To balance out the racial diversity and socio-economics of the student populations attending Lakeside HS as well as evenly distribute the students from the lengthy Buford Hwy Corridor, the E-SPLOST V Project List includes a 750-seat, 38-classroom, two-story addition to Lakeside High School (LHS).
No consideration appears to be given to the students and taxpaying communities along the Briarcliff Corridor regarding the impact on their educational experience (cramped common spaces and lack of facilities, etc.) or quality of life (traffic, flooding, etc.). There is also possibly a Title IX claim given the lack of adequate sport facilities for girls.
If common spaces are not addressed, LHS will end up with more seats but little in the way of common space improvements for the students they already have, let alone the additional seats. The original conceptual plans include
- Kitchen extension (1,546 sq/ft)
- Cafeteria extension (2,025 sq/ft)
- New media center addition (4,391 sq/ft)
- 3 story employee parking garage
- 138 additional student outdoor parking
It is important to point out that the improvements listed above are the bare minimum requirements necessary to get state approval for the addition. Many school districts go beyond the minimum requirements when building facilities for the students in their communities. That information is forthcoming in upcoming posts.
The LHS building additions will not include any renovations or additions to existing media rooms, art rooms, hallways, gymnasium, locker rooms, fields (not including softball field relocation), or any other core spaces or surrounding infrastructure.
Anybody that has driven on Briarcliff Rd when it’s raining is well aware of the watershed issues in the area. LHS is built on the edge of a flood plain. As a matter of fact, the conceptual designs relocate the softball field right on top of a stream in the middle of said floodplain.
Lakeside School Council Concerns with LHS Expansion Plans
The Lakeside HS Council is voicing serious concerns about the planned expansion. They have noticed the same things I have noticed in Chamblee and Dunwoody cluster, that support for these expansions is solely based on the fear of redistricting.
Mike San Fratello, LHS council chair, sent the following open letter this month to the DeKalb Schools administration and Board of Education.
From: Lakeside Highschool Council
Subject: Lakeside School Council Concerns with LHS Expansion Plans
During our November LHS School Council meeting, we had members of the Lakeside community come to voice serious concerns about the planned expansion to Lakeside High School. During our December meeting, we finalized our position on how we can properly represent the state of community consensus, and key concerns regarding the concerns about how education will be affected by these plans.
We all know efforts were made to get community input regarding prospective plans to address the growing student population. It’s clear that neighborhoods that feared being redistricted out of the Lakeside Cluster were most vocal and active in providing feedback. Many, if not most neighborhoods in the community seem to have very little understanding of current plans. At a minimum, this means we represent a community with conflicting interests and desires.
The position of the Lakeside School Council is as follows:
The road infrastructure surrounding the school cannot support additional traffic.
• With the current enrollment of over 2,200 students, we have actually been conducting a feasibility study of traffic issues already.
• As roads cannot be expanded around the school, it is clear that traffic congestion has already reached a critical point.
• The expansion plans will only exacerbate current conditions, increasing concerns with public safety and the ability of emergency vehicles to respond in a timely manner.
• School buses routinely arrive late, delivering students past the beginning of class/home room. This also means that these buses will be late for middle school pickup, thus affecting student arrival times at Henderson Middle and other schools.
• The key question is not about adding 300 more students to Lakeside’s current enrollment, but what an optimal number of students is for this location given the property size and road infrastructure. Given the experience during the 2017/18 school year so far, it would seem that number is LESS than 2,200, not more.
Questions exist about how additional hard space resulting from construction will affect the watershed management in the area.
• Already, flooding from rain at the corner of Briarcliff and Briarlake Roads happens often when it rains, further affecting traffic congestion.
• Either the county or the Army Corps of Engineers needs to review this issue to assess the impact water runoff around the school.
There appears to be a lack of a strategic plan to address enrollment requirements over a period of longer than the next few years. A worst case scenario means that the Lakeside community will be in the same position it is now, once the proposed expansion is completed.
Last, all decisions about moving forward with the expansion plans must be made in the context of how they will deliver the highest quality education experience possible to each and every student.
• We understand efforts were made to get community feedback regarding options the board was considering. It’s clear our community has conflicting views.
• Even if the entire community was in support of expanding LHS per existing plans, we would still need to look to the education experts to determine what the optimal course of action is.
• Our deepest concern is that the current plan is not the best approach to deliver the best educational experience possible.
Thank you for your attention in this matter.
