| PRESS RELEASE
July 5, 2013
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| SACS: Recognizable Progress in DeKalb | |||
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S.O.S. (Scrap Our Schools)
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| Asking "the state" to step in and take over our schools is like asking a murder suspect to preside over the funeral of the victim. Sadly, what other choice do we have? |
DeKalb County taxpayers are fed up and asking Governor Deal to step in and remove our entire Board of Education. Please click this link to add your signature to a countywide petition.
Scrap Our Schools!
The growing sentiment in the communities here is that the corruption inside the schools is so bad and so far gone, that there is nothing that can be done.
If our own leaders do not understand their roles and the public has no other recourse to get their numerous, frequent, urgent issues even listened to, much less addressed, then there is very little that anyone can do. The only system that works is the one that has been built behind the scenes by people who are looking to recoup their investment dollars. Short term investors wanted to flip a lot of houses, then the bubble broke and they were stuck holding the deeds, so to speak. And now we are all paying the price.
The SACS Report says that proper channels are often not followed, but does anyone know what the "proper channels" might be? Every proper channel that a parent may try to follow does not work. Or, what works for one parent may not work for the next. There is no rhyme or reason for many of the things that go on and a lot of animosity is created in the school house when there appears to be a program of social promotion going on. Those who are given power or authority over anything, no matter how small, believe they deserved it and do not want to share their secret with anyone else. A parents that one might think is totally happy with the school will end up removing their child for other parts unknown suddenly and without explanation. A teacher or principal who talked about their love of the area or their long term plans at the school will be called to a meeting one Friday, pack their things and moved to another part of the county on a moment's notice.
Hopes are raised and dashed and those who are caught up in the system have been crying out for help for years, so much and so often that the media has even become bored with their stories. Every school is run differently. Every school has been in turmoil at some point because of the sheer level of neglect, mismanagement, theft and fraud that is commonplace here. For SACS to suggest that there are "proper channels" that can be followed is a joke. Anyone who has tried is fully aware that the "proper channels" do not work. And the fear of retaliation is a lot more than just fear. Retaliation does take place and could have dire consequences for your child and your family. Using a proper channel will not result in anything proper.
Hopes are raised and dashed and those who are caught up in the system have been crying out for help for years, so much and so often that the media has even become bored with their stories. Every school is run differently. Every school has been in turmoil at some point because of the sheer level of neglect, mismanagement, theft and fraud that is commonplace here. For SACS to suggest that there are "proper channels" that can be followed is a joke. Anyone who has tried is fully aware that the "proper channels" do not work. And the fear of retaliation is a lot more than just fear. Retaliation does take place and could have dire consequences for your child and your family. Using a proper channel will not result in anything proper.
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| Above, just one example of how the money does not reach the classrooms. When will DeKalb stop funding corruption and start paying attention? |
Victims of our own demise. There is no organizational chart. We have no job descriptions. We do not get answers to questions about staff that has been reportedly been cut. We know what we pay in taxes. We know what we see with our own eyes inside our schools. We know that someone, somewhere is getting their hands on our money before it can reach the children. And, not just our money, the same is true for federal dollars, SPLOST dollars, donations, contributions, even retirement savings of teachers or dollars intended for Jerry's Kids. (Yes, they even took the dollar that a child donated to buy a shamrock on the wall for Muscular dystrophy.)
There appears to be no other way to help our children that to stop funding this beast. Force all of those who are ripping us off into unemployment and hope they move away, disband and find something else to do with their lives that will not harm so many innocent lives.
Rip the bandage off the wound. It is time to amputate. A broken arm cannot repair itself especially when it is attached to an entire system of broken bones. It simply cannot be done. Put us out of our misery. Get rid of the board, get rid of BOTH Superintendents (Tyson and Atkinson). Get rid of the financial leaders, the lawyers and the teachers who are left here. Get rid of the PTA, the boosters, the canned education programs and please do not bring up the idea of cell towers. We may have failed to educate close to 50,000 children over the past 10 years, but we do not want to give our kindergarten children cancer on top of everything else we know we will be putting them through.
Send out the vouchers. Give us alternatives. Bring on the bus drivers. We can see the writing on the wall. Where will they send us? Gwinnett? Cobb? Or will we just keep them all at home? Anything is better than what we are doing to them now, keeping them in a constant state of fear, as we force them to move around, start and stop different forms of learning and testing, change their bus routes, their buildings and make them travel so far from home to get the exact same level of treatment they could have received wherever they just came from. We rug right out from under the feet of the children every time they get close to feeling secure with their surroundings. It's inhumane, pointless and sad. And, it is one of the very few factors that research has proven to actually affect a child's school performance. Stability of home life and stability at school are necessary for a child to be able to focus on learning, not just surviving the social challenges that come with every change we put them through.
