Georgia Teachers Speak Out!

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

        Jerry Bell is the second superintendent to receive MACE’s accolade as a “Superintendent Clown.”  Crawford Lewis was given this moniker back in 2009.  In fact, MACE had purchased a nice clown outfit for one of our cheerful picketers to wear at the next picket on North Decatur Road in Decatur (the location of the old Central Office – now they have moved to a Taj Mahal on Mountain Industrial Boulevard in Tucker), but on the day of the appointed Clown Picket, MACE had an emergency picket in Atlanta at Douglass High School.  (The issue there was the new principal was apparently demanding that the Douglass High School teachers had to work on Saturday…uncompensated.  The MACE “Remember the Sabbath” picket seemed to put a screeching halt to this.  Ha!)  So, MACE did not get to perform the “Clown Picket” on that particular day, the same day that the GBI showed up unannounced with media in tow, raiding Superintendent Crawford Lewis’s office.

You know the rest of the story.  Crawford Lewis and his top assistant were indicted on Federal charges.  They still await trial.  Crawford Lewis, along with Atlanta’s Beverly Hall, and SACS’s Mark Elgart, were named by me in 2009 as “the three biggest educational hypocrites in Georgia.”  So far, since I named these three “the biggest educational hypocrites in Georgia,” two have disgracefully left or been removed from their high and lofty perches, with much shame attached to their names.  The other, Mark Elgart, has been pilloried in the media of late.  But, it was only after Norreese Haynes and I of MACE started to expose the phony operation of the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges (SACS).  In my opinion, SACS stands for Still Advocating for Cronies and Shills.  Ha!

Now, now, now.  We turn out attention back to Jerry Bell.  A few weeks back, we posed some questions for Jerry Bell, but we haven’t heard from ole “Jerr.”  For whom does the metaphorical Bell toll?  It tolls for Jerry Bell.  Have we had the forensic audit?  Is it true that the board called for an audit?  We are just asking the question.  We have good reason to believe that it did call for one.  Could you, Jerry Bell, fill us in on whether the Hart County Board of Education called for an audit and whether you have acceded to its wishes?

Now we understand that one of Hart County’s very effective and popular teachers was summarily recommended for non-renewal by the brand new principal at the Hart County High School, Robert W. Brown.  Did your administration actually have the nerve to announce a replacement for this teacher before any due process hearing has taken place?  Goodness.  What hubris…and ignorance!  And, it appears to me to be a bit of “amigo-tism” swirling around a prematurely announced replacement for this excellent teacher.  Hmm.  Didn’t this same newspaper go into some detail about this teacher’s replacement being a good friend of the principal…or you?  Hmm.  Amigo-tism…it’s a lot like nepotism.  You are familiar with nepotism, right?  Perhaps if the only elementary teacher in the small school system was recommended for non-renewal but one of your principal’s wives would be hired to replace this non-renewed teacher (although the deck would be re-shuffled a bit), then this might be what we call nepotism.

Let’s see now.  We’ve taken on a few of the big-time superintendents in Georgia…speaking at school board meetings, writing letters and articles about them, filing complaints on them, and, of course, picketing all of them.  We’ve had fun during the years…and we have watched these guys come and go.  Fulton’s James (Jim) Fox, Stephen Dolinger, and James (Jamie) Wilson; Atlanta’s J. Jerome Harris, Benjamin Canada, and Beverly Hall; Clayton’s Joe A. Hairston, Dan Colwell, and Barbara Pulliam; DeKalb’s Johnny Brown and Crawford Lewis; Bibb’s Sharon Patterson; and Muscogee’s John Phillips, just to name a few.  Now we will focus some of our energy and attention on Jerry Bell, the recipient of the Superintendent Clown Award.    Congratulations, Jerry!

Hart County High School Graduation Ceremonies, 2012. 

