Decatur Enrollment Up 10% From Last Year
Decatur Metro | July 30, 2012 | 1:22 pmCBS Atlanta 46
Last week, CBSAtlanta ran a piece on City Schools of Decatur’s growing enrollment. And Patch reports that as of today, 3,584 students are enrolled for the coming school year. Now breakdown by year has been given yet, but that total number of students is only 46 below the “aggressive” projection provided by the enrollment committee earlier this year.
In the CBSAtlanta video, Dr. Edwards says that she’ll soon be speaking with the city to see what can be done to accommodate enrollment in the coming years.
Interesting, but that wasn’t the most important thing on the minds of parents over the weekend.
The question we were all asking was, “who is my son’s/daughter’s teacher?” And of course, the corollary to that question, “who does so-and-so’s son/daughter have?”
It’s actually pretty funny…all the parents (slightly) obsessing who will be teaching their children this year, and the kids ignoring it all in order to jump in the Glenlake pool or grab another popsicle.
The Tokens are looking forward to another great year in CSD schools. Oh, and we are VERY happy with our teacher assignments
They’ll be more interested if class sizes have gone up. Above a certain level, there’s only so much differentiated teaching that even a great teacher can do.
Thanks for the lecture, but I was really just making light of an amusing situation. I fully realize the parents are interested in much more than which teacher their child gets.
Oh, actually many newer parents focus on the wrong stuff. If you have four great teacher choices for Grade X in a particular elementary school, it really doesn’t matter if you get superstar teacher A or excellent teachers B, C, or D but parents will spend all sorts of psychic energy hoping for A and then either being happy or disappointeed. Ditto for windows, location, trailer vs. classroom, rug. Meanwhile, it makes a whole lot of difference what the class size is and how much paraprofessional or student teacher support is in the classroom–one FTE, 1/2 FTE, less (1/3 or 1/4 FTE is functionally of little value academically but is nice for the photocopying.). Also whether all kids who need an IEP have them, classroom control, teacher morale.
Sigh
My thoughts exactly, nelliebelle1197! (although I added a fingers crossed that DTR was back to stay, and we wouldn’t *again* be deprived of his wry and gentle (a)musings.)
Token – I lol’d at your post as all phone and email capable devices in our home blew up over the weekend as the friends all received their cards. In our case it was the kids clamoring to find out where they had been scattered, which meant, come pool party time they were content to play while the grownups hashed out their version of the same game 😉
Wait until middle school when there’s multiple teachers and elective choices plus preteen hormones and cell phones involved…………!
Interesting Comment (from DTR). My own experience was that kids, especially in high school, wanted to know if good friends were in their classes and even more important, who was in their lunch period.
One more thing, you are not alone in this town. Conservatives are not, nor will we ever be a “Silent Majority” in Decatur, but our numbers are growing.
Have a great school year!
My first reply was to the Token. Not quite sure how the edit feature works.
Two things:
1. If we’re within 46 of the aggressive projection, and we know that ATL and DeKalb school refugees have made for some aggressive growth in enrollments, that would indicate that the enrollment committee did a bang up job, correct? Kudos!
2. Threadjack: I have a rising eighth grader who has “JROTC” on her schedule. What’s the nature of that? I’m all for civics and all, and I want my kid to grow up to be a fine ‘merkin, but also want to make sure I can provide any necessary balance at home, just in case the jingoism gets a bit out of hand. Anyone been through it?
1. We’re probably even closer to the upper limit of the projection than within 46 students because school doesn’t start for two more days. With a start date of August 1, I’d expect some students to still be trickling in over the next two weeks.
2. Hmmm. I thought you had to sign up special for JrROTC, like Band or Chorus. Have you asked your daughter if she signed up? But maybe it’s changed and it’s an elective that can be assigned without a sign-up. I don’t know if the same guy is doing it as the one I met once, but I REALLY liked him.
This is a reply to Scott’s concern about JROTC. Your child will have outstanding teachers. One of my greatest pleasures over the past ten years was working with them in a variety of ways. But if you have major concerns about “jingoism”, I suggest you contact Colonel Johnny Richards for a conference.
I don’t have concerns. I’m trying to discover what the class is. As in, what do they teach in the 8th grade JROTC class?
