Out of the Frying Pan

The Atlanta Public Schools -- still trying recover from the nation's worst public school cheating scandal -- are now facing redistricting. Redistricting is one of those tasks that no matter what you do, you make lots of people (and sometimes almost everyone) really angry. School closures tear the heart out of neighborhoods, new schools sometimes can't be built where they are most needed because land acquisition is too expensive or impossible, and reassigning a neighborhood to a different school is almost always traumatic if not riot-inducing. APS is now undertaking citywide redistricting. (Disclosure: all three of my children attended Morningside Elementary through 5th grade, and then went to the Atlanta International School. I have not had children in public school since Iain completed 5th grade.  If I had wanted them to go to Inman, they could have.)

There have been major demographic changes in the city. I don't know if south Atlanta has really has fewer school-aged children than they used to, or if APS is playing catch-up with school closures that should have happened long ago, but the options developed by the consulting group that did the demographic study include closure of a large number of elementary schools in south Atlanta. Those neighborhoods I am sure are mobilizing to try to keep their neighborhood schools, but without students to fill them up, I don't think they are likely to prevail, since schools in other neighborhoods are bursting at the seams.

Along the fault line between the underutilized schools of south Atlanta and the crowded ones to the north, they are proposing to pair up elementary schools to increase utilization at an underused school and relieve some pressure on an over-full one by having one school offer kindergarten through 2nd grade and another one 3rd through 5th grade. Parents with more than one child in elementary school totally hate this idea on logistical grounds. In two of the proposed options, Springdale Park Elementary has been paired with Hope Elementary on Boulevard, and not surprisingly, there has been lots of pushback from Springdale Park families.

 

There's a plan for a new middle school (crosshatched area in the map above - in both of these maps, Morningside Elementary is the green square in the lower righthand corner) and a new high school in north Atlanta (see below), and that's where kids from Morningside would go, after elementary school, instead of Inman Middle School and (under two of the drat proposals) Grady High School; Springdale Park would stay in the Inman/Grady cluster of schools. Morningside families aren't happy about this, given how close we are to Inman and Grady (kids can walk to Inman from here) and how far we would be from the new schools that aren't built yet but would probably be a long way away. Two scenarios also have a new elementary school, just to the north of the Morningside district; a small part of the Morningside district ends up assigned to the new elementary school.

On the maps, it looks like the new middle school is near E. Rivers Elementary School in Buckhead -- not so far, but admittedly much farther than Inman -- and the new high school along Northside Parkway in the far north of the city, near Mt. Paran Church. It's a really long way away. Are there concrete plans to build schools in these locations, or are these projections for planning purposes? It's not clear from the materials I've seen that APS has provided, but I would be surprised that they would put a location on a map if they didn't already own the land.

APS has been doing lots of outreach, and neighborhood groups (largely opposed to almost everything that is being proposed, at least if it affects their schools) have been getting organized. APS says they are still in fact-finding mode and nothing has been decided. That's good, because the response I've heard to the options that have been presented has been largely "try again."

It's a tough job they have and I'm glad I don't have to make the decisions. Schools will be closed, new ones built, boundaries changed -- it's almost certainly going to happen. They've posted the maps and the presentations they've given at some of the community meetings on their website -- and there will be more meetings in early 2012.

Stay tuned. More to follow.

Running with Santa

A week ago Saturday, Iain ran the Virginia Highland Christmas 5K. This year they registered 1200 runners. At least based on the number of people we saw walking away from Fire Station No. 19 that morning with their T-shirts and Santa hats, lots of those 1200 race numbers went to people who for whatever reason ended up not running the race. Too much eggnog the night before, perhaps? But of the ones who did run, many were dressed as elves or Santa or in one case a giant rabbit.





There was the woman in black runner's spandex wearing a red satin bra and thong over her the black spandex. There was the couple in footed fleece pajamas, and the middle-aged woman wearing the Christmas tree skirt as a cape. We saw our neighbor Aaron, unobtrusively dressed in normal running attire. And there were the dogs wearing sweaters or tinsel or antlers or Santa hats. It was a marvelous, quirky neighborhood event.



Finally, it was time for the runners to go to the starting line, which was on Los Angeles, not far from the fire station. It was a great scene of Santa-hatted runners filling the street curb to curb for just about as far as one could see. I walked back up Highland toward Morningside Presbyterian, where the race ended, to wait for Iain. On my way I saw an Atlanta police officer, manning the orange cones at an intersection. I said good morning, and thanked him for keeping the runners safe. He broke into a wide smile.

