Georgia Teachers Speak Out!

 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.

Editor’s Note:  The following are some of the thoughts which Dr. Trotter expressed the last day and one-half on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s GetSchooled blog, a link of which is provided on this page.  Dr. Trotter’s provocative thoughts are always entertaining and enlightening!

 by John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

          The Georgia Supreme Court was absolutely right in its ruling.  The county boards of education were created by the Georgia Constitution and cannot be subject to the capricious whim of the Governor or others who may use private organizations like SACS to whip up hysteria when they do not have enough votes at the polls to remove school board members at the ballot box.  The way to remove school board members is at the ballot box, not by the Governor’s fiat.  I remember this Warren County case well and spoke out against it then just like I spoke out against the same action in Clayton County.  I said then that neither the General Assembly nor the Governor had the right to remove duly elected officials to Constitutional boards because they deem their actions wrong or stupid.  This is what the voting process for.  The voters remove elected officials from office.  Oligarchies be damned.

I hate to always have to say that I told you so but, once again, I told you so.  I said the same thing about the Statewide Charter School Commission which created charter schools without going through the local school boards.  Now, however, I believe that it will be on the ballot in the Fall for a Constitutional Amendment.

By the way, in the Warren County case, I recall now that someone told me that one of the persons who was pushing for these board members to be removed by the Governor was well-connected to this office.  I don’t know if this is true or not, but this is usually how things happen.  When you can’t beat people at the polls, get the Governor to remove them.  Ha!  Hey folks, it’s all about the cheddar.  Someone in Warren County was having their cheddar (money) removed, don’t you think?  Ha!

This was a good and wise decision and based on the Georgia Constitution, and I am proud of the Georgia Supreme Court.  I am glad that Corporate Vigilantism has been put in check.

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          @ Ron and Skipper:  What is close to my heart is constitutional law.  I can deal with the politics of the situation.  The constitution cannot guarantee that the smartest or the most competent people will be elected.  Heck, look at the Georgia General Assembly.  Most are professional and competent but we also have some doozies over there.  But, you don’t do away with constitutional principles and constitutional government because some folks are not as smart or as professional or as competent as you would like.  You just go to the polls and vote for someone else or you move to another locale.  You don’t do away with the elective process.

Clayton County was SACS’s first large “take-over” wherein it scared the daylights out of the residents.  The residents were not against the school board members until this private, money-grabbing company, SACS, whipped the county up into a false hysteria.  The SACS Report in Clayton County was a complete joke.  Norreese Haynes stated it best the day that it came out:  “It’s a sham and a farce.”  I have stated on many, many occasions that I will debate Mark Elgart any time and any place in Georgia about SACS’s capricious and arbitrary application of its so-called “standards.”  To this day, Mark Elgart has never taken me up on the offer.

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          Sorry about the “SAC.”  It should have been “SACS.”  What does this stand for?  Still Advocating for Cronies and Shills…like Ericka Davis, Rod Johnson, and Eldrin Bell in the case of Clayton County?   When you are losing power, you know what you do, don’t you?  You call your buddy Mark Elgart at SACS.  He’ll come to your rescue and have the community all up in arms over a bunch about nothing…except their fear that their babies are going to miss out of the HOPE.  It’s all about the cheddar, baby, all about the cheddar.  I am primarily talking about which politician or well-connected person in the community is selling all of the insurance — guaranteed life for all the employees, property (buildings, buses, tractors, etc.), etc. — to the school system.  A change in the power structure on the school board could change the friendly business eco-system for certain ones in the county.  Help!  Quickly!  Call Mark Elgart and SACS!  Yes, Still Advocating for Cronies and Shills (SACS)!

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          @ Ron F. – I am still looking for some concrete “shenanigans” which were illegal, not some editorial opinions that the school board should have held hands and sang Kum Ba Ya.  Yes, I thought it must have had something to do with the choice of superintendents, viz., the firing of Dan Colwell.  I must be a sage, right?  Ha!  Nothing concrete…just “constant bickering” (like other elective bodies do…perhaps like the U. S. Congress — but you are not ready to do away with that, are you?) and its choice of superintendents.

I too disagreed with the school board’s choice of superintendents…from William Chavis, Barbara Pulliam (a disaster from Minnesota whom Ericka Davis led the charge for and then later led the charge against), the Thompson fellow (another disaster from Pittsburgh whom I spoke out against in this newspaper before the school board hired him), and Edmond Heatley (whom MACE picketed the board about its impending choice of this most unpopular superintendent of all time in Clayton — and I spoke out against the board’s choice of him in this newspaper and other newspapers as well as in an interview on TV).  Yep, the Clayton School Board has made some terrible choices for superintendent.  Ericka Davis, like I said, led the charge for Barbara Pulliam (very unpopular) and Pam Adamson and Alieka Anderson led the charge for Edmond Heatley (the most unpopular of all time, in my opinion).

