The AJC reports that Fulton Superior Court Judge Wendy L. Shoob ruled in favor of Georgia’s charter schools today, in a lawsuit brought by seven school districts, who challenged that the charter school legislation was unconstitutional.

It is not an independent school system,” Shoob said. “The General Assembly has provided sufficient guidelines. Commission charter schools are not required to be under the control or managed by an elected board of education. The funding is constitutional.”

Though Decatur could not formall join the lawsuit against the charter schools because it was determined that they had suffered no direct damages as a result of the charter school legislation, Decatur’s school board passed a resolution in December backing actions of the seven school districts.

Meanwhile, Avondale’s new charter, The Museum School, just broke ground on a temporary facility at 3191 Covington Highway yesterday.

Looks like much of the city’s who’s who were on hand for Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle’s visit this morning!

DHS teacher Chris Billingsley reports…

Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle toured the new fine arts and gym facility at DHS today. He later met with students from the vocational program. Lieutentant Governor spoke to Decatur officials, board members, CSD administrators, students and teachers about Georgia’s charter school movement and improving vocational education. Mr. Cagle reviewed the plans for the renovation of the vocational building (designed by DHS students from Mr. Jim “Big Jim” Streeter’s drafting class) and ate a delicious meal prepared by Ms. Dana Kinney’s culinary arts students. Congratulations to Mr. Duane Spurell, Ms. Kinney, Mr. Streeter, and all others that helped make this renovation possible.

Decatur edTV has posted a great segment summarizing CSD’s charter school progress in its first six months, which prominently features CSD Charter Governance Consultant Debbie Pepin – who, from what I’ve seen, tells it like it is.

Bottom line?  Lots of hard, thankless work for the time-being with little notable day-to-day change.

It will continue to be hard, but it need not be thankless.  Thanks for all your efforts thus far CSD Leadership teams!

Along with May-retta, Gainesville and Warren County schools, Decatur will find out today whether it will be among the first four charter school systems in the country. Prior comments and articles seem to indicate this is all but a done deal, so its relatively safe to assume that we will receive a hearty approval from the state school board.

If approved, major changes for Decatur include “incentive pay” for teachers, academic credits for students based on knowledge and not just class time, and a move toward using national tests (instead of state) to measure academic achievement.

Charter schools nationwide will be watching the results coming out of a New York City charter school in Washington Heights that will start paying its teachers a salary of $125,000 a year this coming fall. The school is something of a test case attempting to prove that high-quality teachers are the catalyst to improve a school system.

But here’s the hitch (as told by the NY Times)…

“In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere.

The school will open with seven teachers and 120 students, most of them from low-income Hispanic families. At full capacity, it will have 28 teachers and 480 students. It will have no assistant principals, and only one or two social workers. Its classes will have 30 students. In an inversion of the traditional school hierarchy that is raising eyebrows among school administrators, the principal will start off earning just $90,000. In place of a menu of electives to round out the core curriculum, all students will take music and Latin. Period.”

An interesting concept.  Decatur’s charter school plan hasn’t proposed anything so dramatic, but does offer merit pay to teachers.