Decatur Schools Redistricting Meeting Tonight
Decatur Metro | November 3, 2010 | 1:58 pmJust a note: Don’t forget tonight’s K-3 redistricting meeting at Westchester, which starts with an information session at 6pm and a public hearing at 7pm.
There’s obviously been a lot of talk about this issue over the last few weeks and CSD has been good enough to provide additional data and maps at the request of residents on multiple occasions.
So I thought a thread today could serve two purposes:
First, prior to the meeting, we could all recap our outstanding questions and concerns, since the conversation has evolved over the past few weeks. Then, after tonight’s meeting, you can use this post to reflect on the meeting (what you took away from it, your outstanding questions, etc.) and detail what you believe still needs to be reviewed/explained prior to a vote by the School Board.
Biggest concerns:
- That this process not be divisive like last time, pitting community or school vs other community or school or one side of Decatur vs the other
- That the discussions and decisions be transparent with no unannounced meetings or private emails playing a role
- That the needs of all children be considered, regardless of the income, race/ethnicity, religion, neighborhood, and social or political connections of their families
Factors also to be considered, as has been stated on other threads:
1. Walkability, respect for natural neighborhood lines
2. Diversity across all schools, in terms of income and race/ethnicity
3. Decent classroom sizes at all schools
4. Avoiding crowding at all schools
5. Whether trailers for students will be necessary
6. Impact of continued student population growth, if it should occur
7. Impact of where preK classrooms go
Earlier, I had “impact of annexation” on my list but I have taken it off because I have been convinced that annexation will not be completed in the next two years and a lot could change between now and whenever annexation would actually impact the schools.
Oh and…..
8. No parking on the lawn at Westchester. All announcements of meetings at Westchester should be accompanied by a diagram of how to park on side streets and walk if the parking lot is full.
Based upon just my personal observations and with no data at hand, I think achieving both 1 and 2 may be challenging. Aren’t most of the neighborhoods in the city fairly homogenous in terms of ethnicity? For example, the Great Lakes seems to be mostly white and Ebster seems to be mostly black.
If this is indeed the case (and remember, these are just my personal observations – I’m happy to be proved wrong with actual data), then trying to achieve diversity in schools may force some to go to a school that is not walkable. And the reverse would be true; trying to make schools walkable may reduce the possibility for diversity.
Good point. What’s the community priority then? Or can it just be a compromise?
That’s a great point. I think many people who have worked through this data, both formally and informally, have probably realized that, but I think it’s a good reminder at this particular point in time.
As I said down below, it’s not just the diversity goals that put walkability at risk – trying to balance overall populations to avoid over- and under-crowding does this as well.
Anyone recall my post from February 2009 entitled “For CSD’s Sake, City Should Determine Viability of Annexation NOW“?
All of my observations and opinions about why the city should have determined the viability of annexation THEN still stand now. The chickens are coming home to roost. Unless of course, the city is planning another annexation attempt and I just don’t know anything about it. But last I heard, pure single-family residential annexation – which is what would occur near Winnona – did not help the city’s budget.
That’s exactly what I heard too.
Thank you for #8. Was starting to feel like the Lorax.
I hope #8 will be a problem tonight! I always show up early to these meetings thinking there will be nowhere to park, and am proven wrong. I hope I’ll have to park a mile away tonight!
Don’t forget to pay attention to the assumptions made by CSD and Ga. State when developing these maps. They can be found in the Power Point presentation. I often think it would save a lot of time if Central Office would discuss their “assumptions” with the community prior to spending months developing maps, etc. based upon assumptions which often end up being successfully challenged by the community.
This one bothers me:
Assumption 5 assumes that Clairemont, Oakhurst and Winnona could all have an equal enrollment of 330 students and Glennwood could have 264 students.
None of the maps have Winnona at 330 and yet they have Oakhurst and/ or Clairemont have populations well into the 300′s and over 330; yet both facilities have far less space available for the children.
Maps 1-4 and 7-8 Winnona has 284 students
Map 5 223 students
Map 6 307 students
The most important school experience happens after the kids and parents walk, ride, bus or jump rope to school. There are plenty of studies that indicate the importance of not overcrowding schools, allowing adequate space for PE, etc.
