Several members of the Fayette County School Board took time after Monday’s work session to offer their thoughts on what had become a linguistic battleground in Fayette County in recent days over Senate Bill 458.

The descriptors “may” and “shall” have been in the forefront of endless controversy that generated much debate over the meaning of those words.

“‘May’ and ‘shall’ have different meanings for legal purposes,” said school board Chair Terri Smith. “‘May’ means you have a choice. ‘Shall’ means you have to do it. And so it was a very significant difference to us. We didn’t need permission to ‘may.’ We already may enroll anybody who comes to register, but it’s our policy not to register children from outside the county. So ‘may’ made no difference at all to us. I think it was also the writer’s intent to tell us that we must. I think it was also the intent of Sen. Valencia Seay, the majority of whose district lies in Clayton County. If I was representing Clayton County I may be pushing something like that. If I was representing Fayette County, I would not.”

The distinction in the wording also made a difference for board member Janet Smola.

“The ‘shall’ and the ’may’ rang the alarm for us, but we’ve always been against SB 458 because it’s a voucher program and it erodes public education,” Smola said.

Another problem with the wording revolved around a term not so much in the limelight in recent days. It is one that dealt with the available capacity to receive out of county students.

“One of my big concerns was the ambiguity regarding that fact that capacity was not defined. The state has a capacity number for us. It’s not the capacity number we use for ourselves,” said Smith. “With them leaving that wide open, what we absolutely did not want to happen was for them to impose a capacity number on us.”

Another school board concern was the potential for SB 458 to pave the way for private schools to gain access to public funds for education.

“It would have been more appropriate for the legislature to focus on ways to place Clayton County in a receivership situation where they could indeed move to remedy the problems in the school district,” said Dr. Bob Todd. “However, the state’s solution is to offer vouchers to go to private schools, according to Sen. Johnson. Public schools must have highly trained special education teachers to deal with those kids. In private schools with vouchers, a P.E. teacher can teach that same child. I guess the larger issue the state’s going to have to deal with somewhere along the line is, where does public money go and where doesn’t it go? If it goes, then are we going to have strings? And right now the state is saying ‘no,’ we’ll just send the money out there.”

Smith agreed, adding that SB 458 would have opened the door for non-accredited private schools.

“I do not support public funds, taxpayers’ money from Fayette County, going to private schools,” Smith said. “In particular, private schools that are not accredited. This was not mentioned in the bill. It just said private schools. So you could have fly-by-night private schools popping up and getting state money.”

Yet another school board member offered her thoughts on the drama that surrounded SB 458. Those thoughts centered on state funding, board authority and an outlook reminiscent of the stand at the Alamo.

“The state is taking more and more money away from us,” said Marion Key. “We’re getting a smaller proportion of our budget from them and then they’re taking away our authority to do what we want to do. You know that thing that says, ‘Don’t mess with Texas?’ I think the state legislators have found out, ‘Don’t mess with the Fayette County school system.’”

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