So now our local sugar plum visions dance around the creation of Dunwoody City Schools. Some say we should convert all existing schools in Dunwoody to charter schools in the hope that would give parents with children attending those schools greater influence over what goes on in that school. Or so they think. Parents have always been a bit delusional about "their school" and we have yet to demonstrate that giving excessive weight to their "concerns" improves education.
Others have suggested doing with the schools as the City did with DeKalb County--break away. For this to happen there must be a change to the constitution and legislation mandating transfer of school property at a nominal cost as was done with the parks when the city was formed. As many have already pointed out government school operations come with many encumberances and a CoD system would be much more expensive than proponents are willing to acknowledge (think Dunwoody Police Department). Yet the Carl Vinson Institute would certainly give it a green-light as that is exactly what they will be paid to do. There would be additional startup costs, beginning with textbooks and recruiting, and it isn't very likely that the parents themselves would pick up the tab. Even in conservative Dunwoody parents expect others to pay their freight.
A third proposal, perhaps only a trial balloon, was to create new schools from the ground up. Private schools. Well, quasi-private, as again, proponents of this proposal are expecting the City to subsidize the operation. And who wouldn't want to pay higher taxes so the neighbor's kids get a private school education? Turns out there are quite a few. While the semi-privy advocates are not very clear regarding the legal and regulatory implications of their grand scheme they're damn sure they don't want their kids going to "those DeKalb schools". But they also don't want to pay the piper--they just want to call the tune.
Outside of wanting someone else to pay what all these folks have in common is a rather flimsy grasp on the overall financial operation of America's Public Schools. The AJC reports that neighboring Gwinnett spends approximately $1 Billion to serve approximately 125,500 students. Assuming average class size of 30 students this works out to about $240K per class. We know the average teacher's burdened cost isn't half that even with platinum plated benefits. The fact that most of these folks don't know where all this money goes doesn't necessarily mean it is wasted but rather that they are not aware of what it takes to run a school. Bear in mind, Gwinnett is one of the more efficiently run systems in the metro area.
The powers that be had a similarly weak grasp of financials when they formed the City of Dunwoody. That or they were intentionally deceptive, take your pick. Yet many persist in the belief that Dunwoody schools would somehow be better run than DeKalb schools supported by the commonly held opinion that nothing could be worse than DeKalb. However there is no tangible evidence to suggest that Dunwoody would actually offer anything different or better in way of governance other than consistently pasty faces which in and of itself isn’t “better”. There is evidence to suggest Dunwoody might be as bad or worse than DeKalb. Dunwoody has polarized internal factions, openly acknowledged ethical issues, rather convoluted real estate "deals", and the City started from day one with “Friends and Family” on the City payroll which directly contributed to pissing away close to $100K. The parallels are frightening.
But probably not frightening enough to prevent the inevitable drive towards a mini-me DCSS--the Dunwoody City School System.
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