Category Archives: Opportunity School District

Governor Deal unveiled a plan Wednesday allowing the state to assume management and operations of failing schools. This post was adapted from How Nathan Deal’s bid to rescue failing schools would work by Greg Bluestein at the AJC.
The enabling legislation creates an Opportunity School District which would pick up 20 failing schools each year. The overall number would be capped at 100 and the program would start in the 2017 school year.  The Opportunity School District would be led by a superintendent who reports directly to the Governor and would be outside the jurisdiction of the Ga DOE and State Superintendent.
What schools would be taken over? Schools that score below a 60 on the state’s College and Career Performance Index three years running which includes 26 of DeKalb’s schools listed below.
Once the decision to intervene is made, the superintendent of the new district can choose between four options:

• Direct state management of the school
• Shared governance with a local school board
• Conversion to a charter school
• Closure of the school

The opportunity school district’s superintendent would pick the school leadership team. Each opportunity school would have a nonprofit board to oversee its governance.
26 of the 141 schools in need of recovery are in DeKalb: