School Board Votes "No" on Annexation
Decatur Metro | December 10, 2008As reported by the AJC, the detailed by Judd Owen in a recent comment, last night the Decatur school board voted with the Superintendent in opposing annexation.
Actually its a little more nuanced than that according to Judd…
“The board voted tonight on the three options presented by the City’s report, which were 1) no annexation, 2) annex the three areas north of the tracks only, 3) annex all six areas. They voted a firm no on option 3, but were split on 1 and 2. The split seemed to be in large part because the data on how many students would come in from those areas was so murky and contradictory. Even among board members relatively open to annexation, there was a strong sense that we do not have a clear view of exactly what we’d be getting into with annexation.”
About what I expected. Regardless of any personal concerns about gain or loss, we can’t go around making unalterable decisions without valid backup data. Because of the discrepancies recently brought to light by Judd and Pat, this issue now seems to be going before the commission half-baked. If they voted in favor, the commission would be supporting an annexation plan that included disputed data.
If I was a commissioner, I’d be very wary of voting on anything before all that student enrollment data was recalculated to match the current version of the map.
But apparently, we’re going forward anyway. That, in itself, hints at the outcome.