Mike San Fratello
Chairman, Lakeside High School School Council
Related Posts
Adding Classrooms is Only Part of the Soluion
November 8, 2017 – Angela Maki is an involved member of the community with children attending the Lakeside cluster. On Monday she relayed to the board of education that classrooms alone are an inadequate solution to overcrowding. She wants to know what the school district is going to do about expanding PE facilities, locker rooms and office space, etc …
Concerns about Lakeside HS Expansion
November 4, 2017 – Various residents and civic associations have caught wind of the 750 seat expansion project and are doing the research the school district should have done in the first place. After doing some of their own research, they wrote a letter to county and school leadership voicing their concerns.
DeKalb Commissioners Not A Fan of the
E-SPLOST High School Building Additions
February 15, 2017 – DeKalb County Commissioners are unanimously asking the DeKalb County School District to build a new high school in Doraville and not add a bunch of classrooms to Lakeside, Dunwoody, and Chamblee Charter High Schools.
750 More Seats at Lakeside HS? Why?
January 30, 2017 – Lakeside High School is currently cramming 2,184 students into a building with a capacity of 1,756 students. Only one other school in North DeKalb scored a below average 2016 School Climate Star Rating. How will adding 750 seats to Lakeside High School improve their School Climate Star Rating and academic achievement?
Who’s Getting Redistricted
Out of Lakeside HS
November 16, 2016 – The school district intends to redistrict 250 students currently attending Lakeside HS to the new Brookhaven High School cluster. Oak Grove, Hawthorne and Sagamore make the list.
Lakeside High School – 750 Seat Addition
November 2, 2016 – The recommendation to construct a 750-seat, 38-classroom, two-story addition to Lakeside High School. The project will also include…
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Not a fan of more students in a school that was intended to be a neighborhood high school. The county doesn’t care that the school with only one road access is not the school to make into a mega school. We don’t have enough acreage! No one wants a parking garage in their backyard and we don’t want a school with no fields to practice on.
With the current building footprint, neither of my children can access their lockers between classes and make it to their next class on time. Not wanting to be marked tardy and have to serve a detention, they carry ALL of their textbooks and course materials to every class, everyday, resulting in chronic debilitating backaches for my 14 year old. My children are not unique in this situation. How is another two-story addition going to address the existing traffic flow problems that resulted from the previous two-story addition?
We have same issue. Lockers have been downsized so much that winter coats don’t fit. Kids need rolling suitcases to store their stuff but this won’t work with stairs. I’ve asked my young drivers to wait ten minutes before leaving campus to avoid the worst/most dangerous traffic.
Sigh. There’s no room and there’s certainly not the transportation access. Really, it’s squeezed in a neighborhood with 2 lane roads all around. Can you say ‘congestion’? They should have fought the first expansion which added another 600 students. Lakeside is already the largest school in the county – in terms of number of students. With this addition, they will be exponentially the largest – in a league of their own. It’s ridiculous. We used to joke that DCSD should just make Lakeside into a 6,000 student campus and have all high school students in the county attend.
Enlarging Lakeside is one of the poorest plans yet. Stan you have pointed out all the issues which effect expansion of that location. Why are we demolishing Briarcliff instead of using it? Remember on the BOE I served on we did a study and found for $25 to 30 Million you could refurbish the high school for a 25 year run. Using Briarcliff could help Lakeside, Druid Hills, and Cross Keys. Lakeside was created out of Briarcliff. It is in the neighborhood.
As a taxpayer enlarging Lakeside and trying to build a school in Brookhaven is a foolhardy and expensive option. New high school $70-100 million plus the cost of Lakeside expansion. How can you reconcile this with the taxpayer? When one sits on the school board your focus needs to beyond the current , very vocal occupants of the school right now and looking at at least a 10 to 15 year plan for the future. Tax money belongs to all the residents not just the current occupants of a specific school.
Cere,
Actually, Lakeside will not be “in a league of their own” after the 750 seat addition.
It will have 2506 seats, but it will have lots of company:
–Chamblee Charter High School will have 2410 seats
–the new Cross Keys High School will have 2500 seats
EVEN WORSE – ALL of these MEGA-SCHOOLS will be at 99-100% utilization the minute the additions are complete!! This is directly from DCSD Planning documents (http://www.dekalbschoolsga.org/documents/secondary-school-study/secondary-shools-handout-sept-27.pdf).
Let that sink in. We will spend millions of dollars, squeeze 7500 teenagers into campuses that were not designed for that many teenagers, make poor traffic situations much worse — and then a few more students will want to enroll and we won’t even have space for trailers. Never mind that DCSD has no experience with educating students in mega-high schools.
