A Measured Amount of Freedom?

From Ed Johnson:

To date, Atlanta Public Schools’ Operating Models for School System Flexibility Options Advisory Committee (“Advisory Committee”, formerly “Flexibility Task Force”) has held two of six scheduled weekly meetings. The Advisory Committee meets every Thursday, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM, August 14—September 18, 2014, in the auditorium at the APS central office building, 130 Trinity Avenue, downtown Atlanta.

Public attendance has been abysmal for such an important matter.

Important because, for example, last Thursday’s Advisory Committee Meeting featured as presentation that briefly displayed a definition of what Flexibility means (Exhibit A, below). Seemingly, the definition went unnoticed by the committee members. Certainly, not one of them questioned, or even commented on, the definition that:

Flexibility [means] having a measured amount of freedom.

Happily, I had signed up to address the Advisory Committee just in case something might prompt me to want to do so. The Advisory Committee sets aside 15 minutes near before adjourning to hear from members of the public in attendance, giving each speaker two minutes.

So, I was prompted to speak, and here is what I said, reorganized and amplified a bit:

A measured amount of freedom. A measured amount of freedom?

Now, I make no claim to be the quickest person around. After all, one day it suddenly dawned on me that my wife (at the time) was different from me. Talking about waking up.

Anyway, I just can’t get my head around the idea of “a measured amount of freedom.”

I cannot imagine Moses would have gone to Pharaoh with an offer in hand to accept “a measured amount of freedom.”

I cannot imagine Patrick Henry and the First Continental Congress would have said: “Okay, George, we will settle for ‘a measured amount of freedom.’”

I cannot imagine President Abraham Lincoln would have settled for “a measured amount of freedom.”

And I most certainly cannot imagine Martin Luther King, Jr., would have settled for “a measured amount of freedom.”

So why would anyone want APS to go to the state to plead to be given “a measured amount of freedom” in the name of “Flexibility,” when APS, right now, has the freedom to improve?

You, committee members, have been told that, under any Flexibility option, APS must – again, must – request Wavers. But have you been told that, under the Status Quo option, APS may – again, may – request Wavers? That all Flexibility options disallow, well, the flexibility to not request Wavers, but that the non-Flexibility Status Quo option does allow the flexibility to request Wavers, or not? Kind of ironic, and even silly, don’t you think?

I suggest that, if you think about it, all that you have heard here tonight about Fulton County Public Schools operating as a Charter System stems from leadership. Nothing you have heard, I further suggest, necessarily stems from Fulton being a Charter System.

Finally, I suggest that APS now has in its new superintendent, Dr. Carstarphen, the potential to develop the capability to improve APS with the freedom it has, right now, and that the non-Flexibility Status Quo option is the only operating model that comes close to preserving that freedom. The only reason our makers of state public law call it “Status Quo” is to subliminally create negativity in public thinking about the current state of public education, especially in Atlanta, so as to dissuade the public from choosing it.

Committee members, are you really taking this “Flexibility” rigmarole seriously? Why would you? Why would anybody?

Thank you.

It is puzzling that, here in the 21-th Century, our makers of state public law have come to predate at least the Pharaohs of old in their thinking about freedom. And it is just as puzzling, if not more so, that many of the people who are but a few generations removed from their ancestors who experienced great lack of freedom in our country seem to be among those clamoring to be given “a measured amount of freedom,” when they already have freedom to participate in improving Atlanta Public Schools for the sake of themselves, their children, democracy, and the common good.

But then, there is Ecclesiastes 1:9 (King James Version Bible):

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;

and that which is done is that which shall be done:

and there is no new thing under the sun.

The Advisory Committee will next meet Thursday, August 28, 2014. You might want to be there. For the full schedule of Advisory Committee Meetings and Community Visioning Sessions, go here and here on the APS web site.

Also, see in Exhibit B, below, that a non-Flexibility Status Quo “School System may apply for wavers to the State Board of Education.” This is in contrast to all the Flexibility option schools that must request wavers, as Exhibit B variously shows.

By the way, Georgia was absent from the First Continental Congress. So maybe that is telling, even today, when it comes to trying to understand the way our makers of state public law think about freedom.