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Dekalb County School System (DCSS) Redistricting & Consolidation Plans
DCSS has floated the need to consolidate some schools in order to reduce the empty seats that are presently identified within the system. The figure of 11,000 plus has been used as the total number of unoccupied spaces. The thought is that, by redistricting schools that are under capacity, better capacity at some schools would be used, leaving some empty schools that could be closed (thus reducing the unneeded administrative, maintenance, operational overhead required to keep these schools open - theoretically, teaching positions would remain about the same). Here is a list of DeKalb County Schools with enrollments of 400 or less.
A Citizens Planning Task Force (CPTF) was created and met from 2/9/2010 to 4/16/2010. It was modeled along the lines of the Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF), a citizen led group that met in 2003-2004. The BRTF final report was published by the DCSS Board on 12/7/2004 (a Word copy of the published final report follows - most of the same ideas, with less data and fewer specific recommendations).
Here is a link to the DCSS web site where various options for school boundary lines can be found.
Here is text from and email that went out to Henderson/Lakeside Parents:
PTA leaders in the Lakeside community have studied the two redistricting options presented to the Board of Education and have created another option the community would like the BOE to consider. Below, you can read about this option and how you can act to support it.
Dear Henderson - Lakeside Community,Friday, Lakeside PTA leaders invited PTA leaders from schools that feed into Henderson and Lakeside to meet and address the school system's proposed redistricting for our schools. We are now asking for you to take action.
To bring you up to speed, here is a little background on the redistricting: There are 11,000 empty seats in schools across DeKalb County. In order to maximize capital and operational funding opportunities provided by the State of Georgia, the school system must address the empty seats. This can be done by closing or repurposing schools and/or by changing the boundaries of the attendance areas of the schools.
DeKalb County hired an outside consulting firm, MGT of America, to make recommendations about where schools should be closed and where lines should be redrawn. MGT did an educational adequacy survey of every school, held a series of meetings for the public to provide input, and gathered demographic data that was studied. They presented 2 proposals to the Board of Education on January 3rd. They can be found at this link.
For the Lakeside community, the proposal included moving attendance lines for most elementary schools, in some cases removing students from the Henderson-Lakeside district. It includes sending a percentage of students from Briarlake, Oak Grove and Sagamore, who now attend Henderson and Lakeside, to Druid Hills Middle (formerly Shamrock) and Druid Hills High. One option sends a portion of the Evansdale community to Livsey.
Now it is time for the public to comment on the proposed changes.At Friday's meeting, the PTA leadership of the schools in the Lakeside cluster unanimously agreed that, at a minimum, we want to preserve the Henderson-Lakeside school district as it exists today. Data shows that when construction is complete at Lakeside, there will be seats for every high school student in the attendance area. Therefore, we do not see a need to remove students from our feeder pattern as the options now suggest. We understand that the attendance lines of some of the elementary schools within our feeder pattern may need to change to avoid overcrowding, to adequately use the existing buildings and to qualify for maximum state funding. We are willing to do that to keep Lakeside's entire existing attendance area in place.The Lakeside community believes the Board of Education will make the best, most economically responsible, decision about the location and number of magnet programs within the county. We hope to focus the Board of Education's attention on our recommendations to help them best configure the Henderson-Lakeside community for maximum fiscal responsibility.
Here are the Comments on the Proposed Redistricting 2011 Plan from the Lakeside High School feeder community
This was sent out by the Principal at Hawthorne Elementary School:
Dear Parents:
I know you have received several notices on the public input meetings that are happening right now on the Dekalb School System’s redistricting and consolidation plan. If you are unable to make one of the public meetings, please use the following web address/link to provide your input: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/redistricting.
Parents who attend a meeting may also complete this online survey to clarify or emphasize any points that were raised.
Up until the Interim-Superintendent makes her recommendation, anything and everything is up for discussion. All stakeholders have until the end of January to give feedback and make suggestions on a variety of options.
Once a recommendation is made, there is the month of February to give feedback and make suggestions on the specifics of the recommendation. |