I also don’t understand why the Winnona border never crosses the tracks when the east side of town actually has an underpass for the train! I’m really not trying to pick on Winnona. It’s a great school. I just don’t think the facility is being put to maximum use for our current community in any of these maps because of CSD’s assumptions about future annexation.
One of the issues is that under the plans (at least plans #1-7) the trailers that are currently on the upper playground directly behind Glennwood will remain to house Pre-K classrooms. This doesn’t seem like the best use of space to me. I was under the impression (and hopeful) that the redistricting would allow for removal of the trailers from Glennwood.
Nola, you do appear to be obsessed with Winnona.
My understanding is that the pops at Oakhurst and Clairemont are slightly higher because the idea is that Westchester may very likely be opening in 2012 as a school. As a parent in a family that could face three transfers in three years if this isn’t done right, I’m OK with Winnona having a somewhat lower number of kids for a year.
Actually I keep wondering about Winnona Park too. Since it has relatively low enrollment given its size, why isn’t it keeping the Swanton Heights kids? Keeping Swanton Heights at Winnona Park isn’t even in Option 8. Is there something that CSD folks know about the liklihood of annexation happening soon that some of us don’t know yet?
I’m going to try to find this out. I’m also interested.
I am not aware of specific plans for annexation.
Regarding Swanton Heights, as mentioned tonight, the real challenges are about (1) the natural/man-made boundaries on the north side of WP and the west side of GL and (2) placement of CL and GL.
(1) If GL could extend further east, that gets too close to CL. So, more students needed to be found to attend GL: only choices are to dig south past College into WP land or dip into the Housing Authority and have more children from that area attend GL.
If WP could extend further east of McDonough, WP could be bigger but that is problematic with Oakhurst. So, what about Swanton Heights heading to WP? Then GL becomes too small.
(2) CL and GL are just very close to each other. This feature causes many of the decisions that follow.
Please give specific examples to support the statement “WP could be bigger bu that is problematic with Oakhurst. “
very simply put – if any line drawn between WP and OA was moved further west, more students would go to WP.
Clearly, more kids will go to Winnona Park if you move the line toward the west. My question was please explain why csd considers this particularly problematic for Oakhurst.
Because it redistricts kids from a school that is 2 blocks away to one that is 1.5 miles away. It encroaches the WP district too far on what is logically and obviously Oakhurst turf.
So, this is a turf war, uh?
“CL and GL are just very close to each other”: Sure wish there was a way to pick up the wonderful building, staff, and community at Clairemont and move them a mile west!
Thomas said in the meeting tonight that reopening Westchester in 2012 is very unlikely based on their current projections. There is a nice slide that justifies not opening Westchester that has been available o CSD website for a couple of weeks. That is why i don’t really go for the keep Oakhurst and Clairemont large rationale. It is not looking like a short term scenario.
presentation tonight: http://www.csdecatur.net/schoolzones/K-3%20enrollment%20zones%20options/public%20information%20session%2011.03.10.pptx?Templates=RWD&printversion=4
slides 16-18 may be nola’s referent.
+10
(+5 for posting at 4:57 AM – that’s commitment. An additional +5 for excellent use of the word ‘referent’.)
Are we playing Dungeons and Dragons?
Afraid I don’t know what you’re referent to.
Thomas,
Last night you presented some additional power point slides which were quite helpful. Can you please add these slides to the csd website, powerpoint link. I specifically remember a slide which listed maps 1-8 and noted the housing authority zoning location per map. It would be helpful to add the current school zone for each of the housing authority communities. In addition, adding a current school zone map to your list of maps 1-8 would be very helpful.
Thanks.
the link to last night’s presentation has the slides that you are referring to (or – your referent). ha.
a map of the current enrollment zones is located on the “file” website (go to csdecatur.net, click on enrollment zones, click on the last link).
