I attended a Fayette County Board of Education meeting [July 29] and was saddened to hear the reasoning of most of the board members in rejecting the charter school application from Liberty Tech.
With the exception of Dr. Barry Marchman, this board is living in 1970. They really believe that every school can be all things to all students.
Rather than creating schools that focus on the needs of particular students, they throw money and technology at every classroom, while leaving the halls, lunchrooms, and playgrounds to be battlefields where children who are different in any way continue to be bullied and emotionally scarred.
The only magnet classrooms in Fayette County are for special education students. A charter school has never been approved by Fayette County and there are no magnet schools. There is no STEM school, no college and career academy, no school for the arts.
Yet, this BOE is surprised when people with children who are different in their interests or social skills are pulling out of this system in droves.
The Fayette homeschool academies have long waiting lists, public school K-12 online schools are exploding, and this board is still wondering why schools are closing since the population of children living in the county hasn’t gone down.
So why does the superintendent and the majority of the board say they “support Liberty Tech’s goals” and hope the state approves the Liberty Tech charter, while also saying that Liberty Tech’s public school students can’t have county tax dollars? Why are they speaking out of two sides of their mouths?
Because they really believe that they need every county tax dollar to keep funding more of the same failing ideas.
Oh, their ideas aren’t failing in test scores, which clearly is their measure of success. But they are failing to meet the social and emotional needs of huge groups of children. Why else are so many families choosing other options at great person expense in time and money?
Given the archaic thinking of this BOE, enrollment will continue to drop and neighborhood schools will continue to close.
While systems all over the state are becoming charter systems to be innovative and free of cumbersome regulation, Fayette County has zero experience with charter schools.
Liberty Tech is a unique model that offered this board an opportunity to learn about and partner with a small charter school. But instead, they protected the status quo.
This BOE is deluded if they believe that their model better meets the needs of “all children.” No one model will meet the needs of all children, and the sooner this board joins the 21st Century the better for our children and our society.
Dana Spears, Ph.D.
Child Development Specialist
Fayetteville, Ga.
