Georgia lawmaker pushes for elected local superintendents | Online Athens

ATLANTA – A Georgia lawmaker is traveling the state trying to build support for his constitutional amendment to allow local school districts to elect their superintendent instead of a board appointment.

Rep. Rick Jasperse, R-Jasper, says he sponsored House Resolution 550 because he believes someone who must be elected makes for a more responsive public official.

Jasperse hastens to add that his wife and daughter are teachers and his father-in-law was an assistant superintendent. Plus, he has no complaints about his own superintendent in Pickens County.

“I like mine very well, so don’t take it that way, and it’s not personal,” he said.

The amendment wouldn’t require the election of superintendents in all 180 school districts, but merely make it the option of each local legislative delegation.

“It’s an opportunity to give Georgians a choice,” said Jasperse, a retired county agent.

He introduced it fairly late in the last legislative session, so it hasn’t even been assigned to a House committee yet. To get on next year’s ballot, it would have to gain the backing of two-thirds of the House and Senate.

It already has some impressive cosponsors in former Republican Whip Ed Lindsey and Budget & Fiscal Affairs Oversight Chairman Chuck Martin.

Jasperse has been trying to build support for HR 550 by traveling the state, both in speaking to grassroots organizations and in joining the House and Senate education committees in a series of “listening sessions” in a dozen cities.

He notes that parents like the idea when they hear it, but in addressing a group of superintendents, he rightly anticipates their objections.

“I’m sure there’ll be an impassioned response,” he quipped during a session in Newnan last month.

He was right. One superintendent called it “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”