Is The GLASS Empty?

If you visit the "GLASS Now" promotional site it does not present the dilemma of "glass half-empty" as it appears the glass has been drained. It could be a consequence of local Republicans, likely to support "new city" schools, getting spanked at the polls in recent elections. But the apathy seems to have set in much earlier. Maybe someone realized that these schools would be public schools and would, by law, operate much like the ones run out of Tucker. Size, smaller in this case, is touted as a significant benefit. But is that enough? Then there is the notion only the best and brightest would head the classroom but there is only one way to guarantee no one will retire-on-the-job after tenure: eliminate tenure. Pretty much a non-starter under state law. Then there is the pay conundrum. Can the city set up schools that are more like private schools than public? That would mean lower pay, not higher as private schools are widely known to pay teachers less than public schools. Maybe someone realized that there isn't enough money to support the kind of friends-and-family hanger-on ecosystem the city supports. Or perhaps the reality of meaningful, outside oversight has chilled enthusiasm. No matter the cause the effect seems conclusive.

They're Baaaaack!

Backers of the zombified City of Cliffside are back, refusing to accept failure while at the same time suggesting they will do a better job this time are on the march to citihood. It is interesting to note they have excluded those areas that voted them down in the last vote essentially saying "love us or we'll leave you." This could be dismissed as mere political expediency but there may be something more significant in play.

The group being tossed back into county waters as chum are the same group that DeKalb fear may bolt for the safer confines of the City of Atlanta. Given recent precedent this move likely will expand the footprint of Atlanta's school system at the expense of DeKalb's. Given the disparity in millage rates this is a win for the bolting taxpayer. Add in APS' demonstrated superiority in addressing the needs of their socio-economically diverse population and it is a win for their children's education prospects.

The new city, and there will be no rest until there is a new city, will have its own problems but the intentional exclusion of this particular group chips away at the sovereign borders of DCSD and sets the stage for DeKalb cities to argue for their own schools within their own tax base. 

Dunwoody City Schools

Should we or shouldn't we?

The answer to that question lies in the answers to many more. The first being "would the City of Dunwoody classify Dunwoody Schools as a 'sovereign government' exempt from all City ordinances, codes and regulations?" Recent history says "yes." Would these schools be run with the same integrity and respect for the community as we have seen with the City to date? Sadly this is likely a "yes." Would the schools be ring fenced from the City (think DHA) or would it be a Friends-and-Family patronage palace (think CVB)? Do you think this City can resist such a power grab? Really?

Bitch Slappin' Mizz Dunwoody

In a recent encounter with Greedy Developer Mizz Dunwoody got one right across the face. Out of the blue. Bitch slapped.

Greedy Developer arrived on the scene with DeKalb-granted zoning in hand to build his building between the Mall and MARTA. But he wants more. He always wants more. And he is accustomed to getting it. He wants a tax abatement, paying almost no property taxes to the city, the county or schools for what is probably a ten year period. Greedy Developer wants the milk but he ain't gonna pay for the cow.

Perhaps his experience with Mizz DeKalb left him confused and angry when he encountered someone playing hard to get. But Mizz Dunwoody should play hard to get. Not because favouring one Greedy Developer is "unfair" to the other Greedy Developers nor because Mizz Dunwoody should be looking to what is "fair" to our local residents. Well not exactly. As long as there is a real prospect of Dunwoody getting their own school system Mizz Dunwoody should not commit to underfunding them. That is only recommended for Mizz Doraville.

Greedy Developer has his DeKalb-conferred zoning, a zoning that found no support in pre-City Dunwoody. Let him build his building under those rules--Mizz Dunwoody cannot really stop him. Mizz Dunwoody needn't demand impact fees. That would be dancing with the devil. But Mizz Dunwoody has been told by someone who knows that Tax Abatements are a bad idea and are a non-starter.

Many think it a knee-jerk reaction but Mizz Dunwoody should kick Greedy Developer in the balls. Nothing says "No Means No" like staggering around with a couple of cracked stones. 

