Schools

GCPS Board To Discuss New Site Acquisition Policy

Thursday meeting also will include formal budget adoption.

The Gwinnett County school board will be looking over and possibly voting on a new policy for acquiring land at its Thursday meeting in Suwanee.

A draft of the policy that is on the board's agenda, among other things, calls for potential deals to be discussed at future board meetings and to be posted on the GCPS website.

The proposed policy is posted on the GCPS website.

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Also at Thursday's meeting, the board is scheduled to formally adopt the $1.7 billion budget for the 2011-12 school year. The spending plan tentatively was approved by the board in April.

The GCPS land-acquisition methods came under public criticism because of a series of articles in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Published reports said that the system recently paid inflated prices for several school sites, and that developers who sold the land made large profits, as much as $1 million per day in one case.

Find out what's happening in Snellvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Also, the Gwinnett system has authorized a former federal prosecutor to conduct a third-party investigation of GCPS land deals dating back to 1999. Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks -- not an actual board member -- has defended GCPS land purchases, saying aggregate savings total $37.5 million.

The Gwinnett system is the state's largest, with about 161,000 students. It expects continued enrollment growth and declining revenue for the 2012-13 school year.

Thursday's board meeting will be at 7 p.m. at the Suwanee headquarters. A public hearing about the budget will be held at 6 p.m., and a public open forum will be at 6:30 p.m. In addition, there is a 3 p.m. work session and a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. That special meeting will address the consent agenda and superintendent's report, normally at the 7 p.m. meeting.

For the complete agenda, click here.


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