School Board Wrong on the AP Decision

The decision to share Assistant principals in six of our elementary schools was the wrong move by the Bartow County school board. In the information that has been released by the school system already we know that the projected fund balance was increased from $8+ million to around $13+ million.  As a result of this increase the “proposed” millage would remain at 17.9 which it has been since 2007. This additional space in the fund balance made this inefficient administrative tactic unwarranted.

We have tried these kind of split responsibilities in the past and as expected the confusion over supervisory priorities made if difficult for the people involved to be effective. I understand the need to operate in a budgetary environment that is the worst in recent memory but this is doomed to fail before it begins. There has to be a line drawn when the actions of the board impact teaching quality, student learning and the management of our schools.

This is one of those occasions when the number on the budget page may look enticing but no one really considers the cost of inefficiency and changing back to the traditional system when this implodes. In my opinion, this option takes a very shortsighted view and puts the impacted schools at a distinct disadvantage. We ask our assistant principals to be the data and curriculum “experts” on the children in these schools. Their job is to make sure all students are progressing and that at-risk kids are identified so that no gaps occur. These assistant principals do this by really KNOWING every kid in the school and building relationships with them. Asking these people to take on double the work load with essentially no time to prepare is just not worth the almost purely symbolic impact to the budget over the long term.

This will fail and at some point we will have APs at all the schools again. We know the “savings” attributed to this plan but we may never know the cost.