SACS Visits DeKalb and Other News

Some insightful reporting by Ty Tagami from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Is Dr. Atkinson out there laughing at us somewhere?

Is she enjoying her fat payout at the expense of our

children and homeowners?  Will the nightmare for

DeKalb's schools finally come to an end?  Or is

this just the beginning?  Traditionally, the worst decisions

that affect the most people and cost us the most

money have taken place of the Summer months, mainly

in July.  So, regardless of whether or not you have

children in the school system, if you pay taxes and

plan to live here for a while, please pay attention to

all issues affecting our county and, most of all,

don't lose sight of the school board's actions just

because the kids are out for Summer break!  Corruption

doesn't take a holiday.  It waits to strike when it thinks

no one is paying attention!  

Accreditation agency visits DeKalb

May 17:  The school accreditation agency that placed DeKalb County on probation last year has returned for a review of the school district in preparation for a May 31 report.

A monitoring team from AdvancED, the parent company of accreditation agency the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, visited the DeKalb County School District Friday with plans to continue interviewing staff Saturday.

The team met with principals, teachers, administrators and board members, a school system spokeswoman said. DeKalb will be judged on progress addressing 11 concerns. SACS gave the district a December deadline to address them.

and...

DeKalb schools change budget hearing plans

May 14:  Hours before a final hearing Wednesday on next year’s budget, the DeKalb County School District cancelled and rescheduled the event for noon on June 3.

No reason was given for the abrupt change of plans. The school board is now expected to hear from the public just a week before a possible June 10 preliminary vote on the fiscal year 2014 budget, which starts in July.

A final budget vote is now expected June 26.

and, just prior to that:

DeKalb schools’ finance chief leaves amid questions about the budget

May 8:  The same day the cash-strapped DeKalb County School District released a proposed budget with millions of dollars in surprise revenue, the district’s finance chief turned in his resignation, two events a district spokesman said were unrelated.

Michael Perrone’s decision to leave Tuesday had nothing to do with the district’s release of a budget that day with $27 million in revenue that did not exist in his earlier projections, district spokesman Jeff Dickerson said.

“He left on amicable terms and all is well,” Dickerson said, adding that Mike Bell, a government finance veteran, will step in temporarily.

Perrone’s departure after an accounting discovery obliterating a projected shortfall for fiscal year 2014, which begins in July, left some observers uneasy.

“With the discovery of what has been called a surplus, there are a lot more questions than answers,” said Gil Hearn, a Dunwoody parent. The founder of Parents for DeKalb County Schools said some worry the new money is not real. “It introduces significant doubt into the process,” he said.

Superintendent Michael Thurmond told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution how he found the money: Some of it, such as a state subsidy associated with a growing population of students who don’t speak English, was always there and unrecorded, he said. But some of it DeKalb had failed to collect, he said. For instance, the district gets federal dollars to feed children, but failed to bill the government for the cost of administering the grant, Thurmond said.

“Some of it, we got it but we didn't know we had it,” Thurmond said. “Some of it, you had to know to ask to get it.”

School board chairman Melvin Johnson said he’s confident in Thurmond’s discovery. He said DeKalb can collect the unbilled money for the current fiscal year, and will try to recoup money from prior years — though he was less optimistic about the prospects for that.

Johnson said he assumed Perrone left because of the revenue revelation. “He probably looked at the budget and saw the discrepancies that had been revealed and decided to resign,” Johnson said.

Perrone did not return messages left on his district cellphone or on an older cellphone he brought with him from Florida. No working number could be found for him in the Jacksonville, Fla., area, where he worked as a school finance officer before he was hired last year by former DeKalb Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson.

Perrone is the first member of Atkinson’s cabinet to leave under Thurmond, who took over in February.

School board member Marshall Orson said he does not know why Perrone left but said it could have been a simple changing of the guard.

“It’s not unusual when you have a change in leadership that some people end up going,” Orson said.

The new superintendent’s budget is a sharp departure from Atkinson’s. With Perrone’s help, Atkinson engineered some of the deepest cuts in school district history. DeKalb sheared off $78 million in spending, implementing a $730 million budget that increased class sizes by reducing teaching positions, laid off library workers, interpreters and bus mechanics and imposed two additional furlough days — unpaid leave — on teachers.

