The school districts for Madison and Warren counties are the winners of this year’s recognition for charter system performance.
The 4,900-student Madison County School System near Athens won the Georgia Charter System Foundation’s leadership award, and the 600-student Warren County School District near Augusta won for system of the year.
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who pushed the 2007 legislation that established charter systems, presented the awards Wednesday. The awards recognize innovation and academic performance. They came with $10,000 checks for each school district, the money donated by sponsors such as the Georgia Association of Realtors.
The foundation is run by Dan Weber, the former senator who carried the legislation for Cagle that established the charter system category.
Charter systems are public school districts that operate under charters with the state education board. Restrictive and potentially costly state rules and regulations, such as caps on class sizes or minimum attendance calendar durations, are waived in exchange for promises to reach goals specified in each charter. The goals typically reference academic measures such as test scores and graduation rates.
The idea is to free up schools to innovate, since central offices in charter systems are supposed to be hands off. Madison used its freedom to group students differently and to award classroom credits for internship experiences. Warren used flexibility with scheduling and personnel to reverse a financial deficit, and earned recognition from the state for schools that “beat the odds,” a statistical measure that compares actual academic performance against expectations based on the demographic and other characteristics of the student body.
So far, 42 of Georgia’s 180 school districts have chosen to become charter systems. All but two of the rest -- Webster County and the city of Buford -- have instead become “strategic waivers” systems. They get less flexibility but maintain more central office control over their schools.
The charter systems in metro Atlanta are Fulton County, Atlanta, Decatur and Marietta, which, with Calhoun, was awarded last year.
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