Letter From Superintendent Regarding K-3 Rezoning
Decatur Metro | November 1, 2013CSD sent out this letter from the Superintendent last night…
Dear Parents, Teachers, Neighbors and Staff,I am looking forward to welcoming the students, teachers and staff, and families to the reopening of Westchester Elementary next Fall 2014. We have been planning for the reopening of Westchester for two years. I know that Westchester Elementary will be just as warm and welcoming a community as our other K-3 Expeditionary Learning Schools. However, there are many steps to take before this can happen.K-3 Rezoning CommitteeOur K-3 Rezoning Committee is in the midst of some very intense and difficult work. In order to reopen Westchester, some Decatur families will be rezoned to attend Westchester. In keeping with our City Schools of Decatur commitment to community and parent input and our System Charter Status, we have asked members from the School Leadership Teams, staff and administrators from schools, and neighborhood community representatives to assist in this very important work. Each of our K-3 schools and ECLC has 2-4 members on the K-3 Rezoning Committee. Some neighborhood associations, such as the Westchester Neighborhood Association, also have a representative serving as a committee member.There have been three committee meetings to date including a community input session which drew approximately 150 people. Twenty-eight people spoke as the committee listened as well as two Board of Education Members, one future Board Member, two Board candidates and me. The comments were respectful and relevant. Comments to date, both in person and through emails, have been captured and shared with the committee and will be shared with the Board.The committee will meet again on Monday, November 4th at 6:00 PM, additional maps have been developed based on the comments heard. The new “draft” maps will be posted on the website byMonday, if not sooner. It is my hope that we can come to some consensus on the most viable maps to present to the School Board at the November 12th Board of Education meeting.
K-3 and 4-5 Instructional GroupingsThe last time we redistricted was when Glennwood opened as a K-3, and the decision was made to build a 4/5 Academy. At that time, the issue of instructional groupings of K-3 or K-5 was reviewed extensively. The committee determined that for many factors, not the least of which is the success our students have experienced with this model, the result was to stay the course.When the K-3, 4/5 model was first introduced in 2003, the team and I looked at multiple factors. These factors included financial savings to be achieved with economy of scale as more teachers and students at a grade level are housed in the same building; shared academic resources, as well as collaboration among teams of teachers and the systemic development of CSD to an Expeditionary Learning Model K-3 and International Baccalaureate from grades 4-12.2007 Unitary StatusNot to be forgotten, the new configuration in 2003 also resulted in the school system being removed from a Desegregation Order voluntarily by the Department of Justice. This happened in 2007, after the School Board followed through on the presented plan which resulted in CSD receiving unitary status. In 2007, a U.S. District Court removed the 1969 Desegregation Order from City Schools of Decatur. The Court found that the system “fully and satisfactorily complied with the Court’s desegregation orders.” Achieving unitary status meant that CSD had eliminated the vestiges of discrimination in the system. A contributing factor is that all children come together in one school at the 4th grade instead of the 6thgrade.We have seen positive results of 4-5 model, especially at the middle school, which is now a Distinguished Title 1 School and one of the most sought after middle schools in the Atlanta metro area.College Heights OptionI’d like to also address the concept of turning College Heights Early Childhood Learning Center into an elementary school. The Board and I recognize that College Heights is an option for the future if we continue on this incredible growth trajectory. However, we are still paying the loan for the renovation to College Heights, and until the loan is paid off, we cannot make any adjustments to the building. We know that opening Westchester will give us a reprieve of five years until we need to make a decision about opening College Heights as an elementary school.Committee WorkI respectfully ask families and the community that we allow the current process to work. Westchester needs to reopen in early August. A principal needs to be named and preliminary work completed, including forming a staff and engaging families. All of this, including changes and upgrades to the school, and the Central Office team moving to Beacon Hill, must be completed by Spring 2014. You can find all Rezoning Committee information to date on the website http://www.csdecatur.net/ZoningYou also may be interested in reading the article Dan Whisenhunt of the Decaturish blog wrote after we met together. Some of what I mentioned here in this letter, I also discussed with Mr. Whisenhunt.http://decaturish.com/2013/10/31/decatur-superintendent-edwards-recalls-a-system-of-schools/Westchester is going to be another wonderful K-3 school and our students will receive the same engaging and rigorous educational experience they receive at Clairemont, Glennwood, Oakhurst and Winnona Park. We understand that change is difficult, and that we cannot please every family. But please know that we are doing our very best to make this a fair and thoroughly-researched process.Thank you for your patience, and for your support of our students and staff in City Schools of Decatur.Sincerely,Dr. Phyllis A. Edwards, Superintendent
Latest from Decaturish
I was impressed with how well run the community input session was. There are incredibly strong feelings associated with yet another rezoning situation, and my hat goes off to everyone that respectfully gave their input. Looking forward to the next step.
