 100 percent due to the incompetence of the DeKalb County schools. This would be a "you made your bed, now lie in it" situation. No doubt annexation would have a ripple effect, not only in the school system but also in the tax base and especially in the cityhood battle. The city of Briarcliff would lose a lot of land from its map if Druid Hills annexed into Atlanta.
Lulu: This is very good news for those who support traditional public schools and reject the notion that charter schools financed with taxpayer funds offer a viable alternative. The original idea was fine: a few charter schools created to experiment with creative education alternatives that might be implemented by the traditional public school systems. Today, however, we see this rampant, unrelenting drive to divert public school taxpayer funds to the unlimited expansion of these charters that cannot guarantee quality education. Right-wing Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats embraced the erroneous notion that moving toward the privatization-for-profit of traditional public schools via the charter school movement would result in educating our children far better than traditional public schools. As time goes by, (there are) more and more examples of how this market-driven approach yields negative outcomes and consequences often directly resulting from this drive for profits.