By the way, Jerr, why don’t you inform Robert W. Brown, that new principal at Hart County High School, to be just as micromanaging about the field conditions at the high school graduation ceremonies as he apparently is about a pep rally agenda, OK?  I mean…if you want to be anal retentive in your management style (which is really a ridiculous and ineffective style of management), then by all means do not let the hallowed graduation ceremonies to be rudely and crudely interrupted by the sudden eruption of the sprinklers on the field.  Ha!  What a fiasco.  © JRAT, May31, 2012.

 By John Rhodes Alston Trotter

Private John Rhodes, U. S. Army, killed in the Battle of the Bulge, January of 1945.

Johnny Rhodes, my Daddy’s best friend while growing up in the East Highland/St. Elmo area of Columbus and all the way through high school (J. V. H. S., of course), died in the Battle of the Bulge in January of 1945.  This was the last great Nazi offensive, repelled by, I think, the U. S. Third Army under General George Patton.  Johnny Rhodes was quite a character, and I have his portrait in the Daniel D. Trotter Conference Room beside my father’s portrait at the MACE Office.  He rode a motorcycle up and down the halls of Jordan High.  He wore his leather boots and his leather jacket (he had these on in the J Club photo that I also have in my office).  (The J Club was the lettermen’s club.)  My mother says that the girls loved Johnny Rhodes!  He was like their Fonz at Jordan High!  But, of all of my father’s close friends, the United States military would not accept Johnny until he had a hernia operation.

Johnny Rhodes had the surgery and was accepted into the U. S. Army.  He stayed in the brig quite a bit at Fort Benning, however.  He liked to go AWOL a lot!  He would show up at my Mother’s house on Lawyer’s Lane in Columbus, wanting my grandmother to fix him a breakfast.  She did.  She too loved Johnny Rhodes!  Johnny would kid my mother by saying:  “Trotter’s going to get killed and I’m gonna come home and marry you!”  Of all of my father’s very close friends at Jordan High, only Johnny did not come home.  Daddy told me that one of their mutual friends says that he saw Johnny get off the ship in Belgium in handcuffs.  I  presume that he went straight from the brig at Fort Benning to the European theatre of the war.  He was killed fighting the Nazi surge in January of 1945.  His remains are in the Park Hill Cemetery in Columbus.  The flag that was draped over his coffin is with me, as well as his Bible given to him by his mother in 1934.  I also have his $25 War Bonds certificate (composed of 25 cents stamps).  His grandparents (who raised him) sent them to my parents when I was born and was named after him.

Miss Green, who taught at Jordan High for probably over 40 years (she was there when my father was a student and when I was a student) almost never forgave my father for naming me after his best buddy, Johnny Rhodes.  Johnny kept up so much mess in her English class.  Daddy ended up teaching/coaching and being assistant principal at Jordan in the 1950s and 1960s.  My mother says that she doesn’t think that Johnny ever got out of Freshman English, but he sure did entertain the girls in the class.  Miss Green would take him out into the halls, and when they came back into the room, he would be dusting off his hands, as if to say, “I took care of Miss Green.”

Johnny Rhodes, unlikely hero.  We remember him.  Rest in peace.

Note:  The portrait of Johnny Rhodes in his U. S. Army uniform is right above my head in this photo.  The large portrait is of my father, painted by one of his students in 1966.  My father’s ship was blown up by a Japanese kamikaze plane toward the end of the war.  Over half of his shipmates were killed.  He survived and married my mother while on his mandatory furlough in February of 1945 in the living room of my mother’s home on Lawyer Lane in Columbus, Georgia.  They are 87 years old and still happily married today.

By Dr. John Trotter

I am returning today from an eight week sabbatical in which I have been doing a lot of reading and writing and talking with the MACE Staff nearly every day.  I was glad when Mr. Norreese Haynes told me this weekend that he and the guys were able to work in a good picket at North Clayton Middle School on the last day of school.  The teachers were thrilled.  I missed the picket line but we are pushing to get The MACE Manifesto published in a few short months.  Some school systems are still open, and I am hoping to visit some schools this week.

