Georgia Supreme Court To Decide If Your Kids Can Leave the Plantation

Sometimes it's hard deciding on what to post and this is one of those times. While it's true all politics is local and some events don't have much appeal beyond geographic boundaries, in some cases they also act as a canary in the coal mine type case, and I believe this is one of those cases.

The despicable behavior of the union-led teacher's revolt and, to a larger degree, the extent to which government teachers go to to indoctrinate the children entrusted to their tutelage, came to full light in the wake of the actions in Wisconsin by the teachers reversing their roles and acting like the juvenile delinquents.

In Georgia, there's a case that has been simmering--at times boiling over--and gaining attention only to recede from view while the judicial system continues to stew over the questions. The case revolves around charter schools and taxpayers dollars.

In Georgia. there are provisions in the law which allow tax dollars to follow the student and not the school. There has been a big growth in charter schools in the state fueled mostly by the realization from parents that the government-run schools just were not doing their job. The government schools have several lawsuits trying to stop this expansion for one simple reason: money.

The amounts are considerable. When a child goes to a charter school, that school is entitled to receive the tax dollars that would have normally gone into the coffers of the government school system. This is the money that the school systems count on to fund the exorbitant salaries of the administrators more then the teachers or for anything to fund any sort of teaching activity in the classroom.

The latest case is headed for the state Supreme Court and it's outcome could determine life or death for charter schools in the state.

If the court sides with the argument put forth by the government schools coalition then the charter schools will lose this money.

This is not about education. In fact, nowhere in the plaintiffs case do you see a mention of educational achievement being affected other then obtuse, nebulous terms. It is about being able to continue to live in the lifestyle to which these government bureaucrats have become accustomed to.

Since I began following this story, which I became acutely aware of after my child was out of school and the state mandated that on our property tax bills that the amount going to education be clearly identified, I realized what a huge ripoff the school system was running. I also became aware that it was not the teachers who were the drain on the system as much as it was the administrators. That is a distinction I want to make clear.

Within the government school system now you have two tiers. Administrators and teachers. Administrators encompass everything from guidance counselors to principals to those on the school board. I found it very hard to find any administrator who did not rake in a six figure income.

While teacher complaints of having to do more with less does have a certain amount of validity to it, it is quickly squelched by the revelation that academic achievement has not improved much since the days I was in school and we didn't have those marvelous high-tech gadgets which have become a must have in every classroom.

Introducing competition into the education market is the best way, in my opinion, to improve the quality of the end product and to ensure more parental involvement. I compare it to the way income taxes are taken out. Since it comes out of your paycheck each pay period you really don't notice it and have become conditioned to it; however, if no taxes were taken out and once a year or each quarter you were to write a check to the federal government for your income taxes, you would very quickly become interested in how that money was being spent. That is what happened in Georgia when they started itemizing the property tax bills.

Parents now want to get the best return on the money they are sending to the state and the education coalition simply cannot stand by and watch the little fiefdom they have built up through the years be torn apart by the barbarians.

I hope the charter schools prevail in this legal case, but most reports by analysts I have read do not give them very good odds, mostly based on the arguments being made by the government school lawyers that the institution is the only answer and why do you want to upset the apple cart. For a group that was firmly on board with the community organizer in charge's mantra of change, they sure are fighting it tooth and nail in their little corner of the world.

Charter School Versus Teachers Union

Weigh these two statements and decide which one sounds more sincere to you.

School board chairman Dan Seckinger said the lawsuit was in the “best interest” of the students and taxpayers of Gwinnett.

Or this one.

Student Deja Holbert said Ivy Prep has proved that it has high academic standards and it outperforms other schools in the state. Holbert said stereotypes would have her “pregnant and a dropout between the ages of 15 and 17” but at Ivy Prep she is Ivy League-bound.

“At the school I was zoned to go to, the test scores were 79 percent for math, 88 percent for language arts, and 80 percent for writing. At Ivy Prep it was 91 percent for writing, 96 percent for language arts and 98 percent for writing,” she said.

Ivy Prep also stands as a good example of why it isn't all about the money either. For a couple of years they have been getting by on a shoestring budget with their teachers being paid on the 2006 pay scale, using computers they bought for $20 at surplus auctions, and limited funds from the state. Back in August the state changed their designation which then made it mandatory for the county to share its education budget with the school, which meant an infusion of about a million dollars.

It is this sharing of the budget which prompted the lawsuit. In a nutshell this is the issue. The state approved the schools but the counties, there is another charter school in the same situation, Statesboro’s Charter Conservatory for Liberal Arts & Technology in which these schools are located did not.

There is a very important constitutional issue at the heart of this, that being at what level is control of the school boards actually held.

For me the results speak for themselves, and while the constitutional question is important, the bigger lesson here is that our government school system is woefully inadequate and this example lays that bare, so win or lose, hopefully it will open some eyes and cause parents to put more pressure on local school boards to approve these charter schools.

While the Gwinnett school board is putting their face on this lawsuit, don't be fooled. It was at the instigation of the teachers union, but the union doesn't have the standing to allow it to bring the case.

Gubmint Skools Fear the Competition

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia recently signed into law legislation which makes it easier for charter schools to get funding.

The new law, called HB 881, allows a new state-appointed commission to authorize a charter school's use of a school system's per-pupil funding, including local money — even if the local board did not approve it.

The regular public schools, i.e., government schoolsaren't too happy, and of course in this over-lawyered society we have become, might take the expected next step and challenge the law in court.

Nothing like a little competition to bring out the best in folks, but of course the folks so firmly ensconced in the educational system in the administrative roles, rather then look to see what charter schools do that make them so successful and try to adopt those practices, would rather simply run the charter schools out of town.
If folks would really look at what portion of the school budget in their areas go to pay the salaries of the administrators, which is everybody from the principal on up to county board of education and compare that to what is spent in the classroom to pay the teachers and get school supplies there might be more outrage expressed by the citizens.

In Georgia, when you get your property tax bill it shows you just how much is going to education and how much goes to the county in real property tax. For me the amount targeted to schools is three times as much as what actually goes to the county. Since they have started doing this in Georgia a lot of people have started looking at the budget of their local school districts. If you gave people back that money there would be a lot more kids in charter and private schools. Once people started seeing that broken down they realized private school wasn't so expensive after all.

That is the big problem whether talking about Social Security, or Medicare or other taxes taken out of the paycheck, people never see the money so they don't miss it. Imagine if you actually got to bring home every penny of your salary? But that is a topic for another post.

Update: Gov Perdue also signed into law the bill whcih gives gun owners who have concealed carry permits greater freedoms in regards to where they can bring their gun.

Governor Sonny Perdue on Wednesday signed legislation allowing guns in restaurants, on public transportation and in parks.

The new law would only apply to the roughly 300,000 Georgians that have concealed weapons permits. Those permit holders have passed criminal background checks.