Suburban Atlanta school district loses accreditation

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/education/29clayton.html?hp

Wow, this all falls on the School Board.

The loss of accreditation could impair the ability of Clayton County students to attend some colleges and earn scholarships. It could also prevent teachers from receiving benefits if they change school systems, and could mean a loss of money for pre-kindergarten education.


This is just staggering.

I'm guessing they will correct the ship so to speak before the end of the school year, but I am very interested to know what exactly the board members were doing to merit this death penalty for a school district.

 

http://www.clayton.k12.ga.us/news/sacsreport.pdf

This School Board did pretty much everything wrong.

I am surprised they were not arrested before losing their accreditation. I guess there are no safeguards for this type of thing.

 

SACS Report http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/ajc/pdf/sacsreport.pdf (It's a crooked scan)

Pages 10-11 give the list of nine things they had to correct or show they were in the process of trying to correct to keep their accreditation. Of the nine, they only fixed one.

Pages 12 and on give an embarrassing laundry list of the things they were caught red-handed doing.

 

Yes, I read that.

I would have thought they would have cleaned out the board when this report first came out, but trying to have the same people fix it does not make sense.

If I was the AJC, I would ask for the back records of these members. They had to of been making money (kickbacks) off of all of this. No way do you stay on for all of this for free. I'm guessing the kickbacks are much larger than what this report has found so far.

 

So when do the lawsuits start getting filed by parents in that district?

 

Yesterday

 

I read they are short 2,000 students from last year. That means they are going to be out of money this year.

You build a school budget for 2008-2009 in 2007-2008 and you base your figures on student attendance. The state gives you x amount of dollars for each child, so if you are short 2,000 students you will not have x dollars times 2,000 students. This could reach into the millions.

They are in bad, bad shape down there.

I still cannot believe the members who created the mess were still there for a full year trying to fix it.

They should have cleaned house from the start.

 

It's Clayton County. They don't believe in fixing anything.

 

Ding! We have a winner.

The problems in Clayton go much deeper than the school board. Google "Victor Hill" (the sheriff) and you'll find a bountiful cornicopia of scandal, beginning with his first day in office when he fired more than two dozen deputies who had the temerity to be white. It just got better from there.

http://georgiaunfiltered.blogspot.com/2008/03/clayton-county-sheriff-victor-hill-is.html

It has only been in recent years that the county turned majority-minority, and there were too many people willing to vote based on skin color, to the exclusion of competence. They've started correcting course with the primary earlier this month, where Hill and several school board memebers got dumped, but it may come too late. And that's a shame, because it's actually a pretty decent suburban county with a decent sales tax base and safe, affordable housing (and home to Atlanta Motor Speedway, for those more familar with NASCAR than ATL geography.)