Thurmond is recommending a $759 million budget for fiscal year 2014 that cancels one of those furlough days and gives bus drivers and other support workers a cash incentive for showing up to work regularly. He is also asking the school board to buy new textbooks, hire interpreters and invest in planning for a career academy when they adopt the budget in June.

Teachers advocate David Schutten said the canceled furlough day is a welcome, if small, concession. The president of the Organization of DeKalb Educators visited a half-dozen schools Wednesday and said teachers at all of them expressed “hope but cynicism” about the newfound money.

Schutten was surprised to learn of Perrone’s departure and said it will only deepen suspicion. “He struck me as being competent, so I’m just kind of taken aback,” Schutten said. “What people are going to want to know is, does this have anything to do with the money?”

Please leave respectful comments below:

Gov. Deal Announces New Board Members for DeKalb County

Thanks to Maureen Downey from Get Schooled for getting this information to the public so quickly!
 For her full report, click here.

The new members of the DeKalb County school board, who will be sworn in at 1 p.m. today are as follows:

District 1 (formerly Nancy Jester's district)

John Coleman
Coleman is a strategic planning manager at Invesco. Previously, he held a variety of leadership roles at McKinsey & Company. He also serves on various nonprofit boards. Coleman has a master’s in Business Administration from Harvard and a master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. He resides in Atlanta.

District 3 (formerly Sarah Copelin-Wood's district)

Michael Erwin
Erwin is a U.S. Navy veteran and has been a research assistant at Duke University Medical Center and the University of South Carolina. He has worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Services and is past chair of the NOAA fisheries committees on fish species and fish diseases in Maine and South Carolina. In 2008, he earned a Ph.D. in Biological Science from the University of South Carolina. He has been a member of the faculty at Georgia Gwinnett College since 2009 and teaches undergraduate students in biological science. He graduated from North Carolina Central University with a bachelor’s in Biology and a master’s in Biological Science. Erwin resides in Decatur.

District 5 (formerly Jay Cunningham's district)

David Campbell
Campbell is a senior manager with Georgia Power, where he supports the company’s energy conservation efforts. He is a certified public accountant with managerial experience. Campbell received a degree in Business Administration from Albany State University. He is a former chair of Leadership DeKalb, a member of the DeKalb 100 Black Men and an active member of St. Phillips AME. He formerly served on the Stephenson High School Council and resides in Lithonia.

District 7 (formerly Donna Edler's district)

Joyce Morley
Morley is the chief executive officer of Morley and Associates and is a nationally known public speaker and trainer. She is a certified counselor, a trained mediator and serves on several local and national governance boards. Morley has a doctorate in Counseling, Family and Worklife from the University of Rochester. She received her specialist’s and master’s degrees in Counseling Education from the State University New York College at Brockport, and a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the SUNY College at Genesco. A Stone Mountain resident, Morley has lived in DeKalb County for more than 22 years.

District 8 (formerly Dr. Pam Speaks' super district)

Karen Carter
Carter serves on the faculty of Georgia Perimeter College where she is chair of the Business and Social Science department. She received a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications from Denison University and a law degree from Ohio State University. Carter has served as a classroom teacher and has held several senior administrative roles in the field of education. She is a graduate of Leadership DeKalb and is an active community volunteer and a PTSA member. Carter is a resident of the Lakeside Community.

District 9 (formerly Dr. Eugene Walker's super district)

Thaddeus Mayfield
Mayfield is a senior partner with FOCOM, Inc., a Georgia-based business development firm. He holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Mercer University and received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Tougaloo College. He co-chaired the successful Friends of DeKalb Education SPLOST IV Campaign and is an active member of several business and civic organizations in the metropolitan area. Mayfield is a resident of Lithonia.

Parents Celebrate in DeKalb, Prepare for Work Ahead

Congratulations and Thank You to all the parents, teachers, students, taxpayers, voters and others who have helped unseat the corrupt and inefficient school board in Dekalb County. You have helped prove what we have believed all along: by working TOGETHER, we can accomplish greatness!

