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Schools

Superintendent Discusses Fulton Schools Charter System Plan

Fulton County Schools superintendent Robert Avossa discussed the district's plan to switch to a charter system.

The state of Georgia currently maintains strict guidelines about everything from class sizes to the amount of the budget that goes to custodial work within the Fulton County Schools. Switching Fulton to a charter system would allow the district and individual schools to have far more say-so.

Robert Avossa, superintendent of Fulton County Schools, believes a charter system would improve education within the district. He explained how the proposed charter system would work during a public speech Monday night at the Milton Center in Alpharetta. About 60 people attended the meeting.

“We have been stuck in a paradigm,” he said. “How can we step outside?”

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Avossa and the school board hope to have a charter system in place for the beginning of the school year in August 2012.

“The communities we serve have some very different needs,” Avossa said. “I ask that you keep an open mind to this.”

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“We are trying to customize as much as possible and let local people weigh in.”

A charter system is a contract with the state that allows some state guidelines to be loosened. It does not supersede federal law. No Child Left Behind and other federal laws and statutes remain in place. A charter system is not the same as a system of charter schools, although individual schools have more latitude under a charter system.

For example, each school would have a school governance council composed of the principal, three parents elected by the parents and two community members. High school governance councils would also have two students elected by the students. The councils could suggest modifications in such things as class sizes and curriculum. Changes would require the blessing of the superintendent.

A charter system would also allow some changes in the hiring and firing of teachers.

Avossa explained how the hiring of some non-traditional teachers could strengthen faculties. As an example, the entire state of Georgia college system produced only one certified physics teacher last year, he said. In math and science, there are currently 35 teacher openings in the district.

“We have to say ‘no’ to a non-traditional because he didn’t take some specific pedagogical class,” Avossa said. “We need to think differently about supply and demand.”

Teacher pay is something else that needs to be reconsidered because of the teacher shortage in some subject areas. “We have the same pay scale that has been use for 100 years in America,” he said.

But education won’t be turned upside down. “The Georgia Curriculum will continue to be a base for our work.”

Detailed information is available on the county's website. Also, there will be similar public meetings on Wednesday night at Lake Forest Elementary in Sandy Springs and Thursday night at Westlake High School on Union Road in Atlanta. The superintendent took questions from the audience on Monday night.

Avossa wants the quality of public education in Fulton County to improve. “People want (the public schools) to be a viable option, not a default option.”

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