The Big List of Things To Remember with APS

Here is the comprehensive list of things to remember as you mull over your profound obligation to your child.

1. You alone are responsible for your child's education. Not all the teachers who will encounter your child. Not the school district. Not Bev Hall. YOU.

2. You do not delegate this job to municipal employees working for the Atlanta Public School system. You collaborate with them but maintain your proper role as overseer of the project. You make changes and corrections as necessary, and you never forget who's in charge--you.

3. You do not have to feel guilty about having more resources than other parents, or demanding stuff for your kids that kids at other schools don't get. The Atlanta Public Schools spend more than $13,000 per year on each pupil. They waste a ton of that money on every kind of misguided management decision imaginable. There is enough money here for a good solid education. What's missing is the will, and the competency, and the culture of success. Or to put it another way: We just need to try harder.

4. You should always be polite with any APS employee with whom you have dealings. You should also always be firm, always follow up, and set the tone early on that you are the dog, not the tail, and you will not be wagged by anyone at APS. (You will see my tired old cliche about the dog and the tail over and over again on this blog).

5. Never allow APS to unilaterally break or "float" any deadline to which it has previously agreed. If you don't know what that leads to, just try parking over at DHUMP next time you need to pick up your kid. Insist on real-world standards of accountability with whomever you deal with, such as prompt email follow-ups and returned phone calls.

6. Understand that while SPARK is an oasis in the middle of the desert that is APS, it is still surrounded by all that desert, and operates in the midst of an overarching APS workplace culture that believes okay is good, good is great, and great is just not achievable. (The parent culture in the Springdale Park PTO, I would contend, believes okay is terrible, good is the absolute minimum, and great is definitely within our reach).

The best thing we can do for SPARK is to never compare it--or let its staff compare it--to anything else APS is doing. Let's keep it an oasis.

7. "Nine years of steady progress," the APS's mantra, is not the same as excellence. APS was in horrible shape when Bev Hall took over. Now it's only below average. Do you understand what that means? When you enroll your kid in a below-average public school system, you have to FIGHT to get your kid the education they need. Do NOT be satisfied with what APS ladles out to you. Do NOT be complacent because your school seems so much better than other schools. Trust me, there are thousands of public elementary schools elsewhere in this country performing at a higher level than SPARK. Our principal is overworked and has no assistant principal to help administer the school. That's an outrage. Our resource teacher, Ms. Williams, is mathematically incapable of fulfilling all the duties she has been assigned. We have no handicap access to parts of the building. The parking situation is atrocious. We have no front door security nor attendant. The buses leave school in the afternoon whenever they leave. These aren't trivial things, because if you want excellence, you have to have it across the board, not just here and there.

8. Only the parents in a school community should define what "excellent" means, and they must get the buy-in of the teachers and staff. That's the way it should work, not the other way around.


Okay. I've gotten you started. Now add some of your own!