Map 8 appears to be gaining ground as the favorite after this evening. My sense is that the contenders are four, seven and eight, but both four and seven would still require one trailer. Map 4 has one trailer at Clairemont and Map 7 has one at Oakhurst (?). Map 8 projects no trailer needs for K-3. Keep in mind that all of the maps are based on a max of 22 instead of 20 in a kindergarten classroom.
There was relatively low turnout tonight for the comment session, which was disappointing. The next meeting is November 16. I strongly urge people to come out and be heard. The main comments tonight involved support for map 8 with continued pressure for better data and skepticism that the staff have the projected growth numbers right.
The Board’s agenda for its next regular meeting also includes an action item for where to place the three pre-k classrooms currently in trailers at College Heights. Opening Westchester does not seem likely because the staff project no additional growth/classrooms needed for 2012-13 and therefore only need three classrooms for pre-K and possibly one for k-3.
Lastly, people have also started asking questions about space at Renfroe and DHS and whether those facilities will be able to accomodate our current K-3 enrollment in 10 years.
“relatively low” – the Professional Learning Center was full and 20 people stood. I posit that 100-110 people at that session showed interest! Glad those folks were able to come to learn and questions together.
“skepticism” in my mind meant that some members of the community are now searching for even better sources of data for us to predict the numbers of our youngest children. We would be glad to hear about these sources and their reliability.
A few folks mentioned an idea about going door to door and gathering data about number of children and ages – if the community wanted to organize that effort and submit the results, CSD would be quite pleased! That data method certainly has not been tried due to us diligently working to educate your children every day.
I would imagine that this could be done in some areas fairly easily. I’m one of the folks that doesn’t like map 8 because it splits the two streets in Rosewalk in two. I can tell you that there are 14 kids in the entire neighborhood that are not yet 4 and wouldn’t count in your estimates for 2012 and beyond, with at least two more three more being born in 2011. I know it would be difficult to plan for beyond 2011, but by gauging the strollers around town, we’ll have this challenge for quite a few years.
Could the consultants handle this? Would the City be willing to send something out, like a survey? Somehow their mailing lists manage to get tax bills and the Decatur Focus to all of us.
The only way to get a representative sample in a survey is to guarantee that the entire population take it. Or to do a completely random sample and then apply it across the entire population. But again, everyone would have to take it.
Re turnout for comment session: If folks want to have the most impact with their comments, they should make them both places–on-line to CSD admin AND to the Board. Those are two separate venues with two separate audiences. I’m not even sure that all the on-line map-specific comments are seen verbatim by the Board. They may be filtered and summarized, which is fine, but always subjective.
Re RMS and DHS: I have never heard concerns that these two facilities will be unable to accomodate the student population bulge coming up but that doesn’t mean anything. Has anyone heard that they could have crowding issues? Would the current tuition student slots be adequate to absorb the resident student bulge if necessary?
the Board will have access to all the comments, as well as an executive summary.
I highly encourage anyone with an interest in this to make it to one of the information sessions – a ton of the questions and concerns that have been brought up here on Decatur Metro and in offline conversations are directly addressed by Dr. Van Soelen’s presentation. I think most people’s skepticism or fear of the process is greatly diminished by seeing first-hand how much effort and thinking has gone into this already.
As for the discussion about Winnona Park’s numbers, the basic issue is a tension between geography and population. Winnona Park’s neighborhood is physically less dense than others, and has fewer k-3 children per square foot. So despite having the largest physical district, it doesn’t have the numbers that Oakhurst and the others have.
The problem with expanding the WP district any further is that it starts to grab kids who are a block or two from Oakhurst or Glennwood Elementary and send them 1.5 miles away to WP. This conflicts with the walkability and neighborhood preservation goals of the reconfiguration. It can certainly be done, but the families affected by this would have legitimate problems with it.
Regarding the expansion of WP district and walkability, this is already the case in all but one map.
We live on McKoy St. and one side of the street is Oakhurst (easily walkable at .6 miles) and the other is WP (not all all walkable due to traffic and 1.3 miles). Our street is tiny and neighborhood-like (vs. a McDonough, Candler or E. Lake).