Please continue to follow education news and political decisions in the press and here on our website because the issue of accreditation still hangs in the balance. What the DeKalb board does as it moves forward will be critical to the collective success of our county.

TOMORROW is the deadline to submit your resume for a seat on the appointed board: here are the details.


Friends of DeKalb County Schools:

3 Important Steps for Stakeholders

From:  "Parents for DeKalb Schools" and Get the Cell Out - Atlanta

DeKalb Board of Education on Trial. 

Accreditation at Risk.

3 Important Steps for Stakeholders

Now that the DeKalb County School District (DCSD) has been downgraded to the accreditation level of Probation by SACS/AdvancED, the District is only one step away from losing its accreditation. See the report produced by SACS/AdvancED.

On January 17 at 1:00 p.m., the Georgia State Board of Education will meet to determine if they should recommend to Governor Deal that he suspend the members of the DeKalb County Board of Education.  This would allow him to clean house and effectively hit the "reset" button for the troubled school district.  Many believe this is the best possible outcome for the long term health of DCSD. Read the summons here.

What can you do for the children of DeKalb?

1. EMAIL the State Board of Education members something similar to:  

Please vote to recommend to Governor Deal to suspend the Superintendent and the DeKalb Board of Education members immediately, including the newly elected members. The children's educational opportunities can be sacrificed no longer. 

Please provide our county with the guidance and information needed so that we can be more efficient at identifying the causes of such abuse of our tax dollars in the future so that we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.  

And, please support legislation at a state level that would provide for an Ethics Review Panel, such as the one currently under consideration by Senator Emanuel Jones (D - Decatur).   

Please make quality, bi-partisan recommendations to the Governor for qualified individuals who might be willing to serve temporarily on our board until the time that the voters can make their choices known. 

Preferably use your own words and share your thoughts on the issue.

The State Board members' email addresses are listed below.

Simply copy and paste all of these into the "To:" field of your email. It's OK just to send one email to all of them at the same time.  

If you would like us to share your email on our public website, www.GETtheCELLoutATL.org, please add a bcc: or cc: line for sayno2celltowers@yahoo.com. (We will, of course, keep your name and any other identifying information confidential and will only share the contents of your email as a way to encourage others to speak up as well.)

lzechmann@gmail.com
eragsdale@doe.k12.ga.us
hrice@doe.k12.ga.us
disrael@doe.k12.ga.us
kmason@doe.k12.ga.us
bahampton@doe.k12.ga.us
mroyal@doe.k12.ga.us
wbarrs@doe.k12.ga.us
lwinter@doe.k12.ga.us
bburdette@doe.k12.ga.us
glewis@doe.k12.ga.us
arice@doe.k12.ga.us
mmurray@doe.k12.ga.us
state.superintendent@doe.k12.ga.us

Complete contact information for the State Board can be found here if you'd prefer to call.

It's important to understand that the Board could wait to decide what steps, if any, to take. SACS has given DCSD until 12/31/2013 to comply with its recommendations. We can't afford to wait. We must insist that the State BOE act now.

2. ATTEND the hearing on January 17 at 1:00 p.m. to show your concern about the children of DeKalb County and the repeated lack of responsibility that the DeKalb Board of Education has demonstrated. There will be no opportunity for public comment. However, your presence is important.  

The hearing will be held in the State BOE Boardroom at:

Georgia Department of Education
2070 Twin Towers East, 

205 Jesse Hill Jr Drive
Atlanta GA 30334

Click for Google Maps

3. FORWARD this email to every property owner, school parent, blog writer, neighborhood list, and media person you know in DeKalb County.

Share this information on Facebook too: Like Tweet Forward to Friend Thank you for working together for a better future for DeKalb Schools!   For frequent updates, connect with Parents for DeKalb Schools on these sites: Facebook Twitter Website

Copyright © 2013 Parents for DeKalb Schools, All rights reserved.  * Note:  Minor additions and edits to original content made by GTCO-ATL editor with permission for the GTCO-ATL audience and other readers of the website:  www.GETtheCELLoutATL.org.