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He should be looking towards retiring anyway. He is almost 80 and 25 years as the head plus his almost 50 or 60 years in education. He has done a semi decent job over the years. Time to pass the torch.
They are already losing people at central office who are leaving the district since he won’t retire and they are ready to move up.
I say keep him for another two years. Gwinnett has done a decently good job—when other districts around the country under símilar conditions over the last three decades have done so poorly.
Two years would allow for a mindful transition—and not a knee-jerk, reactive one that can (will) lead to all sorts of problems.
I say keep him for another two years. Gwinnett has done a decently good job—when other districts around the country under símilar conditions over the last three decades have done so poorly.
Two years would allow for a mindful transition—and not a knee-jerk, reactive one that can (will) lead to all sorts of problems.
Agreed. Let him finish out and retire. He has about 18 months left on his contract.
Its going to be expensive to force him out early. Waste of money.
Parents who support both keeping J. Alvin Wilbanks as Gwinnett County Public Schools’ superintendent and keeping in-person learning available for families who want it gathered at the district’s offices on Tuesday to make their voices heard...
... Rumors and speculation have begun swirling among parents that the new Democratic Party majority on the school board — made up of Blair as well as new board members Tarece Johnson and Karen Watkins — are planning to fire Wilbanks, who has just over a year and a half left on his contract rather than let his contract, with a salary of more than $600,000 a year, run out.
What does 'firing' someone who is likely the 2nd or at worst 3rd best school superintendent in the whole metro area accomplish? This is why we can't have nice things. Success is punished by people with ulterior motives.
After the 2020 elections, it’s a different board and they want to go in a different direction.
... Things have changed and a new governing regime has come into power that very likely wants to start putting their own people in place throughout GCPS so that they can their stamp on the school system.
Which is understandable, that a new governing majority and regime is going to want to put people that they are more comfortable with in charge of operations throughout an organization.
And in time, that new governing majority very likely will get the opportunity to put their stamp on the GCPS system.
But the existing superintendent, J. Alvin Wilbanks, is under contract through the middle of 2022 and likely would be owed at least about $600,000 if the new majority on the GCPS education board were to fire him before his contract his up just simply because they may be anxious to go in another direction and start putting their imprint on the GCPS system.
Plus, while Wilbanks admittedly is not perfect (no one is), there does not appear to be any good reason (or legitimate cause) to prematurely fire a superintendent who generally seemingly has done and continues to do a noticeably better job than most at guiding Georgia’s largest and the nation’s 13th-largest public school system.
After the 2020 elections, it’s a different board and they want to go in a different direction.
... Things have changed and a new governing regime has come into power that very likely wants to start putting their own people in place throughout GCPS so that they can their stamp on the school system.
Which is understandable, that a new governing majority and regime is going to want to put people that they are more comfortable with in charge of operations throughout an organization.
And in time, that new governing majority very likely will get the opportunity to put their stamp on the GCPS system.
But the existing superintendent, J. Alvin Wilbanks, is under contract through the middle of 2022 and likely would be owed at least about $600,000 if the new majority on the GCPS education board were to fire him before his contract his up just simply because they may be anxious to go in another direction and start putting their imprint on the GCPS system.
Plus, while Wilbanks admittedly is not perfect (no one is), there does not appear to be any good reason (or legitimate cause) to prematurely fire a superintendent who generally seemingly has done and continues to do a noticeably better job than most at guiding Georgia’s largest and the nation’s 13th-largest public school system.
That would really only make sense if the person in charge was a failure or failing. That isn't the case here. What do you think the chances are the replacement could/would do better? Basic statistics tell us it isn't very likely considering the positioning and success of GCPS under Wilbanks leadership. Clayton County did essentially the same thing decades ago by pushing out a longtime successful superintendent and that lead to disaster and an embarrassing downward spiral ultimately losing accreditation. I am not saying Wilbanks should be superintendent forever but he is doing a very good job and unless that changes in the next 18 months he should be allowed to finish his contract. Firing Wilbanks only rewards him financially and wastes even more money. Not a good look.
A two year contract worth over 800k For a public servants should be criminal! this man is profiting off of failing schools 68 title 1 schools 1 school ranked nationally Gwinnett & science with less than the 1300 students 10% white with 100% white teachers! No Other schools to compare to naturally it would be ranked top in the nation. MEADOWCREEK HIGH SCHOOL has over 4000k students and less then 6 High school concert how can they do their job with over 13 administrative assistance overcrowded classrooms 70 to 1 student teacher ratio during the pandemic are you kidding me when that county please wake up and take a look at our property taxes! #RiCA
A two year contract worth over 800k For a public servants should be criminal! this man is profiting off of failing schools 68 title 1 schools 1 school ranked nationally Gwinnett & science with less than the 1300 students 10% white with 100% white teachers! No Other schools to compare to naturally it would be ranked top in the nation. MEADOWCREEK HIGH SCHOOL has over 4000k students and less then 6 High school concert how can they do their job with over 13 administrative assistance overcrowded classrooms 70 to 1 student teacher ratio during the pandemic are you kidding me when that county please wake up and take a look at our property taxes! #RiCA
Sorry to be direct, but you seem to be heavily misinformed on some of these factoids.
