For CSD's Sake, City Should Determine Viability of Annexation NOW
Decatur Metro | February 23, 2009If your interested in staying up to date on CSD’s reconfiguration efforts, there are two online resources I would recommend.
The first is Decatur edTV’s latest video about next steps in the reconfiguration process. The 10-minute report recaps the last Board of Ed meeting – where tons of parents turned out thanks to a poorly worded agenda item – and goes thru next steps. The other place to find next steps is CSD’s official “board-approved” reconfiguration next steps calendar. Coincidentally, the Reconfiguration Cmte meets this Tuesday and Wednesday where they will reexamine option costs.
I would also recommend checking out the Reconfiguration Committee’s Interim Report on this whole issue. Its 14 pages long and gives a good look inside the collective head of that committee: where they’re coming from, what’s they’re worried about, etc…
After looking through both these resources myself, I have a recommendation.
Threaded throughout the interim report and the edTV video are worries of annexation. You hear things like “Yes, the city has pushed off a decision for two years, but we [CSD] are still worried. We don’t want to reconfigure now and then in two years have to reconfigure again because of annexation. Its just too costly and wasteful.” Understood. This seems to be a big reason for supporting a 4/5 building at Renfroe over reopening Westchester.
But as far as I know, we still don’t know if annexation is even profitable for the city. And though some will tell you that the city put off the decision based on strong vocal opposition, I still believe the real reason the effort was tabled is because the student enrollment costs were exceeding projected revenues once the data was corrected.
Therefore, even if the city commission doesn’t want to pursue a wide-spread annexation for two years, they must do CSD a favor and determine NOW whether any annexation options are fiscally possible. I know the 2000 census data is getting a little old at this point, but the Reconfiguration Committee should have a better idea of whether they should plan for a possible annexation or whether the option is really off the table for the foreseeable future. Yes, there are other reconfiguration considerations about where to put the administration if Westchester is reopened and the benefits of using SPLOST money in building a Renfroe “addition”, but annexation still seems to be a big part of the discussion.
The residents of this city must encourage CSD and the city commission to work together on resolving this issue in pragmatic steps. We must ask the city commission to reevaluate annexation now, so the school system can prepare for the future. As was agreed upon in the last Reconfiguration Committee meeting (prior to the annexation tabling), if CSD were to put off a reconfiguration decision for a year – and all parents agreed to stop complaining about trailers while we figure this thing out – the city manager and her staff would have ample time to reevaluate the student enrollment/revenue annexation data. Then CSD could make a decision based on a more solid understanding of our city’s future growth potential.
Though the ultimate decision about reconfiguration will never be easy, fullproof, or devoid of emotion, we should take this opportunity to mizimize this one big unknown, so the Reconfiguration Committee can make its decision knowing whether annexation is looming over the horizon or not.
What about a 7th/8th academy in the new space at Renfroe? Keep the 4th, 5th and 6th graders together. Maybe that would reassure those who seem so worried about older kids being around younger kids?
But where would you put those 4/5/6? Still the same problem.
I wasn’t involved in the blow up about redistricting back 5 years-ago, but I understand CSD’s concern back then about making decisions based on anecdotal evidence (ie. the “Oakhurst was a baby factory” argument). But after reading the concerns of the reconfiguration cmte, I’m really concerned we might be planning for a huge explosion of students that never happens. If annexation doesn’t occur, and the economy slows the number of families moving into the city, then we’ll have a huge 4/5 gateway building and a bunch of well below capacity K-3s.
Determining the fiscal viability of annexation now, would take one of many unknowns off the table now for CSD. If its determined it can work, CSD should probably prepare for even more students. If not, then we aren’t building unnecessarily. And all the city and school would have to do is push-up the execution of something it sounded like they were already going to do.