          I suspect your biggest gripe is the fact that in January of 2003, this school board got rid of Dan Colwell.  It should have gotten rid of Dan Colwell.  I personally witnessed him be very ugly to sitting school board members.  The school board was his boss.  So, when the new school board members were elected, there was not much chance that Colwell was going to hold on.

So, I see that nothing concrete has been offered up.  Just the same ole editorial with bland generalities.  But, it is an object to show that SACS was employed in Clayton for no good reason but to try to help those who were losing power to stay in power.  Also, keep in mind that Thompson and Heatley were hired after SACS got involved.  With friends like Mark Elgart and Glenn Brock (who brought Heatley to the school board), school boards don’t need any enemies.  After SACS invasion and occupation of Clayton County, this county has gone down precipitously, and I don’t blame you, Ron F., for getting the heck out of Clayton.  I did the same thing.  But, keep always in mind, that all of hoopla of SACS and accreditation and the bringing of Attorney Glenn Brock was just about the money.  It’s all about the cheddar, baby, all about the money.

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           @ Ron F.:  You make very good points.  The state of affairs in the Clayton County School System is the worst that it has ever been.  Student discipline is out of control, and the teachers have virtually no support from the administrators.  I have a son who graduated last year from the Fayette County School System and one son who will graduate there next year.  I would not dare allow them to matriculate through the Clayton County School System because the shape that it is now in.  You are right.  Many good teachers in Clayton County left for Fayette County and Henry County where support is stronger.  My point was that when Ericka Davis and Rod Johnson called in SACS (with, I think, the help of Eldrin Bell), this was done for political reasons and not because the school board as a whole was micromanaging the system.  In fact, Ericka Davis was by far the worst micromanager, and I have a copious number of her emails to prove it.  Norreese Haynes documented this for SACS, and SACS just observed the “pass-over.”  Same thing for Rod Johnson.  The whole SACS thing was simply a hatchet job, trying to help Ericka and Rod, but they could not be helped because they were knee-deep in micromanaging.  But, Mark Elgart and SACS ignored their egregious violations of SACS’s so-called standards and wrote a half-baked-full-of-errors report which ignored the worst violators of micromanaging, Ericka Davis and Rod Johnson.  Davis stepped down disgracefully and Rod, after promising to step down, was removed illegally by the Governor.  Even though Rod was full of micromanaging (even sitting in on the Superintendent’s cabinet meeting and personally hiring a former Jonesboro Police Officer with a checkered past to be the top security guy in the school system), it still would have been better for him to have stood before the voters at the next election.  I think that he is now in Florida.

Yes, at one time Clayton County was a good school system in which to teach.  There was good discipline and an orderly learning environment where teachers were supported and appreciated.  Not anymore.  The precipitous change for the worse took place after SACS got involved.  This is one of the major points I was trying to make.  I don’t think that you and I are too far apart on this issue.

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          It’s not the school systems’ fault per se (with the exception that the school systems pay no attention to student discipline); it’s mostly the fault of many of the students who bring little or no motivation to school to learn.  If our students came to school motivated to learn (and behave, by the way) like the students of China, South Korea, or India, then they too could learn.  But, unlike other cultures, we want to put the onus for learning upon the teachers, not the students and their parents (who have the real power to motivate their children).

Our school are still thinking like the Earth is flat (a trite cliché, I know).  Our educracy is operating from a false theoretical base.  Operating on bad theory.  Bad theory produces bad results.

Let me give you a few statements which are derived from good theory:

1.  The motivation to learn is a social process/cultural phenomenon.  This concept came from Dr. Eugene M. Boyce of the University of Georgia.  I like to give credit where credit is due.

2.  Order is the first law of the Universe.  Norreese Haynes at MACE loves to say this, and it is so true.

3.  You can’t learn a child; you can only teach a child…just like a physician can only treat a patient and not heal the patient or a lawyer can only defend a criminally charged client and not acquit the client.

4.  Focus on academic achievement without any regard for classroom discipline, and you will get very muted results.  Focus first on discipline, and you will be surprised at the rise in academic achievement.

