Members of the Atlanta school board were told Monday that their capacity to govern is “in serious jeopardy” and that staff from one of the nation’s top accrediting agencies will be in the city school system next month for a formal review.
The decision by Mark Elgart, president and CEO of AdvancED, to send in a team for on-site interviews and investigation essentially formalizes a warning he gave last week that the board's infighting has put its accreditation at risk.
Three metro school districts -- with a combined nearly 200,000 public school students -- now are being reviewed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and its parent, AdvancED. SACS notified DeKalb County last week that it would conduct an on-site review before Feb. 1 over concerns about its operation. In 2008, SACS revoked Clayton County Schools accreditation, which has since been restored on a probationary basis.
The accreditation agency has the power to revoke school accreditation -- which can impact scholarship money including Georgia's HOPE scholarship, federal funding, college acceptances and property values throughout Atlanta.
The team visiting Atlanta will be empowered to recommend a change in the school system’s accreditation status -- up to and including probation or dropping the system altogether, Elgart said.
Any recommendation the team makes would need to be affirmed by SACS.
Notification of the review came after a Fulton County Superior Court judge set a Nov. 23 hearing in a lawsuit brought by dissenting board members, who are seeking to overturn the appointments last month of a new chairman and vice chairwoman.
School board Chairman Khaatim Sherrer El said last week that Elgart was unnecessarily getting involved in a political dispute and risked undermining his agency's credibility.
State school superintendent Brad Bryant said Monday he sees no indication of that.
“I don’t believe that SACS takes any enjoyment in having to spend some of its valuable time working with these districts," Bryant said "I’ve heard a little bit of a rumbling that they are injecting themselves in a place they shouldn’t be. My time being around SACS, I do not perceive that to be the case. I hope they are seeing SACS as a body trying to help them."
The team will be in Atlanta on Dec. 9-10. Elgart said it would focus on board interaction and decision-making related to governance. Prior to that visit, Elgart asked the system to send by Nov. 15 all policies the board has adopted or revised since July 1. He also asked for information about ethics violations by member Courtney English, who admitted to using his board-issued credit card for personal use.
Parent Anne McGlamry said the board is "playing around with accreditation. You can’t do that to these kids. The loss of accreditation is not something that you take back in a week."
The discord among board members began during the summer. In a series of 5-4 votes, the majority made a controversial policy change and selected El and new Vice Chairwoman Yolanda Johnson to replace former Chairwoman LaChandra Butler Burks and former Vice Chairwoman Cecily Harsch-Kinnane.
The four-member minority, led by Burks, said the change violated both board policy and its governing charter. They filed their lawsuit Wednesday, after attempts at negotiation between both sides failed. Their argument has relied in part on three separate legal opinions received by the board advising the change was illegal, the most significant being a nonbinding opinion from Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker.
Baker said the board's charter, last revised in 2003 and approved by the state Legislature, provides six specific situations when a board chairman or vice chairman may be removed from those positions in the middle of their usual two-year term. None of those reasons, he said, includes change for change's sake.
In court Friday, an attorney for the majority said the dissenters were manufacturing a crisis and that the board had power granted under the state constitution that would override its charter and allow such a change, even if it wasn't one of the reasons listed in the charter. An attorney for the dissenters said the charter excluded such a provision for changing officers because it would destabilize the board.
Board officers are supposed to be selected by their colleagues every other January and serve for two consecutive years. The board followed that mandate in January by selecting Burks and Harsch-Kinnane.
But the frustration that led to the change had been building for months, caused by what El has said was poor communication -- among board members and with the public -- about an ongoing investigation of 58 city schools over possible cheating on state tests. The state first mandated that investigation in February, a month after Burks and Harsch-Kinnane's selection as board officers.
With Burks and Harsch-Kinnane falling out of favor, the policy change approved by El's five-member majority removed a requirement that the board must vote by a two-thirds majority if members wanted to replace a board chairman or vice chairman midterm.
The majority since has continued to push changes dealing with the board's leadership. Last month, they gave preliminary approval for additional changes aimed at diluting the power of board officers. Those changes would take much of the responsibility now undertaken solely by the board chairman -- setting meeting agendas, acting as board spokesman, etc. -- and put them instead in the hands of a three-member "governance" committee.
A final vote on those latest changes is expected in December.
Staff writers Nancy Badertscher and Steve Visser contributed to this article.
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