This summer, we hope to put together a Best of MACE Live TV on CDs to give out to teachers this coming school year.  We are also looking into purchasing some regular spots on cable television for MACE Live TV.

I look forward to arriving at the ATL, the world’s busiest airport.  In this photo, I am in front of Cristo Redentor, one of the eight wonders of the world.  Can you see me?  Ha!

MACE‘s theoretical statement which cannot be disputed is this:  “You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.”   I defy anyone to dispute this statement.  The reason that public education is so screwed up today is that the policymakers and politicians and educrats think that they can improve public education without first coming to terms with this statement.  It cannot be done, folks.

Embattled Clayton County Superintendent Edmond Heatley

O. K., Clayton County teachers and parents… Here’s your opportunity to speak out on what you think about Edmond Heatley and his superintendency in Clayton County.  Your name and email address will not be revealed.  Here’s your chance to sound off!  Those who refuse to fight for themselves should not expect others to fight for them.  Incidentally, one of the ways that a teacher can fight for themselves is to join the Metro Association of Classroom Educators (MACE).  MACE doesn’t have a scared bone in its body and takes on every abusive administrator in the state of Georgia!  The CCEA group of GAE and PAGE have proven to be woefully ineffective against the arrogant administration of Edmond Heatley.  They are better at kissing his posterior, not kicking it.  Ha!

Note: This is the list. Make what you want of it. These kinds of things are fun to do. Give me a few days, and I will provide you with my rationale for putting these people on these lists. Many of whom I helped to get elected through the years are on both lists. Many with whom I have agreed whole-heartedly and many with whom I decidedly disagreed on several matters are on both lists. I tried to be objective. As a human, this is a difficult task, I know. I have personally interacted with all of the people on these lists, agreeing with them many times and disagreeing and coming to blows on a few occasions. Ha! But, in a few days, I will put “meat on the bones,” so to speak.

Worst Clayton County School Board Members of Last 30 Years!

1 – Ericka Davis

I hear that Ericka Davis is intending to run for the school board in Clayton County again.  Wow.  Just what Clayco needs.  A school board member who is the only person who was on the school board in Clayton County when SACS came marching in in 2003 and 2007.  Wait!  Is this a coincidence?  Ha!  Could it be that Ericka (and her cohort on the school board Rod Johnson) are the very ones who called upon Mark Elgart and SACS to come to Clayco and rescue them?  They were, as Chairperson and Vice Chairperson, losing power.  It wasn’t because they were concerned with micromanaging.  Heck, they were hands down the worst and most egregious micromanagers on the school board.  Yes, Rod, Ericka’s flunkie on the school board, actually wrote to Mark Elgart, asking for a SACS investigation.  Wow.  Thanks, Ericka, Rod, and Eldrin.  Help Clayton County lose millions, if not billions, in property values and infrastructure, will you?  SACS’s “investigation” was no investigation at all.  SACS ignored the mounds and mounds of evidence against Ericka Davis and Rod Johnson (their egregious and flagrant micromanaging of the system, etc.) and just went on a witch hunt.   On February 15, 2008, the very day that SACS’s so-called “Report” came out, school board member Norreese Haynes called it what it was, “a sham and a farce.”  Oh, so this strategy of using Mark Elgart and SACS to scare Mr. Haynes wasn’t working, was it?  Something would have to be done about Mr. Haynes.  He’s got a voice.  We’ll have to shut him up.  Ha!

Ericka Davis is a political control freak.  I guess that she just can’t stand sitting on the sidelines.  A couple of years ago, there was talk about Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell appointing his friend Ericka to a county board, but there was a lot of howling in the community.  So, this never took place.  Now, she apparently wants to come back.  Let’s see if she will contact her apparent buddy Mark Elgart for the third time…if she is not getting her way.  (I am assuming that Ericka was one of the persons who contacted Mark Elgart in 2003 as well as 2007.  I believe that even Eldrin Bell was in those meetings too.)