5.  Our mantra at MACE since the beginning in 1995:  You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.

That’s enough for now.  It’s getting late.  You can read more at >>>

www.theteachersadvocate.com

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          AdvancED and SACS should be jettisoned.  They do more harm than good.  Both (incestuous relationship) are private, money-grabbing organizations which are not accountable to the people of Georgia.  All of this “standards” talk is a bunch of hooey which is applied capriciously and arbitrarily all of the time.  In my opinion, Mark Elgart is power-tripping…with a huge salary which comes from the public largess.

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          The answer to SACS?  I have proposed this on many occasions:  The General Assembly can pass enabling legislation which will create the Georgia Schools Accrediting Commission (GSAC) which will operate out of the Georgia Department of Education which is headed up by an elected State Superintendent, Dr. John Barge (or whoever is elected at the particular time).  Since Dr. Barge is elected by the people, he can appointed members to the Commission.  I’d prefer that it not be a “political” appointment like the appointments to the Georgia Board of Education by the Governor which have “terms” of so many years and have to be by Congressional Districts.  These appointments to GSAC should simply by low-key appointments and should serve at the pleasure of the elected official, the State Superintendent of Schools.  Then, these members are ultimately accountable to the People of Georgia.

This entire SACS stuff is an anachronism.  It’s a throw-back to days when local grand juries appointed school board members.  Yes, this actually occurred.  Everyone in education knows that a SACS “review” is a rubber stamp; the review is a mile wide and an inch deep.  The problems comes into play when SACS just arbitrarily goes after a school system (like Clayton and Warren and Miller) and handles with kid gloves systems whose violations of their so-called “standards” are much more egregious and flagrant (like Atlanta and DeKalb and Dougherty and probably Bibb and other systems).  SACS’s modus operandus is Piccadilly-style.  Hmm…I think that I’ll have friend catfish (three pieces, please), broccoli with cheese on top, sweet tea, and lemon pie today!  It’s a terrible method of picking which system it will pick on.

I pity the school board that does not have the connected lawyer who seems to always pop up where SACS pops up.  Ha!  I pity the school system which has a highly independent school board which does not realize that certain connected individuals (perhaps the local State Senator or State Representatives) are supposed to be allowed to sell their wares (be it insurance, annuities, consulting, etc.) in the school system.  I pity the school boards which actually think that they are accountable to the People!  Ha!  No, the Georgia good-ole-boy network has this thing called SACS which it uses to keep elected school boards in line.  It’s all about the cheddar, folks, all about the cheddar.

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          @ Simon:  There are dozens and dozens of Miller Counties throughout Georgia.  The real culprits in these counties are the appointed superintendents who have a seemingly insatiable need to have their decisions rubber-stamped and their posteriors kissed.  In the old days, when the voters had had enough, they just voted elected superintendents out of office, as they should have.  I was involved in a couple of these campaigns, and we were successful in cleaning house.  But, now in Georgia all of these superintendents are somewhat insulated from the direct anger and or angst of the People.  All an appointed superintendent has to do to keep a five person school board happy is to keep three members somewhat beholden to him or her.  Let’s see how easy this might be.  Hmm…perhaps School Board Member One has a daughter who wants to move up the school systems.  Strangely enough, she becomes an Assistant Principal at a very young age and with bare minimal qualifications.  She’s on the move.  School Board Member Two has an nephew who has a lighting and roofing company.  Bam!  He gets the year contract to do all of the new installations and repairs in this area.  School Board Member Three is simply and vain, gullible, and naïve.  Ah, she’s the easy one to co-opt.  The superintendent just makes sure that the school system sends her to all of the State Conferences in Jekyll Island, Atlanta, and Callaway Gardens.  The superintendent makes sure that she eats high on the hog and is treated like royalty!  Oh, yes, don’t forget about the National School Board Conference held in San Francisco or New York City!  Make sure she gets to attend this all-important conference there too!  The meetings are nice…but the sexual trysts that often occur at these conferences  among school board members are quite interesting.  I guess this is all about getting to know school board members from other parts of the country!  Ha!  Exchanging ideas, heh?

Let me stop for now.  Maybe I know too much!  But, don’t come reading my posts unless you want to know the truth!  Isn’t this why they hate me?  Oh, it’s going to be another great day today!  My bald head is beet red from the almost two hours in the sun at yesterday’s picket in South Fulton.  Had a bunch of teachers in the MACE Office last night.  If I could only let you know some of the vile curse words that the students routinely – yes, routinely – say to the teachers these days!  And then the response from the principal is unconscionable!  But, this is a family newspaper.