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COMMUNITY
Lobbyists for independent city schools hope to educate lawmakers
BY ELLEN ELDRIDGE
elleneldridge@reporternewsppaers.net
For many Dunwoody parents, the
GLASS is half full.
Erika Harris, co-chair of Georgians for
Local Area School Systems, or GLASS,
says upcoming months will be about fun
draising and educating lawmakers.
Dunwoody’s hopeful lobbyists want
state lawmakers to call a vote to amend the
state Constitution and allow local school
districts in places such as Dunwoody. But
they’ve watched legislation stall during
the past two years. This year, they hope to
convince state lawmakers to pass the bill,
known as HR 4.
Rep. Tom Taylor (R-Dunwoody), who
wrote HR 4, said he plans to bring it up
for a vote this year. “We want to bring it
the floor as early as we can,” he said.
Taylor also said a Senate version of the
bill may move forward, if HR 4 stalls in
the House. GLASS s focus, he said, will be
advocating for the legislation while he is
working on the “procedural stuff to get the
bill through.”
GLASS supporter Heyward Wescott of
Dunwoody said the organization needs to
get information in front of every legislator.
“We’ve got to spell it out for them” he
said. “This is statewide, and many legisla
tors might not realize this is coming down
the pipe.”
Wescott said he came to Dunwoody
like other parents “to build a nest” and
only after moving in did he start to look
closely at the schools. He said Dunwoody
has a “perfect footprint” for a Dunwoody
school system with several elementary
schools feeding into middle and then a
single high school.
“We’re excited,” he said. “It’s a major
uphill task, but right now it’s one of the
best options the state has in improving the
education system.”
He described Harris as somebody who
“drills down to the issues.”
Harris is a mother of four and a master
teacher who earned a graduate degree to
teach elementary through middle schools
in California. After her family moved to
Georgia, she said she started asking ques
tions.
“I didn’t understand why there weren’t
smaller school systems,” she said.
She said she quickly learned 49 of the
50 states have flexibility in creating small
er school systems, but even when DeKalb
County nearly lost its accreditation recent
ly, Dunwoody was prevented by the state
Constitution from creating its own sys
tem.
“DeKalb County was unable to meet
the individual needs of its students,” she
said. “You’d hear a lot of chatter without
any effort put into solving the real prob
lems and with a district this big, they were
solving it from a top-down approach and
that’s not going to work.”
In a district with 100 schools, meeting
the needs of the students is impossible, she
said.
“DeKalb has a one-size-fits-all policy
and that’s frustrating,” she said.
The curriculum in DeKalb County
Schools failed to meet the needs for Harris’
daughters, she said. One daughter is gifted
and the other has dyslexia.
“We had a choice of two curriculums
to meet 100,000 students’ needs,” Harris
said and her daughters had unique needs
that would have been met in a smaller
school system, she said.
Harris recently pulled her girls out of
public school and began home-schooling
them so she could them her 100-percent
attention, she said. She plans to enroll her
5-year-old twin boys in public school and
“see how it goes,” she said.
“Historically, the top-ranked school
systems in the state are city school sys
tems,” Dunwoody Mayor Mike Davis
said. “We know what works, so why not
support and educate people on a potential
bill which promotes quality education and
ELLEN ELDRIDGE
Ashton Harris, son of Erika Harris,
co-chair of Georgians for Local
Area School Systems, in the
homeschool area of his residence.
system improvements?”
Opponents cite increased bureaucracy
and increase cost, but Harris said a right-
sized system is most beneficial financially.
“If you have a right-sized school system
you actually see an economic benefit,” she
said. “There is such a thing as too large,
where you lose the financial advocacy.”
GLASS plans to use donations contrib
uted to an online fundraising platform at
gofundme.com to create and distribute in
formation to legislators, Wescott said. A
fundraiser also is scheduled for McKend-
rick’s Steak House in August.
“Across the board, people are starting
to understand that business as usual in
Georgia is not good business,” Harris said.
“And right now education needs to be at
the forefront of our policy decisions.”
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