They couldn’t handle Norreese Haynes.  So, they had to trump up false charges about him living outside his district…even though the Secretary of State’s Office had already done a thorough investigation and found “no evidence” that Mr. Haynes lived outside his district.  The Secretary of State issued two detailed reports on this matter.  But, this did not keep Ericka from leading the charge for the school board to vote Norreese Haynes off the board, in a split decision.  Mr. Haynes to this day has never been given his “judicial review” as required by the Georgia law before anyone can be removed from an elected position.  Judge Deborah Benefield, a real hoot of a judge in Clayton County, refused to hear the case.  What cowardice on the part of Miss-Debbie-Goodie-Two-Shoes-But-Mean As-A-Hornet-Benefield.

Back to Norreese Haynes:  In his 14 months on the school board, he exposed the notorious land deal, and Mark Belcher of WSB TV2 covered the story two nights on TV with Mr. Haynes.  Mr. Haynes discovered that Barbara Pulliam, the superintendent, had not even signed the land contract.  Now who was selling that awful piece of land to the school systems for an exorbitant price?  Why, it was apparently a friend of Eldrin Bell.  We think that this “friend” even held a big fundraiser for ole Eldrin when he ran for re-election.  Mr. Haynes turned down Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor on the FOX National News as well as four local television stations in one day, trying to be a good team player.  No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes.

Norreese Haynes also discovered the Contract Switheroo with the lawyer (who, by the way, wanted to be called “the school board lawyer” as well as be an employee under the superintendent but Mr. Haynes had to inform him that this didn’t work under the Georgia School Law statutes).  Apparently, the contract which had been shown to the school board and approved by the school board was not the same contract that Chairperson Ericka Davis and the lawyer signed.  It had been materially changed for the benefit of the lawyer, and apparently Ericka Davis and/or the lawyer changed the contract without consent of the school board.  But, darn it, having Mr. Haynes on the school board is very inconvenient.  He catches such hanky-panky deals and exposes them!

Mr. Haynes created and pushed for The Teacher’s Bill of Rights.  He was able to get 100% of the nine  school board members to vote for this action, and the passage of this policy gained national media attention.  Perhaps too much attention to suit Chairperson Ericka Davis.  Mr. Haynes also led the assault on the dreaded Kaplan Plan which teachers tended to despise in Clayton County.  It was, as I understand it, one of those sickening cookie-cutter curricula and pedagogical plans.  You know the kind…the kind that puts teachers in proverbial straight-jackets.  The school board voted to get rid of this set of manacles and free up the teachers.

Mr. Haynes also spoke out loudly and forcefully about “order being the first law of the Universe,” and he publically called for the removal of “the thugs” from the school system.  Mr. Haynes actually kept using the term “the thugs.”  This was resonating both with the teachers (naturally) and with the community (not shocked but pleasantly pleased).  Haynes was on the move.  In fact, this same school board attorney apparently came up to Mr. Haynes in early 2008 and told Mr. Haynes that everyone “knows” that you’re going to be the next school board chairman.  Something had to be done.  This is when the Ericka Davis and Eldrin Bell subterfuge began in earnest.  The details are reserved for another forum, but suffice it to say that Norreese Haynes was illegally removed from the Clayton County Board of Education.

Within a very short time, Ericka Davis and Eddie J. White resigned under apparent duress from the school board.  (Rod Johnson, the Vice Chairperson, announced early that he was resigning, but he lingered on until the Governor removed him.)  The rest of the Clayton County Board of Education members were removed by Governor Perdue.  But, in light of the recent Georgia Supreme Court’s decision on the governor’s removal of school board members in Warren County, this action to remove the Clayton County School Board members might also have been illegal.  The point that I am making is that this disgraced Clayton County Board of Education, in a split decision, voted to illegally remove one of its members, a member who fought like heck for the children, the parents, and the taxpayers of Clayton County.  Within no time at all, all eight of the remaining Clayton County School Board member had either resigned under duress or had been involuntarily removed from the school board.  Life has a way of being poetic.  © JRAT.

