10 Biggest cities in the Metro

[OhioNative]

[quote=rcsteiner;15604187]Unlike many other states, Georgia does not recognize intermediate steps between unincorporated area and full-blown City, which makes it somewhat harder for an area to incorporate. That's a large jump.
QUOTE]

Ohio has several steps of incorporation, each step providing more autonomy to a jurisdiction. At the lowest population density, you have a Township. Then when a defined area reaches a certain population it becomes a Village, then a City.

[Newsboy]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

But one set of idiots has influence over a much smaller area. Instead of having a poor impact on all of Clayton County, for example, the same idiots would have trashed maybe a 20th of the county, and 19 other districts would have been fine...

Given the stuff I've seen down here with schools that I didn't see in the Twin Cities, I wonder how the Atlanta metro has been able to manage such huge, unwieldy districts. It seems like a herculean task to me...

The more agile organizations are typically the smaller ones.

The Cobb and Gwinnett school districts both seem to be well run (recent conflicts in Cobb regarding transparency and scheduling aside), and that is a tribute to their leadership overall, but given the propensity for organizational leaders to administer cookie-cutter solutions across entire organizations in the name of consistency and simplification, it would surprise me quite a bit if there wasn't some harm being done to at least some students in those districts due to sheer scale.

If anybody has first-hand and accurate knowledge of how school districts operate in other states, I'd like to hear about it. Like I said in an earlier post, Florida has nothing but 67 county-level school districts and it works pretty well for them despite "herculean" geographies and numbers of students (Miami-Dade Public Schools is the 4th largest in the country with 380,000 students! Gwinnett, by comparison, is 15th largest in the country with "only" about 165,000).

I'm particularly curious about South Carolina schools, which I know have very strong management at the state level down and I think are governed at the local level by administrative boards -- perhaps one for EVERY high school cluster?! I do know that counties in SC are divided up into "School District No. XXX" and such ... very strange.

In many parts of the NE and Midwest schools are also controlled by hyper-local boards that often oversee just 3-4 schools and maybe a couple of thousand students each. Wonder though if they don't function under the umbrella of a county or city district? It just seems like an awful lot of bureaucracy in schools, and schools is one place we need less bureaucracy, not more.

[Saintmarks]

The school systems here in Texas are almost all labled as Independent School Districts, or ISDs for short. I live in McKinney and my kids go to schools run by the McKinney ISD. Most of the surrounding suburban cities in the DFW metroplex have ISDs named after them, but they are not city run. This was very confusing to me when I first moved here as the city limits and the ISDs of the same name as that city aren't contiguous. Here in McKinney, you can be within the city limits but be in the Frisco ISD, Allen ISD, Prosper ISD, Celina ISD or Melissa ISD, all neighboring burbs.

I have tried to find the reason for this, the closest I can find is that these ISDs (Independent School Districts) were formed decades and decades ago when all of these areas were small rural communities. The ISD boundaries were drawn up, by I don't know whom, but were set somewhat like ZIP Codes. The individual town or city also would draw from rural areas, just like a town's post office serves not only what is in that city limits but surrounding rural areas as well.

As these small towns have boomed into suburban cities, they have annexed almost all unincorporated areas between them, but the decision making process of where cities would annex and where the boundaries would be drawn had nothing to do with the already set ISD lines. Thus, one can live in one city but be in the ISD of the neighboring town. Very confusing.

Compare this to Georgia where there are still a few remaining city school systems separate from the county schools. I remember there being fights between the city of Marietta and Cobb County when Marietta annexed, not just for the basic tax revenue types of disagreements, but if Marietta annexed a residential area, that neighborhood went from the Cobb County school system into the Marietta city system. The Marietta city boundary lines are contiguous with the school system's boundaries as the city runs the school system.

Not so here in Texas. For the most part, each of the larger suburbs has its own corresponding ISD in name, but there are some cities that are combined in one larger ISD. The Lewisville ISD (for example) to the west of us includes the majority of the city of Lewisville, but encompasses most of the neighboring cities of Flower Mound and The Colony along with tiny Hebron as well as a large chunk of neighboring Carrollton. There is no separate ISD for Flower Mound or The Colony. However, the remainder of Carrollton has a joint ISD with the suburb between it and Dallas, Farmer's Branch, which is appropriately named the Carrollton/Farmer's Branch ISD.

Confusing, ain't it?

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by Newsboy

If anybody has first-hand and accurate knowledge of how school districts operate in other states, I'd like to hear about it. Like I said in an earlier post, Florida has nothing but 67 county-level school districts and it works pretty well for them despite "herculean" geographies and numbers of students (Miami-Dade Public Schools is the 4th largest in the country with 380,000 students! Gwinnett, by comparison, is 15th largest in the country with "only" about 165,000).

I'm particularly curious about South Carolina schools, which I know have very strong management at the state level down and I think are governed at the local level by administrative boards -- perhaps one for EVERY high school cluster?! I do know that counties in SC are divided up into "School District No. XXX" and such ... very strange.

In many parts of the NE and Midwest schools are also controlled by hyper-local boards that often oversee just 3-4 schools and maybe a couple of thousand students each. Wonder though if they don't function under the umbrella of a county or city district? It just seems like an awful lot of bureaucracy in schools, and schools is one place we need less bureaucracy, not more.

I grew up in NYC which I believe is the largest school system in the country. Countrol was very political and a strong school board was in place and lets face it, running the schools in NYC is a bigger job than running some entire counties in GA.

I also had 3 children in a school system in New England for many years. The town had 40K people and the schools were small. In MA, every little town has its own system. That provides hyper-control at a very local level, but it also causes many economies of scale to be lost. That causes the state to get involved directly with capital projects such as school construction and purchasing textbooks. Each little town of just a few thousand people has their own schools, with a Superintendant or similar, and all the other redundancies to the other small towns just down the road. That has actually led to some towns banding together and creating regional districts. While not a county system (MA has no actual counties..just historical ones), it provides some economies of scale.

Here in GA, county systems allow for much better economies of scale, and through local option sales taxes, a county can earmark money for specific capital projects for its district.

[Transplant_2010]

Originally Posted by matt8325

Gainesville is not even in metro Atlanta so why is it included in this list ? You might as well include cities like Rome and Athens too.

I agree that Gainesville shouldn't be included in the Atlanta metro population. However, according to this:

Atlanta metropolitan area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...Gainesville is included in the Combined Statistical Area

[Mgyeldell]

Originally Posted by Newsboy

I'm particularly curious about South Carolina schools, which I know have very strong management at the state level down and I think are governed at the local level by administrative boards -- perhaps one for EVERY high school cluster?! I do know that counties in SC are divided up into "School District No. XXX" and such ... very strange.

In NC school systems are pretty much set up the same like GA, strong county governemnet, where most school systems are ran by the county. but the biggest difference I can see between GA and NC schools are the Mandates and Graduation Requirements, In NC the State sets out a blanket set or rules for all schools to follow, while here in GA it can very from district to district for rules. I find the NC blanket rule alot easier to deal with because its easier to withdraw at one school and enroll at another and start up at the new school almost pratically where you left off at the old school, while in GA if you were to move to a different district there is a chance that some of the credits and classes that you've taken in the old district may not transfer to the new district, I had the problem in 05 when transferring from Dekalb County Schools to Clayton County Schools, pretty much destroyed my GPA I made in 9th and 10th grade.

Ohh and also there is no silly Graduation Test(a mockery of any smart students intelligence) at all in NC, you take your EOCs and Vocats throughout your High School Career and Pass your Computer SKills test in Middle School and you can graduate on time