Leveling

Today's AJC editorial page has a couple of interesting juxtapositions, one from the AJC's Education Pundit, Maureen Downey and the other from our very own former-councilman Robert Wittenstein.

Wittenstein took on a previous editorial which claimed that establishing separate school systems in cities recently formed in North DeKalb would constitute separate but unequal and a clear move back to our segregationist ways. Wittenstein pointed out the racial demographics of Dunwoody but neglected to address socio-econoomic segregation these new schools would foster. As is always the case, it is all about the money. There is a point here. Given that the tax revenue per 1000 population is greater in Dunwoody than throughout the county the city schools proposal has the unseemly appearance of the Greedy Rich getting richer whilst starving out those who need it most.

Maureen was both observing that children who most need parents or other adults in their educational lives are least likely to have same whilst those with the most are rapidly pulling ahead. There was just a whiff of a suggestion that geography correlates with this effect. Her main call, sure to fall on deaf ears, was for those involved parents to extend their involvement to the less fortunate children in our midst. To align with that thinking you will need to conjure a reality where all of DeKalb is our midst. Since the only time parents in Dunwoody give a rip about the Columbia High cluster is when they play DHS in basketball or football this whirled view isn't getting traction in daVille. Imagine how well it resonates with the City Schools movers and shakers.

Where Maureen really drops the ball is when she suggests that we level the playing field. Bad analogy. First, most folks who are at the peak of an uneven field see leveling as dragging us down. The other problem is that many of these same folks already feel over-taxed (DeKalb is over the legal limit, so hard to argue that one) and that their money is ill spent. They do not see a field to be leveled as much as swamp to be filled. And Dunwoody wants none of it.

Franchise Fees: With Interest

Probably the most enduring post on TOD is Franchise Fees 101 and it is generally assumed this is due to folks trying to figure out how much the plunge into the deep end of the citihood pool is going to cost. It must be noted that other diatribes on these taxes (What Do Franchise Fees Buy? and Franchise Fees: What Are They Good For?) see little or no traffic.

Perhaps when the reader figures out that it is just another tax from just another taxing authority they give up. They may not even go so far as to learn that even the cable companies are now on a statewide franchise whilst the local yokels keep dragging in the money. So you pay and you pay and you cannot even go down to City Hall to raise a stink over that cable that has been lying across your yard for the last four months. Not their problem, take it up with the State. Oh, and good luck with that.

Or maybe they just total up the cost of Franchise Fees and shrug "this is chump change." It is. In comparison to the other costs (think of FARA writing Home Alarm Registration city ordinances) foisted on you by your newly minted and inexperienced (incompetent?) City Council that would indeed be the case. The fact of the matter is that Franchise Fees are the least of your worries if you're being driven like cattle into the slaughterhouse of Citihood.

Do not let Franchise Fees distract from more dangerous problems. A quick survey can be found in Shout Out To Frederick County, MD. It is incomplete but it is a good start.

You might also look to the track record of nearby upstart Cities, particularly Dunwoody and Brookhaven if you're forming your new circle of governmental hell in DeKalb County. Dunwoody has recently employed the sneaky back-door tax increase by keeping the same millage rate but refusing to craft a revenue neutral (lower millage) tax. This allows politicians to say "we did not raise the tax rate." Legal but deceptive and exactly what they've complained about for decades when the county does it. Then there's Brookhaven. Riding in on their moralistic white horse to joust with the strip clubs only to come out of the engagement muddy and bloody but with saddlebags overflowing with lucre. We'll not go into how quickly Lysol can stain a reputation.

We'll blast past it. 

The real canary in these mine shafts is the City Attorney. If not directly involved in founding these cities they are at least well connected to the powers behind them. And that both Dunwoody's and Brookhaven's CAs have gone down in flames leaving a dark trail of ethical smoke should give anyone even pondering a vote FOR another city like these (and they're all like these) considerable pause. Who are these people? Consigliere? And who the hell are they beholden to, our local version of a political Mafia?

Now you're catching on.