2 – Rod Johnson

Rod Johnson, Ericka Davis’s flunky on the board, didn’t seem to have a clue about his role as a school board member, but apparently thought that he was a mini-superintendent.

What can we say about Rod Johnson?  He was basically Ericka Davis’s political flunky on the school board.  “Landslide Rod” made the run-off by a single vote in 2004.  He went on defeat incumbent Barbara Wells.  Immediately, it appeared that Rod thought he was a star whose time had come.  Ha!  Initially Eddie J. White was the Vice Chairman, but we think that Ericka really wanted Rod as her do-guy in this spot.  Mr. White was a very respected retired principal and assistant superintendent, and he apparently was not comfortable in a mere fetch-it mode for Ericka.  Mr. White stepped down as Vice Chair but remained on the school board.  Rod was right in the middle of the massive micromanaging that was taking place while Barbara Pulliam was superintendent and later when Gloria Duncan took over.

The night that Barbara Pulliam stepped down (strongly nudged to resign, more accrately spoken), Rod was seen driving off in a car with the new superintendent, Gloria Duncan.  Rod and his new “security person” for the school system were presumably escorting Dr. Duncan to her house, as if she had just be named President of the United States.  This “security person” whom Rod unilaterally nabbed as the new security chief for the entire school system at the time was caught up in a major sexual scandal which allegedly took place while he was working with the Jonesboro Police Department.  He apparently lost his job there, but ole Rod was going to take care of him.  When all of this hit the media, immediatley he was jettisoned.  We think that he was later exonerated of the accusations relative to his tenure at the Jonesboro Police Department.  The point we are making here is that Rod arrogated himself to thinking that he alone could just name who would be in charge of the school system’s security.  Keep in mind, that this is the same person who, having not served on the school board even two years, announced that he was taking on long-time State Senator Terrell Starr in his senate post.  At the time, the late Senator Starr had been serving Clayton County over 35 years in the Georgia Senate.

The next morning after Gloria Duncan was named the “interim” superintendent the night before, Rod showed up at the cabinet meeting with his own personal organization chart in hand.  Yes, he literally came to the new superintendent’s cabinet meeting and sat in on it.  He also brought his own organizational chart for the entire school system.  Someone called Norreese Haynes to tell him what Rod was doing, and Mr. Haynes got in his car and arrived at the Central Office in time to meet Rod Johnson after the cabinet meeting had adjourned.   Mr. Haynes confronted Mr. Johnson, chastised him, and told him in no uncertain terms that his type of behavior could not be tolerated and could even jeopardize the school system’s accreditation with SACS.  Keep this in mind.  It was Haynes who was concerned about the accredidation with SACS.  But, after Norreese Haynes could not be controlled by Rod Johnson and Ericka Davis, they tried to reverse the roles and make Norreese Haynes out as the problem.  He was a problem O. K.  He was a problem to them because he kept foiling their plans and their micromanaging of the school system.

Rod Johnson actually wrote a letter to Mark Elgart and SACS, inviting them to Clayton County to investigate Mr. Haynes.  What chutzpah.  Ha!  Mr. Haynes actually had all of the goods on Ericka and Rod and even provided a detailed  report to Mr. Elgart in about 12 pages of cold facts, with evidenciary documents (emails, etc.) attached.  But, in virtually all of this massive amout of documentary evidence of micromanaging and other improprieties [see post on Ericka Davis above], Mark Elgart just ”observed the passover.”  He just blithely ignored the massive evidence against Ericka Davis and Rod Johnson but could only offer vagues and oblique innuendos against Norreese Haynes.  Nothing specific at all.  So, the heat was mounting on Rod and Ericka because Mr. Haynes immediately called SACS’s so-called “Report” as “a sham and a farce,” which is was.  The attempt to use Mark Elgart and SACS to shut up Mr. Haynes was not working.