I really wish DCSD would have a moratorium on this issue. Yes, I know that is risky since they are forecasting so much growth. But I think this is one of those crucial, game-changing moments that will either improve public education in DeKalb for years to come, or will be an abysmal, costly, and embarrassing failure.
The school district, as far as I can tell, is only entertaining plans that alleviate over crowding by 2020. The communications I have received from the Hispanic population tell me they are only concerned about the here and now as well.
Ugh … horrible news Anonymous. I obviously had no idea. These all seem like the easiest go-to solutions with no regard for quality of life issues for students (crowded cafeterias, common spaces, sports, halls, lockers, etc).
But what happens when the Hispanic community on South Buford Hwy does not exist anymore? It is slowing happening now. There are many apartments that are quietly on the market because they do not want to pay the fine from Brookhaven to bring them up to code. Yes, some of the new complexes are being done will have some affordable housing but when you get rid of 500 apartments but only 75 of them will be affordable there is a direct loss. Also, many apartment managers on Buford Hwy are charging an extra $250 per person when the apartment has more than four residents in them. Are these things that I am in favor, NO, but the property owner can do.
Look, the CK Cluster has already lost 500+ elementary students from FTE count 2016 to 2017. Will this continue over the next few years as Buford Highway is changing? Who knows. What I feel is being created is a new high school that will be just like Lassiter High School in Cobb County. Very affluent and little diversity.
Also, we do not know where Amazon 2 is going. What happens if Doraville does win? Guess what is going to happen to the single family house on Doraville that are affordable right now, they are going to be bought up and torn down for their new McMansions that haas happened in Brookhaven/AP and Oak Grove areas.
I am betting that the county does not know that the Brookhaven Marta and Hastings development passed last night. We are looking at 2000 new apartments being built in that area in the coming future.
Then what? We already built to full capacity and have no room for growth because there was no factor in what could and will be happening.
My take on this is people were too willing to accept the partial, and vague solutions proposed by the administration.
The unwillingness of the administration to discuss these issues when they were brought up in community feedback session was troublesome, but not new.
My solution to help out Lakeside is for the district to purchase the homes bordering the property on Oak Grove Rd. and Cadillac Dr. Turn that land into parking and use the current parking lots to expand the school. Yes. It will be expensive, but you won’t get redistricted to another high school.
That’s not a terrible idea Kirk if the school district will do the same for Dunwoody and Chamblee. I suspect that they will not entertain that plan. What is even more revealing is the fact that the school district will not build an entirely new high school in the perimeter area. There is crazy growth going on but the school district is chasing the past BS issues. They are trying to shoehorn children into small campuses. They are trying to shuffle the latino population around. They are chasing yesterday’s problems. They are trying to placate certain activists. Dr. Green needs to realize that he is being ill served by Dan and Josh. They are the past. Josh was Pat Pope’s protege. Dan thinks he is the smartest guy in the room when he should have some humility. If we could get some better people in planning, maybe we could get better solutions.
Here is my thought. Go back to the December board meeting, Stan you may have to help me because I can’t remember if it was December or January. Stan asked Josh Williams a great question about an elementary school tear down and rebuild. They are using the 900 people prototype but this school is going to be built on 1200. Josh Williams tells Stan that the hallways all the common spaces are built at a 1200 student capacity when they build the 900 school footprint. When they increase the enrollment to 1200 they just at 150 additional seats on each side of the school in pods. That makes total sense.
Then Stan asks well what do you do when you go to 2500 if you listen very carefully on the video tape replay you hear Dr. Green say we build a new school. My question is why is he not doing it?
Does anyone understand why DCSD decided to build a brand new 2500 seat Cross Keys High School “at the Briarcliff site or a cost-neutral site,” rather than expanding the current Cross Keys High School building?
According to the DCSD website, the Cross Keys property is over 26 acres in size, while the Briarcliff site is less than 18 acres in size. Even if they included the elementary school property adjacent to the Briarcliff site, the total would be less than 22 acres.
That would be a mega-high school in a high-traffic location on an undersized campus. That seems to fit the trend, if you look at the Lakeside and Chamblee additions, but it doesn’t mean that it is wise.
Seems to me that it would be a lot easier to build a 1200 seat middle school at the Briarcliff site and expand and update the current CKHS facility. Less parking would be needed for a middle school at Briarcliff because middle school students don’t drive (at least we hope they aren’t old enough to do so….), so that would put less stress on neighborhood roads.
