Comments on: School Board Candidate Garrett Goebel Launches Website

By: CSD Snowflake

CSD Snowflake — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:54:05 +0000

I would like to second the contention that strong top-down leadership can co-exist with strong involvement from the front line–parents, teachers, and students. As with everything else in life, a moderate approach blending the best of both extremes is probably the best one. Problem is that it takes a lot of self-confidence, non-defensiveness, and time on the part of strong central leadership to properly collaborate and cooperate with local school governance. This is what I see is the transition that is being attempted in Decatur and may or may not succeed depending on how much committment CSD gives it. It always seems easier to make the “best” decision centrally. But central-based decisions can fail for at least two reasons:
1. Lack of attention to details that are not easy to observe or understand from the central level.
2. Lack of commitment by the folks who actually end up implementing the decision–teachers, students, school principals and staff, and parents. You can try to impose compliance by force but that’s usually only a short-term success, if that. The arts of teaching and leading require more than following directives from above or delivering curriculum units–they require passion, interpretation, energy, creativity, and caring, all of which cannot be dictated from the top down. An example is that the principals were not involved in a substantive way with the decision to become a system charter or the writing of the charter. Therefore, it’s taken some time for them to get on board with the concept, understand it fully, and practice it, never mind embrace and model it. I think their behavior would have been very different if they had been involved more fully with the entire process as stakeholders, not just lieutenants taking orders from the generals above.

By: Sweetea

Sweetea — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:21:53 +0000

You know, I doubt that there are many who think that the current school board is doing a bad job. I think they have done a great job and would continue to do well. However, with the exception of Bernadette, this board does carry a lot of baggage (undeservedly so) because of the last reconfiguration. I don’t think that it’s possible for this board to earn the complete trust of a large segment of parents because neither side seems to be able to get beyond the reconfiguration. Both sides still, after several years, have a bad taste in their mouths. There are school board members who are dismissive of certain parents and parents who are dismissive of our school board and administration – all because of the Westchester stuff. This is not an ideal situation.

It seems to me that it would be beneficial for all involved to begin the move to a new group of leaders who do not carry the weight of the reconfiguration. Everyone would get to start over with a clean slate.

I think our board members are wonderful, but they are not the only wonderful people in Decatur. I think it’s possible to get some fresh faces with fresh ideas on the school board who can really help CSD move to its next era. I think that you can appreciate the great things that our current school board has accomplished while at the same time understanding that there is occasionally the need for a “regime change.” That is why so many of our political leaders have term limits.

By: Garrett Goebel

Garrett Goebel — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:41:38 +0000

Scott, my response was actually meant to have been a follow-on to Tyler’s claim of a previous landslide victory. Numbers can of course be spun either way. My intention was simply to provide some of the raw data by which the readers could draw their own conclusions on Tyler’s claims.

An oversight on my part was in calculating voter turn out against all of Decatur’s registered voters. I don’t know if it is a safe assumption, but we may be able to assume that District 1 has 1/2 of Decatur’s registered voters. In which case, the District 1 turn out was probably closer to 21%. By comparison, there was a 26% drop in votes between that election and the last municipal election in District 1. Of course in it, the incumbent ran unopposed. -I am not a politician. This is my first political campaign. I do not know what typical municipal voter turnout is.

While I think it is safe to read the results as an affirmation of the majority of Decatur residents of the incumbent, I also believe the previous election illustrates a deep divide. I run into people every day who are still very upset. We need to find a way to put the past behind us, and focus on moving forward together.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:14:43 +0000

GG: “(Note: The election you mention was decided by 220 votes with ~10% turnout. Decatur has roughly 14,700 registered voters. Landslide is a term usually defined by the person using it.)”

That’s an interesting point, Garrett, but couldn’t it just as easily be read the opposite way? That is, genuine “hot button” issues that galvanize communities tend to bring out voters in hordes. With such a tiny turnout, perhaps the community opposition to the reconfiguration wasn’t as strong as its most vocal members would have us believe.

Note I’m not speaking for or against the reconfiguration. Just reiterating my general discomfort with valuing raw data at the exclusion of common sense observation (and no, I’m not suggesting that’s what you’re doing; just that it tends to come up in these conversations).

By: Garrett Goebel

Garrett Goebel — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:52:26 +0000

I would much rather talk about what we can do to move forward together. But the truth is that many people are still very upset about the recent past. I wasn’t here during the last reconfiguration. In that regard, I represent a clean slate and a fresh start.

By 2012 according to the central office’s enrollment projections, we may need 28 classrooms at the 4/5 Academy. Can you imagine having trailers at 5th Avenue the day it opens? By 2014 using the same projection methodology, Renfroe and DHS will become overcrowded. My own analysis using historical enrollments from the NCSE going back to 1986 closely tracks the central office projections, but projects somewhat lower enrollments at Renfroe and DHS. However the difference between historic enrollments and the current growth in enrollments is specifically the unprecedented growth of enrollments at the middle and high schools.

The current overcrowding problems need to be addressed in the context of a long term vision which prepares us not just for today’s overcrowding issue, but for the:
o potential problems we are projecting 5 years out
o possibility of annexation
o historic highs and lows in enrollment levels

We need to be working through these problems now. So that when we attempt to solve these problems with construction and/or re-opening schools, the solutions won’t be short-sighted. I believe we are currently at the beginning of 5-8 years of increasing enrollments. However, we need to deal not only with high enrollments, but also to consider future downturns. And how we can achieve systemic efficiencies under both scenarios.

(Note: The election you mention was decided by 220 votes with ~10% turnout. Decatur has roughly 14,700 registered voters. Landslide is a term usually defined by the person using it.)

By: Garrett Goebel

Garrett Goebel — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:10:26 +0000

Top-down and bottom-up are not mutually exclusive. They are complimentary.

Nothing is wrong with effective fairly centralized top-down management. However, part of what determines whether top-down management will be effective over the long-term, is whether or not the leaders at the top are able to keep in touch with the changes going on at the ground level.

We have a community, parents and teachers which are incredibly involved and committed. They are working hard in our schools and many of them are frustrated by their inability to influence things in a positive direction.

Good ideas also come from the bottom-up. Following the previous reconfiguration, there were discipline issues at Glennwood. This problem was addressed by the School Council, who failing to find support from the administration were able to raise funds to hire Rodney Thomas. Rodney is now the Dean of Students at Glennwood. And is generally credited for turning the discipline issue around.

As we move forward together as a Charter System, we will likely see more change in our school system. Empowering bottom-up local school governance will compliment and make our central administration more effective. It will enable us as a system to respond more quickly and correctly to the changes going on in our schools.

By: fifi

fifi — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:03:41 +0000

Thanks Mr Fixit. I stand corrected on the size figures. I do believe that the state regulations and funding formulas favor the larger districts – even if they are not as large a majority as I thought.

I still question what is wrong with fairly centralized control for a relatively small number of schools.

By: MrFixIt

MrFixIt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:43:22 +0000

Fifi, size-wise, Decatur is no where near the smallest system in Georgia. There are around180 systems in Georgia total. Over 70 or those are smaller than Decatur. That puts us in about the bottom 40% but nowhere near the smallest. It’s a common misconception that CSD is tiny.

There are dozens of school systems in Georgia that are even smaller than Decatur High!

We are just smaller than average but nothing special as a far as size goes..