With election day only weeks away and many participating in absentee and early voting, you've probably heard your peers mention something about Georgia Amendment 1. When I first heard about this bill I wasn't sure exactly what it was about, so I decided to take a look into it. The longer I researched it, the more worried I became for the future of education. Georgia Amendment 1 appears as this:
Provides greater flexibility and state accountability to fix failing schools through increasing community involvement.
"Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?"
Sounds good, right? The problem is that the ballot title and question for Georgia Amendment 1 is extremely sugar coated and intentionally misleading to make it sound like it will benefit the education system, when in all actuality, it's the exact opposite. Georgia Amendment 1 would give authorization to the state government to intervene in "failing" local schools. (A school is deemed as "failing" if it receives a 60 or below on the College & Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) for three consecutive years. The state of Georgia has 2,200 schools in 181 districts, and 121 of these schools are considered to be "failing.")
If this bill is passed, then the schools will become part of a state district, which is called an Opportunity School District (OSD). The OSD will take management of these "failing" schools away from the local school districts and give it to a charter operator selected by an appointee of the Governor. The Governor could choose anyone to run these schools, meaning that the new commission would open up the state to private companies to come in and run public schools. The sad truth is that these companies will not use the funding for what it is actually for in order to make a profit for themselves.
The superintendent of the OSD would choose if the school closes or converts to a charter school. If he or she chooses for the school to continue as a charter school, the superintendent would be able to select any management (and hire and fire whoever he or she wants), gain access to ALL school funding, decide how to spend these funds, alter academic curriculum, and even decide how much say (if any) that the community would have. This is TOO MUCH POWER, especially for someone who doesn't have to answer to voters. If that's not enough, the local taxpayers will still continue to pay a per-student amount to support the school, including 3% that will go to the OSD for administration costs.
When you take away the fancy words of the bill and understand it for what it truly is, it's easy to see that Georgia Amendment 1 would be damaging to the future of education. To simply put it, this bill would sell out our schools to private companies so they can make profits. They will not care about the well-being of the students. They will not care about the teachers. And they will surely not care about what the community has to say. As a future teacher myself, I highly encourage you to vote NO in NOvember to help save the future of our education system. Let's keep Georgia schools local!