But perhaps it was more important to build a shiny new high school, even if it might require squeezing it onto the Briarcliff site that is less than half of what Georgia DOE recommends for a mega-high school or buying Buford Highway apartment complexes that will evict hundreds of DCSD students.
I feel like I am living in an alternate universe. DCSD decisions defy common sense so often.
Kirk, DCSD used to own property on Oak Grove Rd adjacent to LHS and sold it to a developer. Stan, I’m surprised no one mentioned that the plan to balance Lakeside racially includes busing students to Cross Keys which is illegal.
The community members were not given information or opportunity to comment on the plans for the LHS addition. Altering the green space will have a neagative effect on the protected land that is part of the Peachtree Creek system as well as roads, traffic, and private homes in the area.
They never planned to build a high school at the Briarcliff site. That was a talking point crafted to obscure the fact the district wants to sell it, or do a land swap. The new high school is going onto one of the older apartment complexes on Buford Highway.
Geez. When are you people going to stop believing what the administration tells you? Remember Dr. Green saying he was going to get the buses to run on time? Or, how about the promise to reduce the number of trailers in the district, when it continues to go up? Never accept what is said at face value.
Is it true that DCSD will start verifying students’ address in an attempt to weed out students that live in Gwinnett county? I know several parents that bought cheap townhomes in DeKalb so they can lie about their real address and send their kids to Lakeside instead of Ghettocreek in GCPS.
DCSD adheres to residency requirements as dictated by state law. I believe all schools have always done residency checks upon registration. I’m not aware of any changes to that state law, district policy, or registration process.
Georgia Department of Education – Guidance for State Board of Education Rule – 160-5-1-.28 STUDENT ENROLLMENT AND WITHDRAWAL.
https://www.gadoe.org/External-Affairs-and-Policy/Policy/Documents/Guidance%20for%20Student%20Enrollment%20and%20Withdrawal%20Rule.pdf
The way I read it, the parent must provide proof of residency. I don’t see where they have to show proof that it is their primary residency. Granted, I’m not a lawyer.
The County is bending over backwards to kiss ass to the Hispanic community because they are scared to death of the lawsuit that has been threatened by Gokce et al. That’s why all the rest of us are suffering through this hell.
Chamblee Getting Screwed,
Can you possibly imagine the hell the students, teachers and families at Dresden, Cary Reynolds, Montgomery, or Woodward have been going through for years? You are complaining about discomforts that may happen.
Do you think for a moment the district would be able to put 27 trailers at Chamblee High without lawsuits being filed? The Hispanic community has been abused and neglected by the school district. Dr. Green is trying to do the right thing and you are complaining about, what? Some parents didn’t want attendance lines changed. The administration doesn’t want to upset parents throughout the county.
What alternative solution do you propose?
Stan, my son was not asked for proof of residency at LHS this year. Several students were not asked. We have had a child in the DeKalb County School system since 2001. This is the first time we did not provide proof of residency. I had a copy of our electric bill. Emails prior to Viking Visit Day indicated that I needed to bring proof of residency, but I was told it wasn’t necessary for my son. I asked Principal Bounds why and he referred me to Jim McMahan. Jim explained to me that Georgia state law only requires proof of recidency when you enter a school. So this only has to happen when you start at LHS as a freshman or move into the area. I still don’t understand why a principal of an overcrowded school wouldn’t continue to ask??? It was too late to make changes for this current school year. This is our last year in the DeKalb County School system. I don’t have the energy to pick up this battle, but it seems like an easy fix to require proof of residency for all students every year.
Kristi. Thanks for the heads up. I had no idea. I expect the schools in my area to require proof of residency every year. Mike San Fratello, LHS council chair, should be made aware. Mike can affect that change. Let me know if there is any resistance to that.
Kristi is correct. Most LHS students didn’t show proof. We brought it and then were told it was unnecessary. HMS and the feeders check everyone every year. LHS has never quite gotten residency checks implemented smoothly. Why they don’t do it like HMS which has been quite smooth and easy is anyone’s guess. School council has tried in the past unsuccessfully to get the school to consistently check residency and enforce it. Given the “law” and Jim’s response, this means a student can attend a month as a freshman, move to Gwinnett and stay at LHS all 4 years. No one would know because LHS rarely mails anything home to get returned mail…even though they collect about $6/yr for mailing fees. If Jim represented the best interests of LHS, he would work to make sure that the academic experience of the kids that live in the attendance area aren’t compromised by the school/district policies/procedures that allow overcrowding (loose residency checks, the district’s “special permission assignments” which aren’t supposed to happen if a school is above capacity, etc). These provide a less than satisfactory experience for those rightfully attending. DCSD office of student assignment continually violates Board policy in their special permissions.
