Georgia’s budget crisis and flexible spending.

Superintendents and school boards around the state are facing incredibly tight budgeting seasons. The bottom line is squeezed so hard that this fiscal year many districts are already projecting staff reductions and all have hiring and travel freezes in place. This is not the time to come before your local board with materials requests or new budget items. Augusta (Richmond County) cut afterschool programs (see here) and many more such stories will come as boards meet this month.

Dekalb Superindent Crawford Lewis projected Dekalb will be laying off up to 200 non-instructional employees (see here for the AJC story). To his credit, Lewis protects schoolhouse employees, including janitors and media specialists. But the real problem comes down to flexibility of financial resources. 91% of Dekalb's budget is in personnel, which means that any cuts hit the bone pretty quickly. No organization can nimbly respond to an economic downturn given that reality. Even Dekalb's proposal, which is the most dramatic to be released so far, may not take effect until next school year.

I'm not sure we want our school districts to be any more nimble than that with their budgets. If these budget cuts continue – which I expect they will for a while - school districts will have to reorganize their core business processes and redesign job roles and responsibilities to meet such austere fiscal realities. Governor Perdue sent a letter to Superintendents today granting broad flexibility for districts to spend their shrinking pots of state funds (see here for the full letter). With such flexibility, districts will be better equipped to allocate resources to meet local needs, but - even then - protecting schoolhouse employees will no longer be an option.

School Board Redesign in Georgia

A state commission on school board reform released their recommendations earlier this month (see here for the original report and task force presentations, courtesy of the Metro Atlanta Chamber ). The AJC characterized the recommendations as "the right path" (see original article here) and I generally agree with that assessment. The recommendations cut the heart of Board make-up, governance and – of course – training. I'm pleased to see that training isn't the only solution presented because there are much more difficult systemic issues that must also be addressed. Most of the recommendations do require legislative action, so we can look forward to a lot of good debate about this over the next few months.

In their response to the Commission, the Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA) correctly notes that "in Georgia, there are far more success stories than failures." But, in the face of the recent Clayton County debacle (see here (AJC), here (EdWeek) and here (CCPS)), it's hard to argue that the current system is working for everyone.

Here is a summary of the recommendations (again from the AJC). While everyone will be focused on numbers 1, 4 and 6, which address governance issues, I think the tough work will be on ethics (#3) and performance reviews (#8) because they require follow-through and monitoring. It's easy to make a rule, it's hard to implement it.

1. Change state law to allow the state board of education to place troubled school districts in receivership. This would include schools not performing academically, struggling with accreditation problems, financial mismanagement or abuse of power.
   
2. Mandate stricter qualifications for school board members, including criminal background checks and drug screens by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
   
3. Implement a statewide code of ethics and conflict-of-interest guidelines for school board members.
   
4. Prohibit school board members from being paid. Reimburse expenses only.
   
5. Prohibit employees of any public or private K-12 school system in Georgia from serving on a board of education.
   
6. Legislate the size of school boards to be 5 to 7 members.
   
7. Change all school board elections to non-partisan during the general election in November.
   
8. Require school boards to have a strategic plan for timely performance reviews.
   
9. Add more board training and an orientation by the state board of education

NCTAF/GSU Induction Project: The Results Are In!

What happens when preservice, novice and veteran teachers in high-need schools work together in a professional learning community, focused on student achievement? According to a recent project in 12 of Georgia's high needs schools: Retention rates soar, student achievement increases, teacher satisfaction rises and the quality of teacher skills improves. These schools participated in the NCTAF/GSU Induction Project and found that you can improve working conditions for teachers by attending to a few key things:

• dedicate school time to learning communities
• train facilitators
• provide clear protocols for learning communities

Learning communities are definitely a prevalent best practice (see here and here for research overviews), but - as this study shows us again - the implementation of learning communities matters as much as the vision for them.

To read the full results of this three-year study, click here.