Author Archives: Stan Jester

Gym Floor Space By High School

Dunwoody High School and Lakeside High School have some of the smallest gyms in the school district. How can we in good conscious pack our schools with students without providing them the proper facilities?

The building additions will ONLY include classroom, media center, kitchen, cafeteria and parking additions. Why does the school council at DHS welcome this? Dunwoody HS and Lakeside HS gyms can’t handle the number of students we have now.

One of the coaches at DHS characterized the current situation at the Kingsley meeting saying Dunwoody HS, with 2000+ students, is given the same resources as all the other high schools with less than 1000 students. We don’t have enough space for anything and what we do have is getting worn down much faster than the current maintenance cycle is providing for.

GYM FLOOR SPACE BY HIGH SCHOOL

GYM FLOOR SPACE
High School Region Gym Floor in SF Enrollment Capacity
Lakeside HS 2 10355 2111 1796
McNair, Ronald E. HS 7 10545 658 1594
Druid Hills HS 2 10584 1324 1405
Cross Keys HS 1 10647 1479 1286
Miller Grove HS 5 10700 1319 1830
Dunwoody HS 1 10944 2095 1509
Tucker HS 2 10961 1769 1747
Towers HS 6 11100 832 1299
Columbia HS 6 11200 961 1430
Clarkston HS 4 11286 1398 1209
Southwest DeKalb HS 5 11330 1175 1825
Cedar Grove HS 7 12084 1116 1247
Arabia Mountain HS 3 12768 1339 1582
Chamblee HS 1 13078 1722 1723
Lithonia HS 3 13098 1360 1416
Stephenson HS 3 13800 1438 2040
Martin Luther King, Jr. HS 5 14600 1535 2037
Redan HS 3 19153 998 1677

1,000 More Seats Are Coming to Dunwoody High School

Adjusting for the latest enrollment projections, the school district will now be adding 1,000 seats to Dunwoody High School (DHS). This is just insane … but it’s the plan.



Clear cutting to make room at Dunwoody High School

Dunwoody High School is a small pocket neighborhood school originally constructed in 1972 and additions to the main school building were constructed in 1973, 1975, and 2011. In 1988, DHS merged with another local high school, Peachtree High School. Peachtree became a middle school and Dunwoody remained as the high school. DHS campus is currently 29.4 acres.

The current capacity for DHS is 1,505 students, while actual enrollment is currently 2,100 students.

DeKalb County School District (DCSD) has updated the long-term enrollment forecasts for each school year from the Fall of 2019 through the Fall of 2025. While I believe the Dunwoody 7-Year Enrollment Forecasts to be woefully under estimated as usual, even with these conservative estimates, Dunwoody HS enrollment is expected to exceed 2,300 by 2021.

Dunwoody 7-Year Enrollment Forecasts

Over the last decade, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the school administration insists that enrollment is going to stop going up. In their forecast enrollment data modeling, DeKalb Schools is currently insisting that High Street will only be a total of 1,500 units.

Richard McLeod, Director of Community Development for the City of Dunwoody, state this week that

There are 3000 residantial untis approved for [High Street] to build. One half (1500) of them will be apartments and the other half (1500) will be condo … I have a meeting scheduled in April with the developers to discuss the plans. They state that they are going to break ground in October or November of 2019.

Over the last 4 weeks, I have sent numerous emails to the Superintendent and Interim Chief Operating Officer Dan Drake asking why they believe High Street will only be 1,500 units. I have not received any explanation yet. If High Street builds 3,000 units over the next few years, DHS is in trouble.

Current Forecasted Enrollment & Addition Size
FORECASTED ENROLLMENT ADDITION SIZE (SEATS)
MGT 2022 Forecast Updated 2025 Forecast Change Original Addition Recommended Addition
Dunwoody HS 2,093 2,337 244 600 1,000
Peachtree MS 1,686 1,513 -173 600 400
Chamblee Charter HS 2,378 2,120 -258 600 600
New Cross Keys HS 2,486 1,739 -747 2,500 2,200
New Cross Keys MS 1,450 1,205 -245 500 200
Lakeside HS 2,619 1,945 -674 750 400
Clarkston HS 2,060 1,510 -550 700 350
Freedom MS 1,630 1,134 -496 400 Cancelled
Dunwoody High School Can’t Handle 2,500+ Students

I’ve blogged ad nauseam how building additions are terrible for the community. The Dunwoody High School Council has pleaded with the board and administration to address the Overburdened Common Spaces.

The DHS band room is the basement dungeon, choir has no room. There will be no additions to most of the common spaces like the gym, locker rooms, fields, storage, or administrative offices. The adjustments to the cafeteria, kitchen and parking are laughable.

In addition to the obvious problems, let’s discuss the issues that aren’t as obvious. Twice as many students means twice as much traffic, twice as many buses lining up the street and around the block, twice as many teams with no space to play or practice, twice as much sewage, etc …