Get Caught Up on All CSD Master Plan Happenings
Decatur Metro | May 1, 2013 | 9:19 amAre you interested in City Schools of Decatur Master Planning process, but you haven’t had a chance to attend a meeting yet? Well, does CSD have the website for you!
The Master Plan website now includes a 40 minute video of the presentation of the Master Plan and a list of Frequently Asked Questions. Here’s a sample FAQ:
What happens if we do not do a master plan?Based upon the Projected Growth, if no improvements are made, then each of the current facilities will meet and exceed their capacities within the next three to five year period. This will force CSD to invest in Portable Classrooms (trailers). Each Portable Classroom costs approximately $35,000 per year to have installed and leased.Example: It is projected that the Decatur High School would require up to 32 Portable Classrooms to accommodate its growth. This would equate into CSD paying approximately $1,120,000 per year for a temporary solution. Another 17 Portable Classrooms would be necessary to accommodate projected growth at Renfroe Middle School at a cost of $595,000 per year.
Also, check out the latest enrollment projects in chart-form HERE.
You can also read the Q&A between residents and staff at the April 25th community forum HERE.
This is great having the April 25 forum Q & A available to all and DM posting the link to remind us of it. Hope that will happen for the following 3 forums too.
Thanks SLTs, principals, CSD, DM!
This is a very rudimentary analysis and should be reviewed under a microscope. They (consultants?) simply took year to year increases from 2011 to 2012 and projected attendance using these same rates. For instance say there are 400 8th graders in 2011 and 450 9th graders in 2012. They multiply 450/400 by 8th grade attendance to get the 9th grade attendance in each subsequent year. There is no leveling off in their projections. In 2012 Kindergarten attendance magically stabilizes at 371 and each year thereafter the next grade stabilizes. By the time 12th grade stabilizes in 2024 there is a projected attendance of 3018 in grades 9-12. They only go through 2018 but it’s not hard to carry their methodology through 2024. I’m not sure I can take this projection too seriously and I sure hope they didn’t pay someone tens of thousands of dollars for this.
Are there special methods for population projections in microenvironments? Decatur is its own unique microenvironment and I hope consultants take that into account. A major recent advance in CSD and its advisory committee was accessing birth data, not just using prior enrollment to predict the future, right? But even birth data are not adequate if people are moving in and out in ways that are unique to Decatur, right? Is there a way to capture and incorporate “word on the street” (I’m sure there’s a better term) in an objective, useful way? Real estate data? Rental data? Impressions from neighborhood associations? Local preschools? Disposable diaper sales?
As I understand it, CSD actually has an Enrollment Committee comprised of parents and community members with demographic expertise. Sometime in the last year, this committee started with a street-by-street survey of house sizes, etc. and performed some fairly complex statistical analyses to determine trends.
I’m not sure how much of this was used by CSD to come up with the numbers that they are currently using. During a presentation on this subject by the Asst. Superintendent, the only thing mentioned was a 1-year cohort which is based on current enrollment numbers.
The big question in all of this is when will the numbers peak? Eventually, DeKalb County and Atlanta schools will get back on track and Decatur housing prices will get so expensive that the flow of students into the system will taper off. Right now, people are in panic mode.
Things like a street-by-street survey of house sizes sound great. Of course one should not rely overly on one factor. Houses are bought and enlarged all the time now, even razed and rebuilt. Families living in condos, townhouses, or apartments seem to be on the rise as folks figure out how ever they can to get into the City of Decatur. But a lot of independent information sources pointing in the same direction can support your official, less local data sources or cause you to look at assumptions, measurements, and recency of data more carefully. Back when schools were being closed in 2004, the sound of squalling babies and house renovations should have given folks looking at the past trend lines more pause for consideration.
I’ve had a number of conversations with CSD administration & one of the board members recently about this, and the projections they’re using are based on a one-year cohort ratio, not anything more sophisticated. The problem I see with CSD’s current projection methodology is that the cohort ratios are all in the upper end of the 6-year ratio history, so result in a double-digit CAGR for both RMS and DHS. I just don’t see that happening every year for the next 5 years.
But ultimately, this is about predicting the future, and nobody is going to be right about this (or, said another way, there are a number of different methodologies – that yield very different results – that could be arguably used in this case). So the statement that CSD “knows” what enrollments will look like in 2018 is BS (and so is any other similar statement anyone else might make).
I think the challenge is to figure out how to accomodate growth without overcommitting or overspending. I’m glad to see CSD look at a phased approach, but think they could be thinking more granularly and/or flexibly about phasing to give some time to see how demographic trends play out.
Excellent response.
I agree with the observation that the enrollment projections look somewhat “aggressive” or over stated. If you look at the high school from 2006 through 2010, it had a net loss of students in the aggregate (total 34 students down from 2006 -2010). Only in 2011 and 2012 do you see any net add to students. This could be a result of the improvement in the economy / housing which allowed people to sell homes and move into Decatur (and builders willing to take the risk to build / renovate in Decatur). Is it correct to assume this trend will continue or is it merely release of pent up demand? I think we need to dig deeper here.
I know parking, carpool, traffic and all of those issues are important. But if we build buildings to house 6,000 students in 2018, when we really will only have 5,000 students (or less) then we will have all made a serious error. And instead of closing unneeded schools like we did in 2004 and misjudging the growth, we may build new, beautiful and empty wings to our existing school buildings.
Am I the only one whose brain keeps whispering “fora!” every time someone says the word “forums?”
I blanched when I read this because I believe in using correct English but use “forums” all the time at work. According to the dictionaries I can access right now, either “forums” or “fora” are correct as the plural. But I can see why it would bother you, especially if you are into correct Latin endings. The plural that bothers me is “matrixes”. It doesn’t sound right. It should be “matrices”. “Matrices” sounds so French, so sophisticated. But most dictionaries say that both plural forms of matrix are correct.
oh, jeebus, get a room!
I would like to hear more creative options besides “trailers or bricks”. It seems to me that city officials should consider ideas that try to reduce the number of students who will arrive in a few years. Vouchers for private or home schooling, a combination of home and classroom learning, distance learning, early high school graduation, and double sessions with alternate Saturday classes are just a few things that pop into mind. Not everyone believes that all high school students need to spend seven hours a day over four years in a traditional setting.
Choice is a popular term in this town when it comes to the most personal decisions concerning a family. I would like to see more options that would allow parents to chose what is best for their child as well as avoiding another huge increase in taxes and building additions that may not necessary in ten years.
Will you homeschool my kids for me? I love the idea of homeschooling. But I”m stumped by my need for a salary and my kids’ lack of interest in learning from me.
+1 Billion. When all you got’s a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail…
Go Mr. B.!!!! I wish we could think out side bricks too!
I don’t know. The only choices I regularly witness most Decatur parents making about their children is what they let them wear and how they let them act in public. Based on that, I’d say I’m justifiably concerned about giving them any more substantial choices.
Yeah, but don’t we have those pesky state and federal government agencies that will throw up roadblocks to creative solutions such as that… being that we are a public school system?
Looking into the DeVry property further, you know, it has a 110,000 square foot school building and ample parking included in the $17.5 million price tag. It is adjacent to Sycamore area housing and close to MARTA. It has forested, undeveloped land buffering it from four-lane access road DeKalb Industrial Way. It is turn-key classroom space with lots of room for future growth! Ever creative Home Town Decatur could build walking and biking trails, add wild land to its great community gardening projects make MARTA into a city partner and teach our children about alternatives to automobiles.
It seems to me the most resistance to using this land for the schools is the hope that a developer will build tract housing, and dump more tax revenue, and students into our small city. The land has been available a LONG time. How much growth is enough (as the bumper sticker says, “unlimited growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”). Adding the DeVry property to the City Schools of Decatur’s holdings is a positive idea!
I don’t think we get to be fiscally prudent in debating the master plan options while simultaneously dismissing key opportunities to boost the city’s tax revenues through productive use of land. If we’re wanting the city to be judicious stewards of our financial assets and resources, we need to remain focused on both income and expenditure.
Incidentally, the parcel in question isn’t zoned Residential, which is what would accommodate tract housing. It’s zoned Mixed-Use, which is our category most likely to be net-positive in terms of tax income vs. service outlay (i.e. we make money, which can help cover our revenue negative single family neighborhoods).
The DeVry property is walkable for only a very small portion of the city. It is not centrally-located at all. Half the city already has to put their kids on the bus for 4th and 5th grades because that school is not a neighborhood school. Let’s not do that again! Also, where are the majority of young children — the bubble? In the neighborhoods farthest from DeVry. Right now Renfroe and DHS are centrally-located and MANY kids/teens walk — they’re already being taught about the alternatives to automobiles. They can also walk to jobs after school pretty quickly from DHS. That is the independence I want for my children before they go off to college.
What makes you think anyone is interested in developing it? It’s been there for a LONG time already. Again, 110,000 square foot of SCHOOL BUILDINGS with tons of parking. Move the kids right in!