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COMMUNITY
Group decides to hand off
charter school cluster effort
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
ing at Dunwoody United Methodist
Church that they couldn’t get agreement
on the plan from representatives of all
Dunwoody’s schools, so they decided to
wait.
“It was impractical to try to do it
at the speed we were trying to do it,”
Concerned Parents organizer Robert
Wittenstein said. “This is a more sane
approach.”
Concerned Parents’ leaders said they
will help organize the new group to ad
dress the charter cluster effort.
“What we’re trying to do is set the
lanes up for people to get into,” Con
cerned Parents chairwoman Allegra
Johnson said. “From that, the charter
school committee will come. We’re just
trying to start the wheels turning, say
ing, ‘We’ve got to do it now.’”
The new group should include rep
resentatives from all of Dunwoody’s
schools, Wittenstein said. “We’re go
ing to try get it started ... but we will
not be in charge,” he said. “It has to be
done by folks who are put in charge by
the schools.”
The earliest the new group could
submit a request for a charter cluster
would be in February 2014, Witten
stein said.
Individual charter schools and char
ter school systems have existed for years
in Georgia, but a charter school clus
ter is a relatively new concept. Char
ter schools and systems typically are
turned over to local control and freed
from some state or county regulations
in hopes of fostering innovation. In re
turn, the charter schools or systems are
required to show academic improve
ment.
A charter cluster would create lo
cal governance for all the schools in a
group clustered around a particular
high school, such as Dunwoody High
School.
Wittenstein said creating a charter
cluster in Dunwoody would have giv
en the city schools “a measure of inde
pendence” within the DeKalb Coun
ty school system as elected officials and
residents pursue legislative efforts to
create a separate city school system.
Rep. Tom Taylor (R-Dunwoody)
has introduced legislation to allow cit
ies such as Dunwoody that have been
created since 2005 to create their own
school systems or to combine with
other new or adjacent cities to set up
school systems.
The Concerned Parents group has
commissioned a feasibility study to
determine whether Dunwoody could
support its own system and to look at
how a Dunwoody system would af
fect DeKalb schools, Wittenstein said.
The group planned to contract with the
Georgia Public Policy Foundation and
a Georgia Tech professor to conduct
the study, he said.
“Frankly, guys, we shouldn’t hold
our breath on feasibility. It should be
evident to everybody a community like
Dunwoody would have the wherewith
al to support a school system,” Witten
stein said.
The study also will look at the effect
the creation of a Dunwoody school sys
tem could have on the remainder of the
DeKalb county system. Dunwoody’s
system could take in about 7,000 stu
dents and about 7 percent of the prop
erty owners paying taxes toward the
system, he said.
“If we take our students out and we
take our money out, that will have a
negative impact on DeKalb,” he said,
“and we want to quantify that.”
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4 | MAY3 — MAY 16,2013 | www.ReporterNewspapers.net
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