Gwinnett County Public Schools won the Prestigious Broad Prize twice.
Their winning specifically cited how GCPS schools were ahead of the curve when factoring in socio-economic variables, as well as having higher achievement among minority students.
GSMST is not a standard school. It is a school any high school student in the county can apply to be into. It only attracts higher achieving students, since its aggressive curriculum and lack of standard sports and extracurriculars deter most away except for those only wanting to excel in Math, Science, and Technology. It is only designed for 1,200 students.
It is 18% white (not 10%), 46% Asian, 22% Black, and 10% Hispanic. While the majority of teachers do seem to be white, it is far off from 100%. There seem to be a number Hispanic, Asian, Black, and Middle Eastern Teachers.
Most typical high schools in Gwinnett county have close to 3,000 students. Some a bit lower and some a bit more. The areas closer to I-85 have had stronger than average enrollment growth. The Meadowcreek Cluster just had a specialized school built in their cluster, the McClure Health Science High School. It is open to any middle schoolers in the Meadowcreek cluster to register into and then they accept out of cluster transers from other areas in Gwinnett with extra capacity. It just opened last year.
Nonetheless, the year before McClure HS opened, Meadowcreek only had 3,289 students (not 4,000). They had 196 administrators and teaching staff. This produces a ratio of 16.8 students per admin/teacher. So the actual Student:Teacher ratio (no admint) is a little higher. Still, way off from 70:1. The school is appropriately staffed.
Now this area is unique. It is close to 70% Hispanic. Almost 25% of the school enrolled into an ESOL program and they have the highest FRL Rate (Free/Reduced Lunch Rate; as an economic indicator) in the county. They also have higher rates of special education students. The cluster has a variety specialized dual language immersion classes at earlier ages, due to this student population. For these unique reasons, Meadowcreek does have the lowest achievement metrics out of Gwinnett County High Schools. Still, they offer specialized education that some populations need and desire that are not always gauged by basic standardized testing.
Most of the elementary schools in the Meadowcreek cluster have approx. 70% of their students enrolled in an ESOL program. They basically have to teach English from entry/basic levels, while getting most students ready for middle and high school. I would actually argue that Gwinnett has given a great deal of resources to this cluster and created the specialized programs needed to this unique area. In total, GCPS has 12 schools with these dual language immersion classes.
I am not sure what you mean by "less than 6 high school concert."
In regards to Title I school classification. First and foremost, A title I school is not a "failing school." All Title I means is the school has a certain percentage of students receiving Free/Reduced Rate lunches (the economic indicator). That is it. Title I schools get extra funding in an effort to create specialized programs at the school for parent and student engagement, as well as hiring additional teachers. The threshold for this is designed to include many schools. Even Forsyth, Fayette, and North Fulton has some Title I schools.
In the entire state of Georgia there are over 1,500 public schools that are Title I designated out of 2,200 public schools. The fact that only about 1/3 of GCPS schools are not Title I simply means it is a more affluent district. That alone is not any measure of excelling or failing.
Georgia has a program for 'Turnaround schools.' They are the bottom 5% of schools in the state and to make the list you must be below the threshold for 3 consecutive years. A rather low bar, admittedly, but GCPS does not have a single school on the list.
GCPS has 139 schools. These schools have 177,394 students. This represents 6% of the schools in the state of Georgia and over 11% of the total k-12 students in the state of Georgia.
Georgia has a program called "Beating the odds" that monitors the CCRPI scores at whether they do better or worse than average, given FRL of an area. 87 of the GCPS schools performed better than statistically expected. This puts GCPS excelling overall. Not bad given that GCPS teaches 11% of Georgia's K-12 students.
Even lower performing Meadowcreek that you pointed out in the Beating the odds program performs 'within expected' CCRPI range. They are accounting for how well the school performs among other schools with the same socioeconomic range.
The average SAT score of the entire district beats the national average and the state average by 67 and 54 points, respetively.
Wilbanks has done an amazing job and has a great legacy to leave behind. What does have me concerned is some of the rhetoric that is coming with this change has been highly negative towards him without cause. I am a bit nervous some people are wanting to make big changes for the sake of big changes vs. solving specific identified problems. They are being handed a well built, well managed, and above average performing school district that teaches 11% of the state's K-12 students. I'm all for continuing to seek improvements, but they need to tread cautiously.
They are already losing people at central office who are leaving the district since he won’t retire and they are ready to move up.
This seems to be a silly reason to fire someone for two big reasons:
1) They'll probably launch a nationwide search to replace him, anyway. I highly doubt they'll just promote someone already in the office, so turning over the position is unlikely to help them move up.
2) Even if they did fill the job with an internal candidate, they can only fill it with one person.
If anything, brining in a new supt. is very risky for these people. The new supt. may decide to get rid of many workers and bring in their own.
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