Local Control

Not complete local control, but more control than a particular government bureaucracy would like. The bureaucracy in question? City Schools of Decatur. It is worth noting that this limited control is being thrust upon them by the State. That's right, the State Legislature is forcing local control, via the ballot box, on a local government. Expect the local government to fight back on the basis of the State being outsiders, and local control is them doing whatever the hell they want, but the ballot box is just a bridge too far.

This is all about Senate Bill 625 which will force a referendum for any bond issuance exceeding $20M and seems to be targeting a CSD request for a $52M bond. Not perfect, but clearly better than a government bureaucracy run amok. Ideally, any bond issue should require voter approval, and consider this: schools have no problem coming to the voters with hat in hand when they want a SPLOST. Probably because they must. 

Citizens of Dunwoody should take note. This is what local control looks like.

Fait Accompli

The latest edition of the Blue Bag Rag hands us this journalistic nugget:

"With the pending approval of a Trail Master Plan by PATH Foundation,"

Is the master plan written by the PATH Foundation, or is it to be approved by them, or is it both? You could read it either of these ways so let's see if there is any meaningful difference in meaning.

Start with "approved by PATH Foundation" because even if it is "just" written by them they kinda approve of the submitted plan, right? Since we know they approve it does it matter what mayor and council say? Probably not as it appears they have handed the whole matter of deciding what goes on in this city to a phalanx of bureaucrats, consultants and special interests. They have gone all Honey Badger on us. 

But let us hope. Perhaps mayor and council approval will be required, and if the above report is accurate, forthcoming. So does it even matter? After all they will approve whatever is put before them because that is the only option available. So it seems like either way your vote never counts because those you elect are completely powerless. Is this what "local control" looks like?

Local Control? Not So Much

The city's proposal to rape the east side of Tilly Mill Road to install one of their nonsensical, misplaced lanes inspired by the Eisenhower Interstate highway system. Oh, yeah and pushed on communities far and wide via the "PATH Foundation"--other people, not from around here, using other people's money coming from god-knows-where and possibly more than just a little of ours.

How local is that? Not very.

Unsurprisingly some really, really local villagers, who are more than a little upset about outsiders paving a slice of their paradise, have come up with a plan that is acceptable to those who actually live there, is far less costly, improves traffic safety and lo and behold, is the epitome of "local control." 

Perhaps a bit too local, eh? Seems like folks at the city are very cool to the idea and are punting to the PATH Foundation for a rinse and repeat. One council-folk even stated that they would devise a plan that "the best interests of the city and its citizens." Unpack that. It is either casual political blather or a surprising dose of honesty. Note that first in line is "best interests of the city" which is the most important thing in this city and we can expect that what the city wants the city will get. So don't expect the plan originating from hyper-local-control to ever be put into place.

Remember When...

...there was a Dunwoody Village Overlay that protected the character developed organically by the community? Remember when that overlay was actually enforced. Remember when ticky-tacky visual offenders were prosecuted?

The Five Tackiest Were Once Prohibited

If you remember all that then you've been around more than a decade, because those things only happened before there was a City of Dunwoody. As it has turned out that referendum was not about local control. It was about a total sell-out. 

Good Witch? Bad Witch?

GLINDA

And so, what the Munchkins want to know is, are you a good witch or a bad witch?

DOROTHY

But I've already told you, I'm not a witch at all. Witches are old and ugly. (High pitched giggles are heard) What was that?

GLINDA

The Munchkins. They're laughing because I am a witch. I'm Glinda, the Witch of the North. 

DOROTHY

You are! I beg your pardon! But I've never heard of a beautiful witch before.

GLINDA

Only bad witches are ugly. 

This is probably one of the most subtle insults on the silver screen outside of just about any Rosalind Russel dialogue. Bad witches ugly. Good witches beautiful. Which witch are you? The homely one? Perhaps somewhat handsome? Somewhere on the spectrum. Not that spectrum. The spectrum that starts at ugly ending at heart stopping gorgeous. 