These cities are based on a particularly nasty foundation of greed and a lust for power because to a large degree this is a zero sum game. In their scratching and clawing to get "their share" they will set aside the truth in favour of convincing prevarications, what little integrity they  have will disappear and any transparency will be thru their distorting prism.

Though the citihood outcome is unavoidable there is a way out. Push for an amendment to allow these cities to form their own schools. Now these schools won't be any better (probably worse) but there are enough lemmings out there who will race to the cliff of "local control" that your home value will see a significant bump. Remember the end of busing (aka M to M)? Same thing, only more so. Once the bump kicks in and before the fools realize City Schools are same song second stanza, you cash out. Just get the hell out of Crazy Towne.

Allowed To Fail

There is an interesting bit of folklore floating around the homeschool crowd in Georgia. As the story goes, when Gold-Domers were crafting their rules around homeschooling it was initially proposed that each homeschool student would have to take a nationally recognized standardized test, the scores must be reported to the school district and if the student did not measure up on those tests then that student must be returned to public schools. Then something magical happened. Someone asked a simple question: "if a homeschool student must go back to public schools if they fail this standardized test, then what do we do with the public school students who fail the same test, send them to private schools?"

We've been struggling with the second part of that question ever since.

The first answer was charter schools which were sold on a model of thrive or close. The idea was that charters would have greater flexibility to experiment with successful practices identified in the charter experience incorporated into traditional public schools. They also came with a commitment to succeed--an educational SLA--and were to lose their charter (closing the school) should they not meet these academic commitments. The problem with this was the same as always--parents. Parents have an amazing ability to delude themselves into believing THEIR child attends the best school on the planet--even in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary and therefore once their child is in a charter school that school becomes sacred.

So charters are having mixed results. At best.

Now Governor Deal is proposing an "Opportunity School District", a statewide district to take over failing schools in Georgia a plan modeled after a successful Louisiana program. By nationally normed standards that would be every school in Georgia, but this educational maxim will surely be applied: when all else fails, lower your standards. By applying that rule only the lowest of the low will be taken over by this State District. At least at first. Of course this does not sit well with existing district boards, supers, and administrations, mostly due to the loss of money and to some degree the erosion of power. Mostly the money. So they're pushing back and their mantra is the well-worn "local control" meme.

That will prove problematic, because "local control" is a myth particularly when discussing public schools. One of the key qualities of public schools is that the parents of students do not pay anywhere near the total cost of educating their children. Others do. A significant portion of the cost is born by business via property taxes paid on commercial real estate. But even that is not enough. Some funding comes from the state and it comes with conditions. The state also sets certain parameters like minimum school size which is enforced by funding. Then there is the Federal school lunch program viewed as low hanging fruit by schools far and wide as the program operates without any audits of any source. Just fill out some paperwork and watch dollars roll in. And if you think our wonderful, diligent, over-worked educators would not stoop to such a fraud then you've not been paying attention to what is going on in APS and DeKalb schools of late. Then there are revolutionary, funded programs like Race To The Top... Regardless, none of these funds come without strings attached. And then there is SACS which seems to exist for the purpose of extracting tax payer dollars and protecting district Supers from any uncomfortable scrutiny by the school board. You know, the folks we elect as the sole representatives of our "local control."

And now we have an ongoing effort to change the State Constitution to allow cities (like Dunwoody) to start their own school system, extracting themselves from the current district. And again with the local control. It will be as mythical as a unicorn, but believe it they will because it isn't so much about local control as it is about the money and keeping that money local. We will also find, in very short order, that a Dunwoody City School System would sell out whatever local control there might be in order to obtain the same funding from the State and the Feds that the DeKalb system gets with all the conditions and requirements thereunto appertaining. And an unaccredited school system will not please the citizenry and we'll be dealing with the SACS issue as well.

It turns out that the real problem with local control is that it comes bundled with local responsibility, which almost no one wants. In fact, should parents want truly local control over their children's education and be willing to shoulder the associated responsibility there is a very clear and simple answer: homeschool.