Clayton Stripped of Accreditation

By Odette Yousef

Atlanta, GA – Effective September first, the Clayton County School district will be the first in the nation to lose accreditation in nearly 40 years.

Today, SACS, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, announced that the district has not significantly addressed several problem areas over the last six months.

WABE's Odette Yousef reports.

Of the nine mandates that the district had to meet, SACS President Mark Elgart said only one was met:

ELGART: Item 7 - ensure that each member of the board is a legal resident of the county and is eligible to hold the elected seat on the board. This is the one requirement that has been fully completed.

Of the other eight, Elgart said this:

ELGART: There's positive intent in some cases, but there's no results from those efforts.

The problem, said Elgart, is that the board had 6 months to address the mandates, but only started getting serious about them over the last 60 days. On two items in particular, the board made little, or no, progress:

ELGART: One is a properly functioning board, and second is normal relations between the superintendent and board, regarding their role definitions and responsibilities and a clear separation of duty.

Of all the district's 50,000 students, Clayton County's high school seniors may be the most worried.

On the upside, Elgart says that losing accreditation does not mean that a diploma from Clayton County Schools is, in any way, invalid. Also, Georgia's General Assembly passed a law that would still render them and current juniors eligible for HOPE scholarships.

But seniors may have more difficulty winning other scholarships and getting into certain colleges and universities.

Elgart says that may be averted if school board members make a genuine commitment before September 1st, 2009:

ELGART: If they are able to complete those recommendations within one year, they will be reinstated as an accredited school system, and that reinstatement date will go back to September 1, 2008.

Clayton County Superintendent John Thompson says the district will appeal SACS's decision.

Also, Governor Sonny Perdue today removed the last remaining members of the school board who were cited for misconduct.

Odette Yousef, WABE News.