We do not care about the gadgets and gizmos or how many Smartboards you are stockpiling. They are all meaningless without human beings at our schools who will care for our children when we cannot be there.
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| Chairman Walker and Superintendent Atkinson make big bucks for folks who also make big mistakes. Friends and family funding may be coming close to an end. |
A lot of jobs need to be lost and property values must suffer. We have to starve out those who attempt to hang on, hoping for a free ride at our expense and off the money we intended for the the children. We're tired of working to watch selfish adults squabble and fight over the right to waste our money.
We can no longer promise to stop talking at the end of our allotted two minutes, nor can we adhere to your warnings about not shouting obscenities. We can no longer sit quietly and watch you parade onto a big stage, or watch you getting out of your chauffeured vehicle. You are failing us. You are failing the children. Instead, of wasting our time playing your games, we will boycott your self-serving performances that you have likely scripted and rehearsed. Rather, we will stay home and watch you speak in front of an empty room. We will not accept you as the leaders of anything. We will boycott your board meetings and find alternatives to your faulty system.
The petition is just one way of telling the DeKalb BOE how you feel and asking the state Governor to please remove the people he can under his authority.
It does not give a plan for where we go from here. Does anyone have a plan that will work considering what we have accepted as normal for the past decade? You can help ask the Governor to "step in" but who knows what he will do, or what anyone can do, to help. We all built this wall around ourselves, refusing to believe that we could be part of the problem. Now, we will have to find out if we can be part of a change or just the victims of our own failure.
It does not give a plan for where we go from here. Does anyone have a plan that will work considering what we have accepted as normal for the past decade? You can help ask the Governor to "step in" but who knows what he will do, or what anyone can do, to help. We all built this wall around ourselves, refusing to believe that we could be part of the problem. Now, we will have to find out if we can be part of a change or just the victims of our own failure.
Regardless how we got here, one thing is clear: We will all go down together.
PETITION TO THE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA - SCRAP OUR SCHOOLS!
Comments from just one of the recent petition signers in DeKalb County:
Governor Deal,
As the parent of two children including one who will be attending pre-K soon, I have followed the thoroughly dysfunctional proceedings of both the Dekalb School Board and administration with disbelief and horror in the four years since I moved here. I never got the feeling that the education of our children has been high on the priority list of any of our high level school leaders. Accruing power, maintaining a fiefdom, doling out favors, and ensuring relatives/friends are hired/promoted even when their qualifications are suspect have unfortunately seemed higher on the list than maximizing the educational opportunities for their charges. As a result, we have millions in legal fees, a former superintendent on trial for corruption, a thoroughly demoralized teaching staff, and clear evidence of a decline in the quality of education our children are receiving.
The budgeting irregularities are inexcusable for an entity that spends almost ¾ of a billion dollars of our tax dollars a year and, if found in business on the NYSE, would likely result in sanction by the SEC. Given the deep-seated structural problems of both the administration and board, Dekalb School District is too big not to fail. Decisions appear to be made on whim without evidence of long range planning. Millions of dollars of supplies cannot be accounted for while local schools are gluing deteriorating textbooks back together lest they run even shorter. You cannot redirect a leviathan – you can choose to allow the destruction it will wreak or terminate it. While I have respect for at least one member of the board, I feel that state option to remove the board must be implemented to impart the gravity and egregiousness of the situation to the school administration and the entire county, nay the state. We cannot accept such rampant failure or our state will continue to lead from behind in education.
This must be addressed today. Children do not have the luxury of waiting around for two or three years to see if the situation can be rectified by normal channels. Their education is NOW and anything else sets them and our entire state behind. How can I recommend to any colleague with young children to bring their talents to Emory or Georgia Tech or move a business here when our school systems (Dekalb, APS, Clayton, etc) are in such disarray?The leaders of Dekalb have failed our children and teachers for too long.
I am not a fan of bureaucratic control but I would put the school system into receivership if I could. I fear that nothing less than this draconian measure or dissolution of the district into multiple smaller, more responsive districts will be sufficient to break the entrenched culture of personal gain and systemic negligence we have today.