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Abstract
The General Assembly of the State of Georgia passed the Charter Schools Act of 1998 to increase student achievement through innovative educational flexibility. A feature of this Act provided local school systems the flexibility to operate as a Charter System. In 2009, to further increase flexibility from certain state laws, rules and regulations, the State Legislature required all Georgia school systems to determine under which operating system they will govern. The deadline for that decision is June 30, 2015. There are three principal operating systems, known as Flexibility Options: Investing in Educational Excellence School System (IE), Charter system and Status Quo School System. Within the context of governance, this study examined district-level and school-level decision-making processes in a Georgia Charter District. The study investigated how significant decisions of budget, personnel, programs and/or innovation are decided, the means by which school governance council members learn their roles, and the challenges and benefits of operating as a charter system of governance. Multi-faceted data collection techniques were employed to answer the research questions posed by this study. These techniques included targeted in-depth interviews with district board members, the superintendent, principals and local school governance council members in the Charter System. Document reviews, direct observation and researchers journal contributed to the analysis of the data. Evidence from this study revealed school governance councils take part in the decision-making process, especially in the areas of budget and personnel in the charter district studied for this investigation. Findings from the study indicated lesser involvement by school governance council members on the types of programs and/or innovation to support individual school improvement plans as local school governance council members tended to defer judgment to school leaders in these types of decisions. This study also examined how school governance council members learn their roles. On this question, the findings revealed two primary methods through which school governance council members learn to perform their tasks: orientation and training of members by the system, and the formation of Communities of Practice at the local school site. Awareness by constituents of the distinction between charter schools and charter systems, as well as a need for greater understanding by the public of locus of decision-making authority presented challenges for authority figures in the charter system. Two benefits of charter system governance consistently noted by stakeholders were flexibility and local school control over budget and hiring.