Talk to the new chair over at LHS. Let’s see what the council wants to do and we’ll go from there.
I emailed the Region 1 superintendent, along with Bell and Williams about the Stem High Schools Fulton County is building. I’m sure it will fall on deaf ears, but I think the concept would have been a viable solution to add more space without additions or redistricting. From neighbornewsonline.com –
Updated
This article was updated Aug. 18 at 4:38 p.m. with information on the Fulton County Schools’ plans for a south Fulton STEM campus.
An artist’s rendering shows the front of Fulton County Schools’ planned science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-
focused high school campus, which will be on the former site of Milton High near downtown Alpharetta.
1/26/2018 A new STEM high school is coming to Alpharetta | NeighborNewsOnline.com | Suburban Atlanta’s Local News Source | mdjonline.com
http://www.mdjonline.com/neighbor_newspapers/a-new-stem-high-school-is-coming-to-alpharetta/article_11cbb8c4-8447-11e7-a6fc-2fc30e3795fc.html 2/3
Fulton County Schools is getting a new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-focused high school campus set for north
Fulton.
“These are some of the fastest growing academic fields in the world,” district Chief Operating Officer Patrick Burke said of STEM
studies. “STEM-related jobs account for many of the new jobs being created in the workforce.”
At its meeting Aug. 17 at Asa G. Hilliard Elementary School in East Point, the Fulton County Board of Education approved by a 7-0 vote
the building and site plans the new campus. According to district spokesperson Susan Hale, the STEM campus is open to all north
Fulton high school students and will be located on the former site of Milton High near downtown Alpharetta.
Hale said estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal jobs related to STEM “would grow by more than nine million
nationwide by 2022.”
Anticipated to open in 2020, the school will host college- and career-focused curriculum pathways in a newly constructed school.
According to Hale, these plans were presented to the school board at its Aug. 10 work session before being approved.
Those plans show an organization of three structure wings for the programs of healthcare sciences, engineering and information
technology. The healthcare sciences and information technology wings, three stories each, will flank the main entry to the facility, while
a one-story engineering wing allows for larger laboratories to have direct access to outdoor classroom space. In addition, there would be
acoustical separation from the rest of the building structure.
Burke said each of the three program spaces is situated around what he termed a “touchdown space.”
“This will create a high-energy environment where STEM students can see and be seen in the act of learning,” he said.
Ground-floor spaces will include the career and counseling center, a food court, administration areas and active learning classrooms.
“The cafeteria, on the first floor, and media center, spread across three floors, will be housed in a combined touchdown space that
increases space utilization, flexibility and collaboration in a 21st-century learning environment,” Burke said.
“The school also has safety elements in place, such as clear visitor/student drop-off areas, student parking and a dedicated bus lane,”
Hale said.
It also reflects the community’s desire to have access to the facility by proving a separate auditorium building for after hours and
weekends.
“The innovative design of the campus is the result of many months of engagement with district and school leaders, parents, business
and community members, Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and partners in higher education,” Burke said.
Hale said the district plans to build a similar STEM campus in south Fulton but is still working out ideas on its visioning, programs and location.
If they built a school choice high school in Doraville, they would have to open it up to everyone. It would drain even more students from South DeKalb where they are struggling to put high school classes together already. And building a new high school is more expensive.
Could they convert one of the traditional high schools in South Dekalb to a Stem High School as well? What are the district’s thoughts on how to stop the drain and fill all the empty seats?
There are all kinds of magnets in charters in South DeKalb already. The high achievers magnet tells the story. Southwest DeKalb is the South DeKalb high achievers magnet. Like Chamblee Charter HS in the north it has an attendance zone as well as students who choose to go there. However it is at 65% capacity while Chamblee Charter HS has a waiting list a mile long to get in to. Furthermore, the other high schools in South DeKalb complain that Arabia Mtn and SW DeKalb: 1) Take students away from their regular schools and 2) Take the good students making it difficult to raise their aggregate standardized testing scores.
