The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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March 3, 2010

Schools need fresh thinking

Dalton Daily Citizen

DALTON — Tuesday night at the Chatsworth-Murray County Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet, Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston spoke about the importance of education in helping the state climb out of its current economic hole.

He spoke not just in the lofty, 20,000-feet-above-the-real-world terms of why education is important, however, but in the very practical terms of how educators in Murray County had made changes to their system that have both saved money and improved performance in some key areas.

This year, the district switched to a 160-day calendar after the state decided that schools have to teach the hourly equivalent of 180 days of school rather than have students in class for 180 days.

The move saved the district more than $500,000 this year — money that can be used in other areas like saving teachers’ jobs — and so far does not appear to have affected student performance, according to Murray County school officials. During his speech, Ralston said that Murray County also appears to be getting more kids to attend class because of the shorter calendar, which he said is a key initial measure of a program’s effectiveness.

After all, he pointed out, if a student isn’t there, it doesn’t matter what you are teaching and how you are teaching it.

What Murray County is doing isn’t a secret. So far, 15 school systems from around Georgia have inquired about how well Murray’s 160-day year is going.

As the gloomy budget numbers for the state continue to roll out of Atlanta, every school district needs to be looking at inventive ways to save money while still keeping its eye on student performance.

This year, Peach County switched to a four-day-a-week calendar for students to save about $400,000 in costs and closed all of its buildings on Mondays. Teachers and administrators working on Monday use technology to interact with each other and to access their school computers.

At the time Peach County made its switch, Sara Mason, spokeswoman for the district, said, “The most recent round of funding cuts have forced the school district to take some unprecedented actions.”

Cutting 20 days out of your school calendar. Switching to a four-day-a-week schedule for students. Both are unprecedented actions to be sure.

But it is this type of unconventional thinking that the state needs to be encouraging as school districts eye potentially disastrous cuts that could lead to teachers losing their jobs.

What the state needs to do is loosen the financial regulations that it forces districts to live under. Local school officials don’t need constraints on how they can cut right now, but encouragement to look at a broad array of options.

The truth is that what works in Dalton might not be best for Whitfield County or Murray County.

School superintendents have complained that the state needs to give them more latitude in figuring out how they cut their budgets.

As the red ink continues to pile up, the time for fresh ideas is now.

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