Where's our Dotty? Who, or rather what is our Dotty? Our Dotty? That would be local control. So, is our local control a good witch or a bad witch? Which witch is it? Or is it a witch at all? Or, like witches in the storybooks is local control just a convenient myth?

Since local control is THE foundation of this city this topic warrants a bit of pondering.

It has become painfully clear that our elected officials, the seven dwarfs, are not in control of much of anything that goes on at city hall. They have some of the best seats at the theater but they're not the actors on the stage, not the director, not the writer and certainly not the producer. They ARE the groupiest of groupies. They get the best seats. Befitting their egos but not conferring any real control over our locality. Try this thought exercise: identify the dwarf that will raise a hand and fess up to instigating, driving and directing all the local zoning changes to support developers' goals for Dunwoody Village. What's that you hear? Munchkin laughter.

So who is running the show? And where are THEY from? And do they live with the consequences of what they do to OUR community? Are they good witches? Or, are they bad witches?

Well, the general label applied to our masters at city hall is "bureaucrat." Witch might seem more appropriate, but we're stuck with bureaucrat. And they're not from around here. They're from the North (community development) and the South (economic development) and seemingly every where but here. You do a little bit of very simple internet searching and you'll begin to wonder if any bureaucrat at city hall from the very top down currently living OFF this city actually lives IN this city. To be honest it appears that we Munchkins are being ruled by witches from somewhere else working on behalf of someone else. This should be shocking. It is insulting. It is ugly. At least we don't have to ask if these are good witches or bad witches. And if local control is truly foundational we know why this leaning tower is about to topple. On us. Not them.

Is Netflix A Sin

Or is it just a guilty pleasure? No matter, some local governments in Georgia want to treat it, and tax it, like a sin. Now the Georgia Municipal Association, a shaker and mover behind all things "tax" would tell you it is just another franchise fee which they claim isn't a tax, it is just "rent." As if the god in their heaven endowed them with the unalienable right to rent out other folks property. 

But there are some real problems in this nightmare on main street. First, what the hell happened to all that local control? Was that just the stinking bucket of political manure some thought it was? And why is it that the governments that tax residents seven ways to Sunday have no problem handing out multi-million dollar tax abatements to developers who are already making enormous profits? And keep in mind those same advocates of taxing us for Netflix justify it by saying that Netflix is very profitable. First, clamping down on market success is not a sound intellectual argument, else we'd expect to see taxes on restaurants based on their success. Or how about this: a tax on developers based on how profitable they are. Never. Going. To. Happen.

So what should happen? Well, let's take a page from the antifa/BLM movements, Silence Equals Consent and any elected official who remains silent, who refuses to stand up and speak out against these punitive taxes should be removed from office and replaced with representatives who will make the bureaucratic changes necessary to fulfill the promise of "local control." 

Clayton Should Not Lose Federal Funds

Why not you ask? Because Clayton County, like all other counties in the United States should not be getting Federal Funds. But we should all be alarmed by this quote from the AJC:

'We're trying to get to the bottom of this. We need to find out where this (designation) originated from and correct it and move on from there. We can't afford to lose any money.'
- Jeff Turner
- Clayton Commission chairman

So much for local control by local government. This is a clear indication that these local political systems are reduced to petri dishes of corruption as they pass Federal Money thru like a starving child with dysentery. When they have positioned themselves, us, where we cannot afford to lose any money they have empowered politicians and bureaucrats in D.C., a vast majority neither elected by nor beholden to the local poll, to run our lives with the mere threat of withholding even the smallest amount of money. The way our local governments operate, Dunwoody included, they will grow their "revenue" to further a "grow at any cost" paradigm benefiting the pols, their friends and families and at the expense of those they insincerely claim to "serve."