Magnet schools for high achievers
DeKalb County operates six magnet schools for high achievers:
Kittredge Magnet School
Wadsworth Magnet School
Chamblee Middle School
Chapel Hill Middle School
Chamblee Charter High School
Southwest DeKalb High School
Magnet schools of the arts
DeKalb Elementary School of the Arts
DeKalb School of the Arts
Other magnet schools
Clifton Elementary School – math, science and computer education
Evansdale Elementary School – math, science and French
Columbia Middle School – math, science and technology
Arabia Mountain High School – environment, energy and engineering
Columbia High School – math, science and technology
Kirk,
Let’s not mix the issues here. I agree with you that the elementary schools in the Cross Keys cluster are terribly overcrowded and it is unconscionable that DCSD has ignored them for so long.
But I don’t see how that relates to DCSD’s ill-conceived plan to address HIGH SCHOOL overcrowding, which is what Lakeside and Chamblee parents are concerned about.
Dr. Green decided to build 2 new Cross Keys elementary schools, John Lewis ES in Brookhaven and the new Cross Keys North ES in Doraville. I don’t know of anyone from the Chamblee or Lakeside communities who opposes this.
But high school overcrowding is a totally separate issue. There were, and still are, other options besides cramming 750 more students onto the Lakeside campus and 600 more students onto the Chamblee and Dunwoody campuses.
Now, even the Cross Keys community is expressing concerns about an aspect of the DCSD plan to fix high school overcrowding. Several people spoke at the last BOE meeting, asking DCSD not to buy apartment complexes in Brookhaven to use as the site for the new 2500-seat Cross Keys HS.
But where else can they put a 2500 seat high school in Brookhaven? The Briarcliff site is less than 18 acres, which would be really,really small for a 2500 seat high school.
We need to demand that DCSD respond to these concerns. But, more likely, that DCSD steamroller will just keep on rolling until it has exhausted or squashed any of us who question the plan.
Stan,
Will there be any additional rooms for special education students?
Do you know how many special education students are being seved in the DeKalb School System?
Thank you
Just going to say that Southwest DeKalb, for example, has almost 700 empty seats… classrooms being used as storage, lounges, offices, etc. Some top to bottom redistricting could eliminate a lot of these issues…. although that isn’t going to happen because of politics.
Joy, Georgia DOE has a report for “Enrollment by Disability.” Based on October 2017 data, DCSD has 10,250 students with a disability, out of the 100,144 total students.
That means that about 10% of DCSD’s students are classified as having a disability.
The GaDOE report lists 17 types of disabilities. For DCSD, the biggest are
– Specific Learning Disability = 3764 students
– Autism Spectrum Disorder = 1512 students
– Other Health Impairment = 1287 students
– Significant Developmental Delay = 1083 students
– Speech Language Impairment = 855 students
– Mild Intellectual Disability = 633 students
– Emotional Behavioral Disorder = 540 students
– Moderate Intellectual Disability = 254 students
Hope this helps.
Do most of the sped kids go to online school and is that working or can their needs be met at Lakeside HS ? A recent study of ‘online’ schools revealed that students with learning disabilities were the weakest candidates for the online school format in both high school and college level.
Anon,
I was responding to Chamblee Getting Screwed. Not trying to mix the issues, just point out the district is addressing long standing injustices which would not have been allowed in Chamblee. Also, I have heard parents from Ashford Park say they won’t send their children to the new elementary school at Skyland if they are zoned into it. They may not oppose the school, but it won’t be good enough for their children.
I agree there are other options to address high school overcrowding. I have consistently said the district needs to do a comprehensive redistricting throughout the entire county. Another high school could be built in Doraville and a Doarville cluster formed. There are more options which have not been discussed publicly.
You can demand anything you like, but DeKalb County Schools administration is very good at ignoring all feedback and demands that don’t fit with what they have already decided they want to do.
The bottom line is the district is NOT making decisions based on what makes sense financially, or what is in the best interests of the students. They make decisions based on what is politically expedient. This shows the culture of the administration has not changed as Dr. Green had promised. Many, many good things are happening in classrooms, but the central office is still the rotten core of the apple.
Here is an interesting question…
If approximately 10% of students in DCSD have disabilities, what is the percent of students with disabilities at the magnet schools? Wouldn’t it be the same?
I haven’t calculated it for the current school year, but last year most were under 5%.
” If we could get some better people in planning, maybe we could get better solutions.” Now there’s a true statement right there.
FWIW, the Druid Hills (aka Briarcliff) property is actually quite large – esp if you factor in the land used for the stadium, which would negate the need for a track. There’s also the International School (formerly Kittredge magnet). And last time I was there, there were tennis courts, which of course were in horrible shape. It would make a terrific site for some kind of magnet-type/STEM school that could function as a small college-like campus. We really should do something for our truly best and brightest – the top 5% – they are floundering in our high schools.