OK, so I took a quick look at the new maps. They seem to respect natural boundaries pretty well, better than the earlier maps.
Looking at Map 5–which overall looks good–one thing I notice is that the MAK neighborhood is districted to Winona, which requires crossing both McDonough and Candler. That neighborhood would more naturally be sent to Oakhurst. But Oakhurst is right up next to capacity as it stands, whereas Clairemont is way, way under capacity. So take the chunk north of the RR tracks currently districted to Oakhurst, plus the little bit east of that chunk currently districted to Westchester, and send them to Clairemont. If I’ve counted my circles correctly, those changes would be neutral vis-a-vis Oakhurst enrollment, positive for Clairemont, negative for Winona and (a bit) negative for Westchester, while having fewer people crossing barriers.
Agree that the numbers look pretty good the way you describe the swapout. I’d be careful about counting dots because they don’t look right to me. Only one dot for Gateway Homes? Maybe things have changed but there used to be tons of kids there. LP families wouldn’t be happy to leave Oakhurst but at least the whole neighborhood would be together. LP is always a pawn in redistricting because it doesn’t “own” a school geographically. What would be neat is if some of the informal paths that run along the creek and behind homes and in uninhabitable flood plain areas could be made into city walking paths so students from LP could walk all the way up to Westchester. It’s been talked about in the past but haven’t heard much lately.
Creek walk + Bridge over Scott = Perfect!
Bridge over Scott at Westchester would be such a plus that I will vote for anyone who can make that happen. Ditto for bridge over CSX tracks at Renfroe. Or tunnels under. (I know how unlikely it is that the State or CSX would allow these improvements which is why I can make such an extravagant promise.)
Regarding certain neighborhoods being pawns: Several ppl who spoke at the meeting on Monday night mentioned being “pawns.” One woman even talked about being “victimized.” If neighborhoods don’t have a school in their backyard – and many don’t – it’s likely that they will be the ones who are re-zoned as we open schools. They are not “pawns” or “victims.” Just look at the geography. If anyone gets the short stick in all of this, it is the housing authority kids. They aren’t physically close to a particular school and therefore do get moved around. They also don’t have the advocates who go full-force to protect their interests, at all costs. That’s a shame.
On Monday night (and from reading blogs and Facebook posts this past week), I couldn’t believe how everyone was so focused on his/her own family situation and neighborhood situation – to the point where no one has a big-picture perspective or seems concerned at all about COLLECTIVE GOOD. I’ve found ppl to be so selfish, and maybe it was wrong/naive to have expected more.
What we need is for ppl to take a look at this from not just their own point of view (by family and by neighborhood) but by a larger, city-wide point of view. **What works for the city as a whole may not make certain families or neighborhoods happy. There is no way to draw the lines where all of the goals are met (walkability, racial diversity, economic diversity, equal room for growth in each school) AND make everyone happy.** It’s impossible. The lines must be drawn somewhere. We’ve got to take a bigger picture view of this situation.
The consultant said on Monday night that we are looking for “the most workable solution for the most people.” Every family and neighborhood won’t get exactly what is wants. Accept this fact, and this process will become a lot smoother and more reasonable.
Amen.
+1,000
All the neighborhoods advocating for their needs should be heard. Collective good includes doing as much as you can to meet each one’s concerns. Many are concerned about being able to walk to their neighborhood school – a fair and valid point that has driven up the community feel of Decatur immensely. Folks should be allowed to advocate for their needs and concerns without being told they are being selfish. That is part of what is great about Decatur – the ability to speak up and have an impact.