Rod Johnson, apparently under great duress, announced at the school board meeting that he was going to resign from the school board.  He had made a very outlandish claim against the Metro Association of Classroom Educators (MACE), a claim that was 100% false and a claim that was actionable.  I confronted Mr. Johnson at the school board meeting about his fantastical and incredible claim which had also been published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Ms. Davis tried to protect Mr. Johnson by calling me “out of order.”  Ha!  I am always “out of order” when the “order” is falsehood, pomposity, and scandalous libel.

Mr. Johnson announced that he was stepping down from the school board, but he never did.  He just kept lingering on.  Perhaps he liked the money.  Ericka Davis, his mentor, meantime had already resigned under a great deal of apparent duress.  Ole Rod lingered on.  Finally, Governor Perdue removed him from the Clayton County Board of Education.  He and Ericka Davis and Eldrin Bell did Clayton County major damage, costing the county millions upon millions in business sales tax and property taxes.  The value of property plummeted and the image of the Clayton County became laughable because of the two SACS invasions, both of which were caused by actual school board members using SACS to try to shut up other members.  The only person probably in the history of the United States who sat on two different school boards while SACS came in and issued actions against these school boards was…guess who?  Yep, you got it…Ericka Davis.  Her Barney Fife in the second episode was Rod Johnson.  We hear that Mr. Johnson is now residing in Florida, but he goes down as the second worse school board member in Clayton County during the last 30 years.

3 – Linda Barrett

4 – Pam Adamson

5 – Pam Glanton

6 – Nedra Ware

7 – Connie Kitchens

8 – Ann Stacy

9 – Alieka Anderson

10 – Michelle Strong

11 – Rebecca Johnson

12 – Yolanda Everett/Carol Kellam*

13 – Charles Tucker

14 – LaToya Walker

15 – O. W. Cowen

Best Clayton County School Board Members of the Last 30 Years!

 1 – Norreese Haynes

 Norreese Haynes (L) with Margaret Spellings,  former U. S. Secretary of Education, at a recent educational confab. 

For the time being, see the entry on Ericka Davis, and you can read a lot about Norreese Haynes’s many accomplishement in just 14 months on the school board.  Just think if he had served eight or 12 years on the Clayton County Board of Education.  There surely would not be the mess that Clayco is in today.  Edmond Heatley would not be here.  He might not still be in Chino Valley, California, but with Mr. Haynes on the Clayton County Board of Education, Edmond Heatley would not be the superintendent in Clayton County.  We don’t believe that Douglas (Doug) Hendrix would be head of Human Resources either.  Mr. Haynes knows how to deal with people, but his problem was that he had become too popular and was showing up his Chair, Ericka Davis.  Ericka Davis seems to always want the limelight shining on her.  She likes to shine.  This was Mr. Haynes’s problem.  He lived in the right district.  He was living in a house in Conley, Georgia right in the middle of his school district when the school board, in a split decision, illegally removed Mr. Haynes from his elected position.  In two detailed reports from an investigation on this matter by the Secretary of State’s Office, Mr. Haynes was exonerated.  Ericka Davis and Eldrin Bell were behind the entire sordid action to get rid of Mr. Haynes from the school board, despite the official findings of the Georgia Secretary of State who is charged with the responsibility to determine residency and other qualifications.