FYI, your child’s teacher’s name is on the front of the yellow card you received in the mail.
I’ll be sure to look in the event that we ever get our postcard. 😛 I had to send my husband over to the school yesterday evening to check the class assignments posted on the door. I was feeling so left out!
Perhaps a naive question, but if we’re so overcrowded why are we still taking tuition students from outside the district?
I thought they put a moratorium on that a couple of weeks ago.
I’m assuming because there’s pockets of underenrollment in certain schools, certain grades, e.g. the newly opened Glennwood Elementary had space last year. But I don’t know what happens to those tuition kids if GE is busting this year. Enrollment is tricky because you can’t put a kindergartener in an underenrolled 3rd grade class just because there’s space there. That’s why, under the old, old configuration with only 2-3 classrooms per grade even in the biggest K-5 elementary schools, principals loved “multi-age” classrooms–they were easier logistically. But once the grade-specific CRCT came along, they didn’t work so well. It was hard to teach half the class for one set of standards and the other half for another set.
Tuition applications are only accepted in April, and the process has been closed out for this year. Returning tuition students were allowed to re-apply in the younger grades, but no new tuition students for grades k-5 were accepted (this was published on the CSD website in march)
Tuition students, even returning ones, are never guaranteed a space and, in the case of a high enrollment group, may have acceptance or denial held until the end of the summer as enrollments trickle in.
Not true. Friends of ours had their first-grader accepted for tuition about a month ago.
Their first grader will be dis-enrolled if new families moved in since they were accepted, or she will be moved to another school.
Class size was a real issue for our DHS student last year. He felt the teachers were forced to mainly focus on classroom management and test prep. I would add that it was his first year in public school after K-8 in private, so this is understandable. Bottom line, he was bored a lot.
Because of his experience, some teachers and parents have gotten together to create a an independent study/home-school initiative for high-schoolers. Certainly not for everyone, and very much an experiment. The point is… when it comes to learning, one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.
Here’s what we are doing: http://www.learningtribe.com
If enrollment is again up so much, why have I not been asked for proof of residency again this year? Historically we have been asked to show proof of residency for both our kids when entering 4th, 5th, 6th and 9th grade, but not this year when my kids are entering 8th and 10th. Why not? I think we as residents should expect to be asked to provide proof of residency every year that our children attend CSD. I am okay with my children sitting in full classes where everyone has paid to be there, but not when some get a free ride…. and why did CSD drop the tuition rate this year?
Tuition can not go higher than the actual per pupil cost the district spent in the previous school year. Districts have the option to charge less (and some, like Buford City do), but are bound by the maximum.
I own and pay taxes on one piece of property in the city. I live in a different property downtown. Not only did we have to provide proof of resdiency, the school district had my landlord verify that the lease was real (a signed lease and a power bill apparently not being enough). So if they didn’t check for you, it must have been an oversight.
Between two children, I’m verifying our residency every year even though the school system clearly knows that we are way too entrenched to ever leave. I cannot tell whether this is by protocol or if we are being picked on! But I dutifully shlepp in during the brief allotted times with the hardcopy documents in person. I never see anyone else there doing it. Who knows? I keep thinking that there’s got to be a better way but there’s bigger fish to fry.
Dr. Edwards: Have city annex old DeVry space, relocate corporate to there, reopen Westchester as neighborhood k-3, have 4-5 move into rest of DeVry, use 4/5 for 6-8 and Renfroe 6-8 and then back together for high school.
Solves a lot of problems. You get the neighborhood elementary schools, space for all of 4-5 to get together, space for two middle schools and one big happy family for high school/career academy.
While we’re at it, if there’s plenty of space at DeVry, could we make it 4/5/6? Then there’s plenty of space for the coming bulge of 7/8ers. Kids are still in the latency period at age 11, 6th grade–boys are still remembering to tie their shoes and the girls could use another year without boy craziness. No reason to rush adolescence.
DeVry already was annexed. At the property owner’s request.
So I guess all the residential annexation is off the table again.
Does anyone have tuition numbers?
That was one of my initial thoughts when I saw the post. If the schools are bursting at the seams, I don’t see how we can annex additional residential property.
I love the reporter’s tone of voice – deep concern bordering on alarm. All while reporting on what is essentially a success story.