Putnam schools to consider charter system

Scott Teague
The Union-Recorder

May 10, 2008 01:09 am

— Putnam County Schools currently is investigating whether to convert its system to a charter system, thereby freeing itself of teacher qualifications mandated by the state.
A design committee drawn from educators and community members met Thursday night and produced a set of qualities that define “educated students,” Superintendent Jim Willis said.
“We’re defining what it means to be an educated person. We have to understand what it means to educate someone, and then we’ll figure out what it takes to get there,” Willis said. “We already do great things in educating our children, but there are things like connections to jobs and development of skill sets that we could improve.”
Some of those qualities an educated person possesses are a strong work ethic, a sense of place, a strong set of skills, a good understanding of technology and how its used in the work place, Willis said.
Putnam County Board of Education voted March 17 to submit a letter of intent to pursue a charter school system to Georgia Department of Education.
If the system were to convert to a charter system, all schools would be charter schools and free of certain state requirements that prevent them from employing professional tradesmen from teaching technical courses.
The school system currently contracts with Sandersville Technical College for a teacher to instruct a commercial driving license course. The instructor doesn’t meet state standards in education, but does possess years of experience from which to draw on in classroom lessons.
Looser restrictions could allow the system to pursue the school board’s stated goal of improving and expanding the system’s technical education curriculum.
It also could allow the schools to grant class credits to students who’ve demonstrated mastery in a class but who otherwise would have had complete a certain amount of hours in the class, Steve Hersey, chairman, said.
Charter conversion also would allow greater flexibility for board members to spend state money, Hersey said.
“We don’t know if we want to do any of that,” he said. “At the end of this process, we’ll ask whether we need to go to a charter system in order to waive some of the current state rules and regulations in order to implement recommended changes, or whether by sticking to the current system we can implement the changes.”
But the system is far from converting.
“We want to see what makes for the best school system, not just the best charter system but the best school system,” Willis said. “Once we decide that, then we’ll look and see if a charter system is what it takes to get to that point.”
From 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. May 17, the community is invited to hear proposals created by the design committee and offer suggestions and feedback on possible conversion to charter system.