I am writing to respond to your paper’s coverage of the school system. I am puzzled that your staff writers John Thompson and Ben Nelms approach this subject with such apparent dislike for the Fayette County Board of Education. Were they somehow failed by public education in the past?
Your paper’s coverage of the FCBOE has been more indicative of some personal vendetta then good investigative journalism. As a case in point I would mention the headline for June 8 issue of the paper – “Councilwoman: ‘Fraud’ at Fayette schools?” Reading that leads one to believe that the councilwoman was accusing the school system of fraud, but if you read her letter she is not.
I want to thank Councilwoman Brewer for taking the time to investigate what she did and to report on it in that meeting and the follow-up letter to your paper. It is good to see one of our elected officials taking the time and effort to fulfill their obligation to the public.
It is a common misunderstanding that schools designated as Title I are given that designation because of poor academic performance. As Councilwoman Brewer discovered, that is not the case. It is solely based on the percentage of students below the established poverty level. Poverty here is the key indicator of poor performance in a school; there is a lot written about that subject that is worth looking at.
I cannot speak to the idea that some parents may be taking advantage of the system. Like the councilwoman I am part of a generation that was raised to believe that lying is wrong. I am aware that local churches have taken it upon themselves to feed that same group of students over the summer months so that they do not go hungry – so at least some of those children really are needy.
What does puzzle me is the idea that the school system is somehow worse today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. The performance of our educators is monitored by student testing and that testing does not show some drastic decline in performance.
All four of my children attended FCBOE schools and all four graduated from Fayette High School. Three of them went on to attend UGA and graduate from there; the fourth is a successful business owner here in the community. The quality of education they received was not substandard in anyway.
Despite the insinuations on your paper’s part over the years, that the school system has some big ugly secret it is hiding, you have yet to show a single piece of evidence for such. I would respectfully suggest that you allow some other staff writer who is more objective to cover the FCBOE going forward.
Finally, I would like to suggest to the City Council that if they are looking to attract millennials to the city that the decision not to support the multipurpose development of the acreage across from Dunkin’ Donuts was not the right decision. Fayette has a housing crisis; in the sense that we do not have adequate affordable apartments for those fresh out of college or just starting out life as adults.
Matthew J. Williams
Fayetteville, Ga.