The UK voted for Brexit because they realized that laundering their money thru Brussels constituted exporting all of their control to a growing number of foreign interests. They did not take back their country, they took back their control and in so doing a certain necessary measure of their freedom. It is time for the States, Counties and Cities of the U.S. to do the same.

There's A Grant For That

TOD has ranted often about grant-grubbing down at City Hall. When your new City is touted as "saving us all from DeKalb" these grants are the thirty pieces of silver politicians need to sell us down the mythological river of Local Control. It is the kind of sleazy politics as usual that puts an interstate lane thru a park and removes two lanes from a parkway.

If you've listened to all the hubbub around the Bicycle Lanes Matter movement, you might think that Dunwoody is some kind of bicycle nirvana but just like those poor misinformed souls who moved here for the parks and baseball diamonds you would be wrong. We aren't. And by and large what we do have are weekend Lance-alots who often drive here to then ride around here. That's right. They drive here to put their toes in their straps and their noses in the air. So keep in mind, this isn't about neighborhood kids flocking to school on their Schwinn coasters or the local Birkenstock Babe wheeling over to the now-defunct Green Market to score some Beets and Sweets.

As you've probably guessed the fuel behind this movement is grant money. Turns out there is quite a bit of Federal grant money available for this brand of social engineering. Your Local Control fanatics don't need to be in favour of bicycles, they just need to be in favour of taking these federal dollars and essentially stealing from our children and grandchildren who at some point will probably be picking up the tab. And there is no end of help to do just that.

Bike Walk Alliance and Advocacy Advance offer how-to guides on soaking the Feds for these pet projects. Others focus on how to tap the Feds for ongoing maintenance as this is a common complaint from Common Sense Citizens: "Fine, the Feds pay to put it in, but WE pay to maintain these white elephants." Still others provide talking points. There are even some organizations providing boiler plate ordinances and legislation so that your little piece of heaven can look and operate just like they want.

As a spoon full of sugar there are the ubiquitous Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond certifications to be had as your locally controlled community aligns with their not so local demands. This is where Dunwoody ran into a hurdle. Seems one of the Bicycle Lanes Matter evangelists suggested that to climb this bejeweled stairway to their heaven a Smart City would need to hire a Bicycle Czar. This was viewed by some as unneeded staff expansion and scope creep. Though unmentioned it would also have a negative impact on grant grubbing efforts as money spent on payroll is unavailable for seeding grants. Deciding which contractors get access to City dispensed grant money is a key component of political power in our fledgling little cities. We are not at a stage to suffer erosion of that power so it seems the spandex crowd may have bent a rim on a storm grate that they themselves installed incorrectly.

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.

Core Dumped

The AJC recently reported on the vetting of State School Superintendent wannabes by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. It should come as no surprise that the Chamber is a proponent of Common Core (or any reasonable, objective standards for that matter) as they pay the bulk of school taxes only to pay an even higher price as what few graduates Georgia Public schools produces are woefully incompetent.

All but two candidates Charlie McCarthy-ed the party line parroting the evils of Common Core. One brave soul, never to be heard from again, came out in favour of Common Core. Only one standout seems to have left the Clue Store with a purchase. He observed that it doesn't matter what he or anyone else thinks of Common Core nor does it matter what the truth of Common Core really is because Common Core is DOA. Politically it is toxic waste. He seems to be the only candidate with a reasonable grasp of the situation. Perhaps he even understands the job he's after is more about diplomacy than authority.

Many of the candidates vying for the State position were quick to join in on throwing Common Core overboard but in so doing they have sailed directly into the political horse latitudes. If not for being against Common Core then what other winds fill their sails?

Some tout "local control" but how do you position yourself for a STATEWIDE office on that? Do you propose to shut down the State level office which is already pretty impotent or are we soon to engage in semantic gymnastics and re-definitions of "local"? How do you reconcile ardent support of new schools for new cities while seeking what you otherwise suggest is a powerful statewide position? Some talk vaguely about putting more money into the classroom and are either ignorant about the position or believe the voters are. If they are public school insiders then they may have good reason to believe the latter but are probably blessed with too much self-esteem to entertain the former. If they are outsiders then perhaps they are just politically savvy which may be all it takes to win.