Seems to be the Oakhurst neighborhood preservation is lost to the West side of our little Oakhurst street. And indeed, we do have legitimate problems with it.
If Swanton Heights stayed at Winnona Park, would that allow the Winnona Park/Oakhurst Elementary borders to shift a bit so that Oakhurst residents could attend Oakhurst Elementary?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Swanton Heights 1.3 miles from Winnona Park? So how come those of us with the privilege of not living in public housing get to make walkability a priority, but those of us in Swanton Heights can be districted willy-nilly (because we are a parcel, not human beings) to whatever school makes it even so that we can all feel good about our diverse schools?
This is difficult to say, and I’ve gone back and forth about it quite a lot, but at some point we have to stop districting based on actual people living in actual locations at this exact moment (since that could change from one moment to the next) and draw some physical boundaries and be done with it. If that means we at Glennwood have more FRL or “non-white” or whatever students, then we hire extra help at that school and we embrace them like we did 6 years ago when our school was almost exactly 50/50 white/black. Don’t forget that Glennwood was a school of excellence in 2004 despite that racial make-up–we were doing a GREAT job at that school and were on our way up before having everything pulled out from under us. That’s why my family chose Glennwood in the first place, because of the real diversity there.
Neighborhoods and demographics are going to change drastically in coming years, esp. in this economy. We can’t district individuals based on where they are right now. We have no way of predicting where they’ll be next week.
Just saw the slide mentioning McKoy street from presentation last night. Since a mere 4 students are affected, we on McKoy would love to be able to attend and walk to our neighborhood school.
Crossing guards at McDonough and S. Candler make WP easily walkable for Oakhurst residents because scores of kids go through there everyday on their way to RMS or DHS. Those crossing guards have traffic at their command.
It’s a far easier and safer walk than my house to Winnona Park, at two miles away and crossing E. College and the railroad tracks, a reality to which I’ve been consigned since 2004 and the last reconfiguration. Spare me!
That was a reply to Shannon O’Daniel above! Sorry that wasn’t clear.
But Swanton Heights already goes to Winnona Park. That seems like a no-brainer to me, to keep Swanton Heights at Winnona Park. I realize that that makes Glennwood awfully small but that’s just a consequence of the schools that CSD decided to leave open in 2004. There’s going to be some awkwardness because there’s no school in one quadrant of Decatur.
A few thoughts about the meeting (of course all of this is IMHO)
• I was really impressed with the informational session; the information presented was thorough, thoughtful and gave me much comfort that a LOT of thought and reason has been put into this process. So much of the “boards” and chatter has been they haven’t considered this or that aren’t even thinking about xyz… and I took away that yes most had been considered and they are thinking about xyz…
• I LOVE that 8 is a new option for a couple reasons: 1. it is a very direct and quick result of “them” listening to our comments and concerns. I think we should be appreciative (and a tad bit impressed) with that level and speed of responsiveness 2. and also because I think it actually addresses a lot of concerns
• I am not sure there is a large source of untapped data that will uncover trends/information that isn’t being considered. It isn’t a secret that Oakhurst is where a lot of young families are moving and they will have larger number of younger students. I think they are being reasonable I their assumptions. (I bristled at one parent calling their techniques “naïve”).
• The information also highlighted just how sensitive our district is to small changes in numbers – it doesn’t take that many students to throw off the delicate balance we are trying to achieve. Is it unreasonable (and I don’t know the answer) to have to do this type of exercise more frequently (every 3 years) when we are so small and things are always moving? It just seems like we/they will always need to be prepared to revisit and make tweaks
• Re: Westchester – I know there is a lot of talk about opening it/what if… personally, I think it has been demonstrated that it isn’t needed for right now (this round) but that it IS an available location/resource that is readily available to us if/when the need be. No point in spending the money if we don’t have to until we have to.
• I was impressed (for the most part) with the reasonableness (?) of the parents. Emotions always run high at these types of events, but everyone was patient, polite and asked great questions. This is where I get all glow-y that I live in Decatur.
• Finally, the speaker was awesome. Seriously I took notes on how to run a meeting effectively.
I totally crush on competence.
