Greene County voters will make decisions during early voting and the May 21 Republican Primary to shape the future. Still, the three contests for seats on the Board of Education may have less impact locally.
Dr. Perry Lee was appointed BOE chairman in 2023 when Michael Lynch retired. Dr. Otho Tucker, former Lake Oconee Academy CEO, is running to challenge the incumbent. Lee is credited with helping bring up test scores in the system’s schools, and Tucker is credited for a 17-year career that saw LOA in its infancy by becoming a Blue Ribbon School in the state in 2014.
Lake Oconee News received requests for a better explanation of priority admission of students of part-time employees, as reported in April. LOA Executive Director Dr. Brad Bowling has stated the school currently needs to give priority admittance to students of part-time employees.
House Bill 1122, which was recently signed into law, permits priority admission of students whose parents or guardians work at least 20 hours per week but will not go into effect until July 2025.
LOA explained that part-time hires were needed to attract teachers only wanting part-time employment, paraprofessionals, Titan Tech workers, and skilled tutors. However, many employees work so few hours that they would not meet the 20-hours-per-week standard outlined in the new law.
During the current school year, 85 students whose parents are part-time employees are enrolled at LOA. Information received through an Open Records request to the BOE showed that 100% of the new part-time employees hired in 2023-24, who also had children admitted to LOA in the same year, were shown to have worked less than 20 hours per week and some as little as 10 hours or less.
Under Georgia Code 20-22062, which fell under the Charter Schools Act of 1998, the following applied to priority admission: “A student whose parent or guardian is a member of the governing board of the start-up charter school or is a full-time teacher, professional or other employee at the start-up charter school.”
The disagreement centers around interpreting “other” in existing law, which arose in charter negotiations. The charter agreed with the collective understanding that only full-time employees would receive priority admission.
Its definition also states, "Faculty and instructional ‘staff members’ mean all certified personnel assigned to the school on a full-time basis. The term paraprofessional shall have the same meaning as set out in code.”
LOA asserts that the clause provides proof that a part-time employee, despite the state’s definition, can have priority admission due to the word “other” in the law. No written legal opinion has been provided through open records that support this position. Tucker claims to have brought in a grammarian that supported their interpretation.
“The definition is simplistic and accurate,” Tucker said. “When ‘or’ comes between the statements, it denotes singularity. It is either ‘this’ or ‘that.’ In the second example (referring to the new legislation), ‘and’ is plural, taking both ‘this and that’ into consideration, and therefore, the modifiers carry into the next phase.”
An attorney for the Board of Education, Cory Kirby, responded in correspondence last February that “full-time” applies to teachers, professionals, and other full-time employees. Their interpretation was that if the phrase “full-time” does not apply to all three, it is meaningless.
Tucker asserts that the assistant superintendent of the Georgia Charter School Association agrees with LOA’s interpretation.
Lake Oconee News was asked to verify this with Bonnie Holliday at the Georgia Charter School Association (GCSA). Holiday is the chief strategy officer for GCSA and stated in an email: “In short, because of the unique circumstances and the various enrollment allowances memorialized in rule and law, GCSA advises schools to administer enrollment priorities under the guidance of counsel, and Lake Oconee Academy has always adhered to that guidance.”
Holiday commented in another email relative to concurring with LOA’s interpretation: “GCSA simply advises schools to utilize enrollment priorities under the guidance of counsel. If the school did that, they followed our advice, but a school’s counsel would not vet an interpretation of the law through me.”