It looks as if this race may offer some entertainment value but little else.

What Is Means

When politics crashed head on into facts during the Clinton administration the American public was challenged to parse statements ultimately devolving into a serious discussion of the meaning of the word "is".

But we've grown quite a bit since then. Now we no longer confront these kinds of issues head on preferring to accept political deceptions and deflections until confrontation is absolutely unavoidable. This is no more true in public education than in any other political arena. The upcoming challenge in language parsing is being brought to you by the stampede towards "Charter Clusters" in DeKalb and the language being redefined is "Local Control".

Now "Local Control" is near and dear to the hearts of all Dunwoodians as this was an important rallying cry in the citihood movement. It was also inseparable from "Taxation Without Representation" and when you ask yourself "Local Control Of What?" you inevitably arrive at one and only one answer: money. And such will be the case this time around.

For those not paying close attention the current Charter Cluster proposals distance themselves from central office policy, procedures and politics. Sounds good especially if you're of a mind to vilify DCSD central office. But in so doing the proposal also distances the Cluster from the will of the voter as the voter elects a board which hires and directs policy for a Superintendent from which these Clusters are severing all ties. Except the money.

Now when you hear "Local Control" in these Charter discussions you may be thinking this is a great thing as you'll now have a more direct say in the goings on at the public school in your neighborhood and more control over how resources are allocated and your money is spent. After all with the current system you may well find yourself in a distinct and powerless minority. Unfortunately the new system would degrade your position from "practically powerless" to "structurally removed from the equation altogether."

Perhaps a simple example would help. In a not so random selection let's look at a small but typical Dunwoody cul de sac with sixteen homes of fairly intact households representing two votes per home for a total of thirty two votes. Now due a combination of demographics and the restriction of votes to households with children who could attend the local school this is reduced to eight votes--one vote per child. This is a reduction of 75% in voting representation on that street--three quarters of the voting representation is lost simply due to the fact that the disenfranchised ONLY pay taxes. These folks still vote for school boards but let's keep in mind that the main goal of Charter Clusters is to separate themselves from district management and oversight. The money will flow in and 75% of the voters who now have some say (no matter how small) will soon have no say whatsoever.

If even minimally observant you will note that none of the Charter advocates will support the notion that those who they wish to strip of a voice should also be excused from paying. Somehow THAT is part of some lopsided social contract.

What you will hear are many justifications for this system and it will be touted as far superior as parents of school children will run the school or at least have a direct hand in running the school. Now imagine this: a principal, a counselor and a parent are having a discussion regarding that parent's child and that child's capabilities and preparedness for certain activities and materials. Your job (as a mental exercise) is to ponder the order you would rank these three individuals with regard to objectivity in this situation. Once complete you will have a better understanding of why more than one teacher has stated more learning would take place if all their students were from an orphanage.

Hopefully this helps as you ponder what Local Control means with the new Charter Clusters. The final definition is still a work in progress but one thing is certain: it will contain the word "cluster."

Local Control

Council is poised to rubber-stamp the next change to the original modest proposal for Brookrun trails to it's much pricier non-vetted implementation as a thoroughfare for our new APC. By and large this was believed to be driven mostly by City bureaucrats gone wild but the AJC's political roundup in the Memorial Day issue indicates that a key force behind moving us down this road is the DNR.

So in only a few short years we've gone from chants of "local control" to a City run by folks who don't live here and don't seem to like the folks who do and now we see one of the few publicly vetted decisions over-ridden by folks operating at the State level. There are those amongst us who say this is all for the best and we should sit quietly in the corner eating our cookies and drinking our milk but one has to wonder how many folks who voted to create this City are happy with this version of "local control".