Sanderson Responds to SACS Inquiry

Updated Sunday 11:30 a.m.

The review of the superintendent’s response and a decision on the next steps should take about a month, a SACS spokeswoman told the Marietta Daily Journal.

Bartlett criticized Sanderson’s letter, according to the MDJ. “I am disappointed in the tone of the letter because this is an issue that affects the entire community of Cobb County, and personal politics should not come in place of protecting the integrity of our school district,” Bartlett said. “Many of the allegations are personal agendas and have no substantial factual basis.”

Banks, on the other hand, told the MDJ that the superintendent was accurate and actually nicer than Banks would have been. “I think he was trying to minimize any repercussions that could result in an investigation, that’s just my interpretation.”

Updated with Full Story

Four members of the Cobb County Board of Education were too hasty in changing the school calendar in February and caused unnecessary division within the board and the community, Superintendent Fred Sanderson says in a letter dated Thursday.

Further, Sanderson criticizes specific statements and actions by board Chairwoman Alison Bartlett and her leading opponent, board member David Banks, throughout the controversy that has raged over the switch to a balanced calendar this year and its next school year.

The only board members who avoid direct criticism in the letter are Lynnda Crowder-Eagle of Post 1 in West Cobb and David Morgan of Post 3 in South Cobb.

The five-page letter is Sanderson’s formal response to a sent to the school district March 29 by Mike Bryans, the Kennesaw-based Georgia director of accrediting agency AdvancED’s Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and Schools Improvement (SACS CASI). Bryans’ letter responded to numerous complaints that alleged Cobb County violations of AdvancED accrediting standards and policies.

Bryans gave Sanderson 30 days to reply and warned that “if, after review of your response, we believe the Cobb County School District may be in violation of the AdvancED Accreditation Standards or policies, a Special Review Team may be appointed to visit the district,” posing a threat to the district’s accreditation.

Sanderson, who is retiring at the end of June, does not dismiss the allegations or attempt to defend board actions.

“These allegations and the evidence cited in response raise genuine concerns about the Cobb County Board of Education’s ability to govern effectively,” he wrote. “In my professional opinion, the board’s current structure is not effective.”

The most serious charges from Bryans concern governance and leadership, and most of them stem from the calendar fight.

The “efforts of four board members to exclude their fellow colleagues and use their personal and political agendas to drive school board decisions” eroded public trust and confidence, Bryans wrote, and Sanderson provides ample evidence of that effect in his response.

“The process of approving a system calendar in February 2011 was legal, but did not represent the spirit of effective governance. The board was hasty in raising the issue and voting to replace a three-year calendar that had been approved by a prior board, and had been in effect only five months,” Sanderson wrote.

The superintendent calls out Bartlett for apparent hypocrisy in her calendar arguments, quoting her explanation of her vote in November 2009 against switching to the balanced calendar—“I thought it was wrong to go back and undo what we had already set where people had already set their calendars”—then noting that “as board chair, Ms. Bartlett did vote to change the calendar just six months prior to the start of a new school year.”

Although new board members Tim Stultz, Kathleen Angelucci and Scott Sweeney made campaign promises to change back to a traditional calendar, Sanderson wrote, they “should have recognized their first priority on being sworn in was to become acclimated to and informed about district operations, and trained in the basics of school board leadership and effective governance.”

Such training and some patience might have helped the board members achieve their campaign promises through cooperation and consensus rather than division and alienation, the superintendent wrote.

“Many stakeholders have voiced their displeasure at board meetings, public forums and in the news media, and have complained that the four board members who voted for changing the calendar failed to provide a valid rationale for doing so other than the fact that they campaigned on the issue,” Sanderson wrote. He notes that the calendar dispute led the entire board to appear before the Cobb County grand jury April 1, with the exception of Bartlett, who was recovering from a heart attack.

Going back to the beginning of the board terms of Stultz, Angelucci and Sweeney in January, Sanderson wrote that they and Bartlett did not violate Georgia’s open-meetings law when they decided to call a special Sunday meeting, at which they elected Bartlett chairwoman and Sweeney vice chairman and added items to the agenda of the regularly scheduled work session three days later, including the calendar issue.

“It nevertheless represented an affront to board protocol and effective governance,” Sanderson wrote. “Additionally, the discord and mistrust caused by this meeting would appear to violate the board’s ethics policy and its provision that board members promote a ‘spirit of harmony and cooperation in spite of differences of opinion.’ ”

The calendar issue also has driven board members to violate standards and policies in their public statements and undermine administrators, Sanderson says:

• Bartlett raised allegations during the initial calendar debate in November 2009 that unnamed principals had coerced teachers to vote a certain way on a calendar. She made those comments in a public meeting, rather than taking the allegations to the superintendent, and she sparked an investigation that found no evidence of coercion.
• Banks accused Bartlett in January of trying to end the district policy of allowing teachers to accrue and eventually cash in unused vacation time as a way to get “revenge against the principals that soundly denounced your false accusations back in 2009.”
• Bartlett told the Marietta Daily Journal in February that administrators were spreading lies about board members, which “is scary because this is how people like Hitler came to power. They believe the untruths.”
• Unnamed board members told the MDJ in November 2009 that the Central Office had “a surplus of dead wood.”

“Comments like those cited above can damage organizational effectiveness and can undermine the superintendent’s role,” Sanderson wrote. “The board should adhere to the SACS CASI Governance and Leadership standard and its requirement that the board: ‘Recognizes and preserves the executive, administrative, and leadership authority of the administrative head of the system.’ ”

Also causing administrators problems, the superintendent wrote, is the public distrust of the board since the calendar vote. It started with Bartlett telling the district to set up and administer an online calendar survey with little notice and less than a week to run, continued with two board members being assigned to work with the administration on creating calendar options, and has led to multiple open-records requests from upset community members, consuming staff time.

The problems are not limited to the pro-traditional-calendar side. Sanderson wrote that Banks committed “a clear violation of district policy and the board’s own ethics policy” when he used his monthly newsletter to criticize the four members of the board’s majority and when he used the district’s email system to distribute his newsletter.

Sanderson also cites multiple instances this year when media reports referenced discussions that occurred during executive board sessions, meaning one or more board members violated the confidentiality of those closed proceedings.

The superintendent does end on a hopeful note. He mentions that the board April 13 began the training the accrediting agency recommended back in 2009, and he says that continued training can work through the distrust and division to produce an effective school board.

“Board training is a crucial component in building the trust, respect, shared values, knowledge and understanding among each board member of his or her role. Had the board initiated this training immediately following the installation of three new board members, many if not all of the issues cited above may have been avoided,” Sanderson wrote. “That training is now under way, and I am confident that positive results will be apparent to district stakeholders as the sessions proceed.”

on the possible investigation into the way they oversee the school system, deferring to Sanderson as the system's chief executive.

"The Board of Education is unanimously committed to addressing these concerns, even to the extent of identifying and correcting instances where the letter of laws, regulations, policies, and standards has been followed, but Board actions nevertheless may have fallen short of modeling effective governance," Sanderson wrote.

If the letter does not satisfy AdvancED, the Cobb County School District could face a formal investigation that would put its accreditation at risk. Efforts to reach Bryans' office for more information about the timing of decisions were unsuccessful Friday.

Original Post Below

Thursday, the Cobb School District submitted this official response to an inquiry from The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement (SACS CASI). On March 29, SACS to Cobb School Superintendent Fred Sanderson, questioning the governance of the school district and giving the school board until April 28 to explain its actions.

The above PDF contains Sanderson's response in its entirety.

Please check back in at Patch, as we'll be updating you with more information as it comes in.