They have children and grandchildren, and expertise in education, finance and law. They are white and black, men and women. Some can jog to their neighborhood schools and others live miles away.
What this disparate group of charter school pioneers has in common is dissatisfaction with the reigning model of public school management.
If their petition for Georgia’s first charter school “cluster” wins approval from the DeKalb County school board, it could set a precedent that ripples across the state. School boards typically are elected, but this petition would establish the first public school governing board in Georgia with authority to spend the money of taxpayers who had no voice in that board’s selection.
Only staffers and parents connected with seven schools in and around the Druid Hills neighborhood got a vote. About one-fifth of those eligible voted overwhelmingly to move forward with the petition and, in effect, elected the seven-member governing board named in the petition.
Advocates say the selection process was inclusive, with meetings since February that were open to anyone. Around 120 people organized the petition and about 10 times that number voted for it, during four-hour balloting last month.
Members of the county school board recognize the precedent this petition will set if they approve it.
DeKalb school board member Michael Erwin, whose post is in southwest DeKalb, said half the constituents who contact him are for it and the other half against. Erwin is sympathetic to the charter movement — his own child attends a charter school — but this charter proposal is unlike any other in Georgia. It would effectively delegate school board authority to an unelected governing board that will hand pick its own successors.
He is concerned about how the petitioners came up with their leadership and whether the group is representative of all those affected.
Race — ever an issue in DeKalb — is on the minds of those who’ve contacted him, Erwin said. Critics, especially older black people, worry about the effect on the 94,000 or so students outside the cluster in the largely black school district, he said.
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