To the editor: We all know the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Currently, the 18 campuses of Mountain Ed schools need some squeaky wheels. Due to HB 153, on June 30, 2023, Mountain Ed will lose chartered school status. This will force it to be authorized by a local system, none of which have offered to partner to do so.
This school system will be dissolved even though it has significantly changed the lives of its graduates and lowered the drop-out rate in 18 counties, including yours.
Mountain Education serves students who have returned to school to give themselves a fighting chance in life. Many of these students do not have parents who will advocate for them. Can you imagine the uproar if football programs were cut? Or if the gifted funds were reallocated elsewhere? There would be no shortage of outcry. But for these kids, there are crickets.
If Mountain Ed is dissolved, how many of the 2,520 students served at 18 campuses will finish school? If they don’t have the supports they need, the dropout rates go through the roof. The homeless rate goes up. The welfare rolls increase. The prison population increases. The taxpayer burden goes up. Mtn. Ed. is an opportunity for these students to open their own doors and not expect the taxpayers to support them for the rest of their lives.
There has to be a feasible way where the dollars are spent to rescue kids before they become adults who are dependent on the state to care for them. A way that will ease taxpayer burden by creating more taxpayers, instead of more tax users.
Mountain Ed gives students the steps and supports to make getting a job with a livable wage a reality. All Mountain Education students have mentors to help them navigate life itself. Please do not take hope away from our students, it’s all many of them have left.
Let’s all join together and get some grease. Call and write your representatives asking them to allow Mountain Education to remain a Ga. state chartered special school with a regional attendance zone and funding.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Michelle Gunnin
Mountain Ed Educator