There was a woman sitting on the hood of a car with Cherokee County plates, parked on North Highland near the finish line, waiting for a runner to finish the race. I don't quite understand driving to our neighborhood, early on a Saturday morning, from Cherokee County to run this event. But there weren't many cars parked on Wessyngton that morning, so I don't think there were many people who came from outside the neighborhood. There probably were some serious runners participating (the best time overall was 17 minutes, 11 seconds), but Iain said he saw one person checking his Blackberry while running. And in the Morningside Presbyterian parking lot, along with the cases of plastic bottles of water and bananas and oranges, there were plenty of small groups in costume happy to pose for pictures.



A history of the Virginia Highland neighborhood was recently published. When streetcars ruled in Atlanta, before the cars took over, the subdivisions in Virginia Highland were suburbs. Virginia Highland -- as a defined neighborhood -- didn't exist until the Georgia highway department announced a plan to build an interstate highway through the neighborhood. An organization that had not been active, the Highland-Virginia Neighborhood Association, was claiming to represent the neighborhood, and was stating at public meetings (erroneously) that the neighborhood supported construction of the highway. From that was born the Virginia-Highland Civic Association, to distinguish it from the other group, and the VHCA became part of active neighborhood opposition to the state highway department's plans.

In 1974, the Federal government rejected the state's Environmental Impact Statement, and plans for the road were dropped. Many residents had fled to the suburbs during the years of legal battles over I-485, but the ones who stayed and the ones who replaced the ones who left rebuilt a wonderful community in Virginia Highland and Morningside, where we live. Christopher Leinburger mentioned Virginia Highland in a recent NY Times op-ed piece, "The Death of the Fringe Suburb." Neighborhoods like Virginia Highland and Morningside are good places to live. You can walk to a coffee shop or a restaurant or to Alon's, and you can run a 5K in a Santa suit. What could be better?

On Christmas eve, Iain walked to Fire Station 19 with a tin of Christmas cookies. My family made these, he told them, and we just wanted to say thank you, and Merry Christmas.

The Cookie Index

Week before last, I ran into a co-worker at Kroger. As I said hello, she was scanning some foil-wrapped chocolates at self-checkout. She started to explain that German tradition requires a celebration of St. Nicholas Day on December 6. I told her my kids' school was hosting a German Christmas market on Saturday, and that she should come. She knew about it already and said she would be there.

The Christmas market is hosted by the parent organization representing the families of the kids in the German track at the school; some of the families are German, and others, like us, just have children who study German at the school. Over the years, we've done different things to help out. One year we did crafts with the kids of the volunteers working at the market, and a few years ago I made an angel costume that was worn by a student who posed with small children for Christmas photos (like having pictures taken with Santa, in the United States). Last year I made cookies for sale by the parents' group at the market.

When I signed up to make cookies last year, I think I expected that I would - I don't know - make one batch of chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag, and that would be it. So I was somewhat surprised to be assigned one of 7 traditional German Christmas cookie recipes and to be told I needed to make three batches of them. The kids helped and we rolled and cut and baked cookies one evening, packed them into the required cookie tins (the detailed instructions specified storage and transport in cookie tins, not in plastic containers), and turned them in a day or two before the Christmas market. There they were combined with cookies made by other families and packaged on a small paper plate, wrapped with cellophane and tied with ribbon, and sold at the market for $5. I bought two or three packages of them last year; I think we gave one package away and ate the rest of them. They were very good, and a nice variety, even if there weren't any chocolate chip cookies.

But last year, as I recall there were a lot of cookies that went unsold - I think they might have ended up in the teachers' lounge at the school. So I thought that this massive cookie-making effort might be scaled back a little this year, to try to come closer to matching supply and demand. But I was wrong - when the instructions came, they were planning an even larger cookie-making effort, and had plans to package some of the cookies in tins that would sell for more than the small packages that had been sold before. This seemed highly optimistic to me, but I just did as I was instructed.

So I was up til 1 a.m. one night the week before last, making cookies. They got combined with all the other cookies and packaged up at a massive cookie-packaging-event the morning before the market, and were for sale at the event last Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful afternoon. There was the photo station, with a girl in the angel costume and this year with Santa too, and little kids posing for photos. There was grilled bratwurst and potato salad, and the German church had desserts of various sorts. A German bakery had stollen, and there were lots of stalls with other things for sale, too.

We ate bratwurst off styrofoam plates and Iain stood in line with other kids at the table where the desserts were for sale. I saw my co-worker who I'd run into a Kroger. Tom and I looked at the used books (in German) and browsed the crafts for sale. By the time I made it back to the table where our cookies were for sale, the small packages were all gone. I bought a tin for $15, and I'm glad a didn't wait any longer, because it wasn't much later that the cookies had been sold.

I don't know who made the decision to make more cookies this year, but they were right and I was wrong. Of course, I haven't seen any foreclosure signs in the neighborhood for a while and there's a new restaurant about to open in Caramba's old location on North Highland (okay, it's yet another burger place, but still...).

Finally, things may be getting better. It's about time.