Muscogee County School Board hears options for governance
Five years ago, the Georgia Legislature passed a state law that in part requires public school districts to choose for the first time one of three options for governance.
The deadline is June 30. As of Tuesday morning, according to the Georgia Department of Education, the Muscogee County School District was among the 31 out of the state's 180 districts that haven't decided.
Tuesday night, the Muscogee County School Board gathered in a called meeting to hear the administration explain the options. Superintendent David Lewis plans to make his recommendation during the board's June 8 work session, then the board would vote on the choice during its June 15 meeting.
The choices are:
Investing in Educational Excellence (also called IE2 and Strategic Waivers). An IE2 district has a performance contract with the Georgia Board of Education granting the district freedom from specific provisions of state education law, state board rules and state education department guidelines in exchange for increased accountability.
Charter System. A Charter System applies for a charter from the state board and is granted freedom from almost all of the above in exchange for increased academic accountability and approved innovations.
Status Quo (also called No Waivers). Status Quo districts have chosen to not request increased flexibility so they don't have increased accountability and instead remain under all state laws, rules, regulations, policies and procedures.
The choices are supposed to last for five years. As of Tuesday morning, 102 districts have chosen IE2 (four approved, 98 letters of intent), 45 districts have chosen Charter System (31 approved, 14 letters of intent) and two have chosen Status Quo. Harris County hasn't decided. Chattahoochee County has opted for the IE2.
Muscogee superintendent David Lewis said the vast majority of the larger districts and those similar to MCSD have chosen IE2. But some choices are changing.
Assistant superintendent Rebecca Braaten said, "Even today, one of the school districts that said they were going to go Charter flipped to IE2. So what we're seeing, they're flipping back and forth between the two as more information is being brought forth. That's one of the reasons we've waited as long as we could, because we wanted to see what it really is going to look like."
In fact, Lewis said, he received conflicting answers from two state officials for a question he had about funding.
Lewis brought to the meeting former Gainesville City Schools superintendent Merrianne Dyer, who retired in 2014. For six years, she led one of the state's original four districts to receive a state charter in 2008.
Muscogee board vice chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1 asked Dyer what advice she would give MCSD.
"The first thing I would say is to look at your accreditation plan and what were the recommendations for improvement," Dyer said. "You want to use this process. You want to take a step back and not look at compliance and 'you have to do this' but how can you use one of these avenues to improve performance and improve outcomes in Muscogee County."
Dyer also advised MCSD to not focus so much on the consequences of missing performance targets because they often end up being not as punitive as outlined.
"The best benefit it gave to us," she said, "is it changed our thinking. We thought more about possibilities of doing things. The culture of innovation developed over time."
Board chairman Rob Varner of District 5 asked Dyer why so many more districts have chosen IE2 over the Charter System. Dyer said she didn't know, but she added, "When you are developing your charter application, you are building something, creating something in that framework that fits you. Whereas in IE2, it's more applicable to every district."
District 4 representative Naomi Buckner had a more blunt answer. While the IE2 format allows the district's board to grant local schools more power in governance, the Charter System requires the district's board to implement school-level governance and grant decision-making in five of the following areas: personnel, financial, curriculum and instruction, resource allocation, establishing and monitoring school improvement goals, and operations.
"It seems very clear to me, these systems have a problem with relinquishing control," Buckner said.
Lewis said he talked to three superintendents in large districts this past week, and one of them noted, "If we fail under the IE2, we can default to the Charter. If I'm a Charter and I fail, I default to the status quo and then I've bankrupted my district."
After the meeting, Lewis explained by "bankrupt" he meant that waivers would no longer be available to the district, such as for class sizes and how to spend state money for operations.
Lewis wouldn't tell the Ledger-Enquirer which option he favors, but he did say it won't be Status Quo.
"The waivers have been important to us in terms of flexibility, especially looking at our critical needs and certification," he said. "Had we not had the class-size waiver available to us, we still would have been on furlough days."
Varner said he was favoring IE2 because it is the most popular choice by far, but what he heard during the meeting switched his preference to the Charter System.
"The purported flexibility just gives Dr. Lewis and the administration and therefore the board the ability to structure a program that is - this may be a little strong - but crafted uniquely for our district and our particular challenges and what our needs are, and that's a good thing to have," he said. "In an urban district as diverse as we are, we need flexibility."
Lewis estimated it will take a year for the approval process to be finished. After the district submits a letter of intent, it will develop an application, conduct a public forum, submit the application, revise it based on state board feedback and then executive the contract.
This story was originally published May 26, 2015 at 9:54 PM with the headline "Muscogee County School Board hears options for governance."