2 – Abner Moore

Give me a day or two, and I will do a report on Abner Moore’s tenure on the Clayton County Board of Education. Dr. Moore was never the doctrinaire school board member that the hard line old “wool hat” Democrats were or the new zealot Republicans were.  He was able to work with both groups, although sometimes his middle of the road approach piqued both groups on various occasions.  I first remember seeing him on the school board at the old 120 Smith Street in 1982 when he raised the ire of the feisty Chairwoman, Margaret Haynie.  She was chewing him out in front of everyone, and he tried to defend himself, but he wasn’t getting help from any of his fellow ten board members.  (There were eleven board members back then.)  But, the sure-footed and facile Abner ended up chairing this same school board within just a few years, which he must have felt was poetic justice.  But, enough for now…

3 – Gary Weldon

4 – Mike Barnes

Mike Barnes was first elected to the Clayton County Board of Education in 1990.  He won re-election in 1994.  In 1998, Mike ran for the Georgia House of Representatives and won.  He served the voters for eight years in the General Assembly and retired from elective politics.

 More on Mike Barnes to come.

5 – Margaret Haynie

6 – Jack Foster

7 – Jessie Goree

8 – Paul Downs

9 – Lawrence Dailey

10 – Linda Crummy

11 – Lee Moore

12 – Valencia Seay

13 – Mark Armstrong

14 – Andrea Callaway

15 – Lindy Krebs

Coming soon to this page will be one of the chapters of The MACE Manifesto: The Struggle for the Soul of Public Education. The principal author is Founder and Chairman of the Metro Association of Classroom Educators (MACE), Dr. John R. Alston Trotter. MACE‘s Executive Vice Chairman, Norreese L. Haynes, contributes heavily to this shocking educational tome. Trotter and Haynes issue what appears to be a very cogitated call for revolution, not clarification or obfuscation, in public education.

These leaders of MACE appear to have prescient insights into what is wrong with public education today. Trotter and Haynes certainly do not pull any punches when they lower the boom on what they call “an educational state analogous to Germany‘s Weimar Republic in the 1920s or, better yet, the Pretorian Government of South Africa during the days of apartheid.” They contend that the waste and ineffectiveness and inhmanity of the public educational system in the United States is “both mind-boggling and unconscionable.” Dr. Trotter states: “It appears that no one wants to acknowledge what is fundamentally and systematically wrong with the system. Everyone appears to be worried about being politically corrrect and polite. Mr. Haynes and I are concerned about neither. We simply tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.”

Stayed tune for a preview chapter of The MACE Manifesto to be released very soon.

 by John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

     First of all, there seems to be some confusion if Jerry Bell is really the superintendent in Hart County…at least in the way the State of Georgia’s Department of Audits and Accounts lists him.  In the Fiscal Year 2011, it appears that Jerry Bell is listed as the Finance/Business Service Manager for the Hart Count School System.  No one is listed as the Superintendent, but David Hicks, the former Superintendent of Hart County, is listed in 2011 as the Superintendent in Bremen City Schools.  Is this confusion due to mere oversight, incompetence, or sleight of hand?  Inquiring minds in Hart County want to know.

Inquiring minds in Hart County also want to know, in light the evidence of the mass cheating recently discovered not just in the schools in Atlanta and Dougherty County but all over the country, why there seems to be an anomalous spike in the test scores of the Hart County children when they enter into the middle school but a precipitous drop when these students matriculate into the high school?  Is there a natural explanation for this apparent sudden rise and sudden fall in the test scores?  Inquiring minds in Hart County want to know.

Inquiring minds in Hart County also may want to know how the Hart County Middle School and the Hart County High School can earn an Accreditation With Quality (AWQ) rating from the Georgia Accrediting Commission (GAC) when one of GAC’s Standards for this rating is for the schools to have a fulltime Media Specialist at each school.  It is our understanding that the Media Specialist at each of these schools are pulled off of their Media Specialist duties to teach classes each day.  If we are wrong, please correct us, OK?  Were any documents falsified when submitted to the GAC?  Inquiring minds in Hart County may just want to know?

Well, enough for now.  But, yes, one more thing… Aren’t Hart County teachers good enough to promote into administration?  Does the school system have to constantly promote from the outside?  Why not recruit from within the ranks?  Yes, inquiring minds in Hart County want to get to the heart of this matter.