Renfroe needs a rehaul, but does it need a whole ‘nuther building for a program (4, 5, 6) that many parents don’t want? Don’t think this is the answer. I’m with you DM, the city needs to figure out if we’re in for an explosion, aka annexation, or just a little smoke. We need ACCURATE numbers, not based on spec. And we need to slow down on the building phase, since I think our ability to pay out is shrinking right now
I really appreciated reading the interim report. It shed a lot of light on all the different angles for me, and I hope that everyone reads it. But I’m just amazed that all of this has gone on under our noses for the past few months and so few people have been involved. No wonder there was such a backlash at that meeting in January. I can’t believe the people on the reconfig cmte didn’t expect that when they try to figure out how to reconfigure the school system without the input of most of the community, they were going to get reamed. This is a huge deal. It is going to take a lot of time and a lot of heads to make it work.
At ASC, we recently opened up an email “hotline” for members of the ASC community to send in their ideas for how to save money/be more sustainable around campus. I think Pres. Kiss and others have been very pleasantly surprised at not just the number of ideas that have come in, but also the quality of the ideas. They are already implementing some of the ideas. Maybe some kind of email “hotline” would be a good idea for CSD to get input from community. If you ask people for ideas, they’ll start really thinking about it instead of just lashing out. And they’ll definitely feel like they’re a part of the solution.
DM: I’ve been mulling over your suggestion that the city commission needs to go ahead and decide on annexation now for the sake of CSD. It’s a very reasonable suggestion, for the reasons you mention. CSD is undertaking their second major reconfiguration in five years and it’s just not practical for anyone to suggest they then absorb a far bigger shock to the system of a 30-50% increase in enrollment.
The trouble with the idea that the commission makes its decision now, I think, is summed up by your statement that we still don’t know if annexation is even profitable, given that we still don’t have a handle on the crucial variable of the student count. To be serious about considering annexation, we would need (among other things) to conduct a new, state-of-the-art demographic analysis. That analysis would have to broken down area by area. It would have to take into account, not only the current population, but projected in-migration resulting from annexation. It would have to take into account those areas that are liable to see new residential development — such as the old DeVry campus, already being rezoned as mixed use, as well as Suburban Plaza and others. I assume that to do such a study right, we would need 2010 census numbers to start with, which won’t be available until 2011. The projections would need to be sophisticated in order to get at age distribution, so CSD could think about how it would handle the numbers grade by grade and school by school. It’s a huge undertaking, and we’re nowhere near being in a position to do this.
I’ll add that this should also be funded by the city (it’s their agenda), but handled by the schools. And, unlike in the City Report on Annexation, the schools would need to handle all of their own financial projections based on those numbers.
So if the city commission were to decide right now, it’s decision would have to be no. I don’t think it will surprise you to hear that I would find that a huge relief. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that decision to be made any time soon for the sake of the our public schools.
Thanks Judd. I was hoping you’d chime in on this.
Personally, I’d just like someone to explain to me how annexation COULD be fiscally profitable at this point. All evidence presented thus far has been debunked because the maps didn’t match the data. I’d just like to see the pie-in-the-sky projections that show me that with x% of annexed commercial property and x number of students, annexation would be profitable. Right now, we don’t even have that.
If CSD is worried about annexation, I believe the burden of proof is now on the city and its commissioners to show that their solution to our high taxes is even feasible. They’ve freely said they have been talking about annexation for years…and though they haven’t legally done anything but talked about it yet, there are still repercussions to simply talking.
If they’re going to keep talking about annexation then they need to show the general public at least how it would work out for us. Give us the best-case scenario. Then at least everyone can look at the numbers and come to their own conclusions.
Even though its not the detailed demographic study that you mention above, just having some sort of idea is better than the bogeyman of the unknown that sounds like its spooking the reconfiguration committee into building a potentially unnecessary building.
And just one more thing to back up this suggestion philosophically. If we’re going to talk about being a “green” city, it is imperative that we continue to act like one. Allowing CSD to build a massive building that goes largely unused, because the commission is “talking” about annexation, would be a serious waste of energy…both to build and maintain.
This is where good communication helps solve a problem, at least temporarily. Does the city commission know that CSD is considering this expansion because of its annexation talk? Do they feel at all responsible to do something about it? Because inadvertently…they are a big part of the cause.