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.