I’m the bristle-causer who used the term “naïve”. Right after I said that, I realized that I had slipped into the jargon of my profession and used a term that wasn’t right for the audience. I spoke with Dr. Van Soelen immediately afterward and assured him that it was not meant as an insult. Apologies to all who bristled!
My thoughts on yesterday:
- The comment made above about low turnout yesterday is a good reminder to be skeptical about comments made here and in other forums. I did not feel the attendance was low. I know that many parents who did not attend just plain couldn’t (evening time, childcare, etc) but are indeed making comments online and in letters. The informational session was packed, like Thomas mentioned. I did a head count and got around ~100 for the informational session and about ~45 for the public comment session. Many felt that because the informational session addressed a lot of their concerns and there was a dialog so they did not stay for the public comment session.
- Though it took me a while to see there was a place to input feedback on the maps, overall I really commend CSD for giving us a variety of ways to deliver feedback. I realize there is skepticism over who on the board hears what and in what manner, but like Boodle said, I am pleased to see that they are listening to feedback and addressing concerns with the attempt of map #8. While I still feel like there are more ways we can help CSD with gathering data, I really do appreciate all the work that has gone into this so far.
- After all this number wrangling, hopefully we can narrow it down to 1-2 maps and then take some time to see how it would affect neighborhoods and parcel lines. There was mention of streets being divided and re-looking at that.
- I hope that CSD understands that there are plenty of 2 year bubbles coming up. They have done a lot of excellent work looking at a 2 yr cohort but I would challenge them to extend that view.
- Serious kudos to all the parents from all the schools that attended last night. This process is not going to be all rainbows and unicorns for some families but overall I felt we were mostly being calm and reasonable and trying to focus on the entire district versus my school/my kid mentality.
Note that a good 10-15 of those at the public hearing were CSD principals and staff.
Option 8 isn’t unicorns and rainbows for us, but it does address a lot of community concerns and seems to be the fairest option for most of the schools and kids. I also got the impression that CSD has been very deliberate and thoughtful in this exercise and appreciate the hard work that they have put in to date.
I doubt Karass will ever be happy, but I think the vast majority of us can live with 8.
I’m not unhappy with Option 8, it’s definitely got some advantages over other options. But there’s still an opportunity to make comments, ask questions, share information, and learn on this blog, through the CSD website, and through comments to the Board. And I thank DM for this blog because it is a persistent prompt to CSD to provide information. Otherwise we make up the info here!
Map 8 is not particularly kind to the North of the tracks portion of the current Oakhurst district. All of the things folks are complaining about on McKoy, etc. happen along Adair on Map 8. An entire neighborhood Rosewalk is split in two.
These same neighborhoods along Adair were part of the Westchester community in 2004. And yes, there was a lovely strong Westchester community… Just as vibrant as Oakhurst is today.
As I understand things, the Adair area has been happy at Oakhurst and many are saddened at the thought of leaving, just as in 2004 the same neighborhood mourned the loss of Westchester. Now that the north of the tracks crowd is no longer quite as needed at Oakhurst, I think it is only fair to keep their community as intact as possible. Map 8 does not do that.
This problem may be solved by sending the Ponce de Leon/ Pinetree homes to Clairemont and the condos of Adair and all of the Rosewalk homes Oakhurst instead.
I think everyone is forgetting that there are 62 tuition and courtesy kids that will need to be placed. Many of them can attend Winnona, Glennwood or other schools with lower enrollment, which would bring their numbers closer if not over those at Oakhrust and Clairmont.
Yes, but the proportion of the 62 “out of district” students who are classified as Free/Reduced Lunch is only 8% so if, and only if, keeping the schools diverse by income level were the highest priority, then it would make more sense to me to even out Glennwood with tuition students and even out Winnona Park by keeping their Swanton Hill students there. On the other hand, if racial diversity is more important than income diversity, then the tuition students would even out Winnona Parks low diversity because they are 1/3 black.
But maybe neighborhood contiguity is more important. It sounds like things are tipping that way. It’s ironic given the last reconfiguration but maybe the right way to go in the new millenium.