Muscogee school district priorities are higher funding, lower costs and better results

In the Muscogee County School Board’s Thursday meeting with the Columbus legislative delegation to discuss priorities for the upcoming session of the General Assembly, money — surely to nobody’s surprise — was the dominant theme.

While some of the items on the list Superintendent David Lewis shared are administrative inside-baseball kinds of issues (attendance, transfer and graduation tracking methods, the “equalization” formula, etc.), others are matters of obvious public interest.

Among them, in no particular order of importance:

The Quality Basic Education (QBE) Act school funding formula, adopted when Joe Frank Harris was governor, is a 37-year-old bureaucratic relic that has never — not once — been fully funded by the legislature. According to the MCSD, the state’s pay scale for entry-level teachers “will significantly lag behind other professional positions in the labor market and create a disincentive in attracting college graduates to this profession.” It also, the board contends, rewards teacher advancement only for years on the job and additional degrees, rather than for talent and effort “that drives student achievement …”

The list also calls for legislation that would allow the MCSD and other local school districts to shop for health care plans for those employees not covered by teacher health insurance. This could possibly cut costs from state-sponsored health plans. (When you’re seeking money from the state, it doesn’t hurt to suggest ways to save some.)

Lawmakers are being asked as well to improve an “inadequate” retirement plan for long-service school system employees. People who have spent many years taking care of our schools deserve a plan that takes better care of them.

One of the most interesting items on the MCSD list is the recommendation that school districts should be able to reinstate retired teachers in “critical-need fields” without jeopardizing those educators’ retirement benefits. The state’s most experienced teachers shouldn’t be penalized by the state for coming back into the game when they are most needed.

A bleak statistic most of us probably didn’t know: State funding provides for one teacher per 345 students in elementary and middle schools for art, music, PE or foreign language. Yes, that’s “or.” As in, pick one. That is simply unacceptable.

The legislature convenes in January … in an election year. It will be interesting to see how high educators’ priorities rank on elected officials’ agendas.

Olens departure regrettable

Sam Olens, by most accounts, did a fine job as attorney general of Georgia.

But his 2016 nomination for the presidency of Kennesaw State University by Gov. Nathan Deal drew fire from KSU students and faculty. Some of it was reasonable (he had no higher ed administrative experience), and some of it patently unfair, particularly criticism of Olens for his legal defense of the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage (as state AG, that was his job).

What apparently will end Olens’ KSU presidency after little more than a year is a pointless error of political and (inexplicably in his case) constitutional judgment.

This past September, KSU cheerleaders knelt before a football game. University System of Georgia officials made it clear to system presidents in an October meeting that kneeling during the National Anthem is constitutionally protected freedom of expression, not to be prohibited or interfered with unless it causes some kind of actual disturbance.

The next Saturday, KSU did not allow cheerleaders onto the field until after the anthem — a policy decision Olens did not clear with University System officials.

“As an attorney and a free speech advocate,” wrote Atlanta Journal-Constitution education columnist Maureen Downey, “Olens was well aware of the protections students at public colleges have under the law. Instead, he capitulated to the outrage expressed by state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, and Cobb Sheriff Neil Warren.”

That might explain a lot. Erhart, who chairs the higher education appropriations subcommittee, is the culture war commando who came down on Columbus State’s proposed “safe space” policy last spring.

Sam Olens is a smart, able and decent man who will land on his feet. But it’s a shame if he gave in to one wing of political correctness under pressure from somebody who purports to be defending us from another.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Muscogee school district priorities are higher funding, lower costs and better results."