Thursday, December 14, 2017

It's Not About The Money

And yet...it always is.

Atlanta's annexation of Emory was going so well with DeKalb Commission and BOE approval after they extracted meaningless concessions from the ATL. Then Mother Maria "rose up" and demanded that APS expand its boundaries to remain the same as the City.

The undisputed facts are pretty simple: APS is getting approximately 10 students and DeKalb is losing about 2.25 million USD. Now APS will not get THAT much money as their millage rate is lower than the usurious rates imposed upon DCSD taxpayers. Based on the squealing from the usual pigs you'd think this was an enormous amount of money and if it were what you inherited from uncle Ned on the occasion of his untimely demise, it is. If you compare it to a nigh on billion dollar budget it is like that penny in the parking lot. Hardly worth the effort to bend over and pick up. Another view, one slowly surfacing, is a "gross profit" perspective. In no way are those 10 students getting 2.25 million USD of services so there is a lot of meat in that gravy. Enough to [almost] cover the compensation packages of the super and his chosen ones.

But as is common in polite society it is the taboo subject hiding the greatest truths and the topic least discussed in education is, well, learning. Not a single member of DCSD administration or board is initiating or engaging in a fact based, meaningful debate on how this change impacts learning for these 10 students. We ARE subjected to political platitudes about serving every child and protecting the interests of 102.000 students in DeKalb. Someday maybe those interests will include learning.