Just learned that parts of Willow/Pensdale/Eastland used to attend Westchester. So those parts would have been rezoned twice in a row, from Westchester to Clairemont to Glennwood. Nice that was prevented.

Decatur: A city of homes, schools, places of worship, and positive intent!

The biggest factor working in favor of keeping the Willow/Pensdale/Eastland neighborhood at Clairemont was that using a class size of 20, adding those kids back into Clairemont didn’t add any additional classrooms from the 15 projected and the impact will be lessened every successive year as the neighborhood ages out of the elementary schools. (However, as Thomas Van Soelen mentioned, we might keep a trailer to accomodate 3rd graders who elect to stay.) That said, I realize that you can’t guarantee that new families with younger children won’t move in, but we can only go with what we know.

The board did have comments and they were (as far as my faulty memory serves) supportive of the proposal prior to the vote and the vote was unanimous.

I’d like to thank Bruce Roaden, Thomas Van Soelen and Dr. Edwards for being so receptive to feedback and really trying to do the best thing for the school system and for children. Also, the board deserves recognition for working with so many diverse groups and trying to accomodate as many requests as possible.

This positive experience illustrates why we love Decatur (trust me, this wouldn’t have been possible in DeKalb County Schools) and shows how the community can work together in a civil manner when we assume positive intent rather than set up an us versus them mentality.