MAK is at WP now, and we want to stay there. Oakhurst is a great school, but I don’t think it is fair to say that MAK “more naturally” belongs there simply because of where some roads are. We consider WP our home school. We have been tossed back and forth in every re-districting, and we want some stability. Plus, we have crossing guards at McDonough and Candler who do a fabulous job, and a 4 way stop at McDonough. It is a pleasant walk to school for us. One can’t simply look at a map and decide whether a certain school or route to it “makes sense.”
And I should add that although this is what I want for my family and neighborhood, I also think it’s the right thing to do. Oakhurst is exploding with growth in a way that other neighborhoods are not. We in MAK have been shifted back and forth each time a school gets too crowded. We have a very real concern that Oakhurst is going to be bursting at the seams, and that rather than filling it up, it should be left with some space for the future growth that everyone can see happening, so that in a couple years we don’t have to pull kids back out of it again. The dots on the map don’t show growth– they are a snapshot in time. Personally I think we should put more K-3 space at College Heights, which would probably require moving our neighborhood, but it would make sense from a space perspective.
Just an FYI, a bunch of Okahurst right now is being sent to Winona while MAK is at Oakhurst. In terms of natural boundaries and neighborhood togetherness, it makes more sense to switch that.
Don’t even try to play the race card and try to sell me that the K-3 model has anything to do with the school system being removed from the Desegregation Order.
I feel the entire board and Dr. Edwards need to slow down and make decisions that are long term not a rush to reopen Westchester next year. Tired of the shuffling every 2 years for the last 10 years.
All the “shuffling” the last few years is b/c people keep moving here for the schools. From out of state, people see the system and think it looks good, so they choose Decatur. And APS and DeKalb County school families are jumping ship left and right to flee to Decatur schools – which has caused the recent mini “housing bubble” right here, just in Decatur, only within the city limits. And ppl keep having more kids!!
How dare they?! 
What is the solution? No one can predict how many kids will keep flooding the school system. If we take a long-term, “not-a-quick-fix” view, we could build/open more elementaries, but then what happens if the school population goes back down (for some unforeseen reason)? Then we have half-empty schools that are too expensive to keep open (like back in 2003) that may possibly need to be closed.
I guess my main point is that there is no crystal ball to predict the future. We can’t build too fast or we might end up with too much overcapacity. It is probably more prudent to open schools as we need them, which yes, does mean that some families will be rezoned. It’s part of living in an incredibly desirable school system. The only constant is change.
Does anyone knows why houses on Lamont/Vidal were at Westchester in all four of this week’s maps but some/all are at Clairemont in all three of the new maps? Just curious because I haven’t seen much discussion or public comment from folks on these streets.
I attended the October 28th meeting. I live on Upland Rd (close to the Lenox Place neighborhood) and my child goes to Oakhurst. Option 5, 6, and 7 maps now have us zoned for Westchester. I do not look forward to potentially walking to school down Scott Blvd and having to cross Scott. This is a turnaround from the first 4 maps where we were zoned for Oakhurst in 3/4. Nowhere during the Oct 28th meeting did I hear our neighborhoods requesting to go to Westchester but rather we requested to stay with Oakhurst for walkability purposes. Why the change? Disappointed.
No mention of the administration’s unwillingness to let go of IB for 4th and 5th grade, which is the real reason they refuse to consider going back to K-5s. EL is a more appropriate fit for younger grades anyway; the transition from IB to EL for 4th and 5th graders would not be traumatic. But the money invested in IB for the 4/5 Academy is the main reason K-5s are not being considered. Don’t be fooled by these other reasons.
i don’t get fooled by any reasons. i’m convinced it’s completely random.
I’ve wondered about that. Well, both Expeditionary Learning and International Baccalaureate go from K through grade 5 if needed. So theoretically a K-5 could go either way and both are excellent programs using well-respected methodologies. In my opinion the most important aspect about either one is that a school using it has chosen to hold itself to a higher standard by participating. What kind of money are we talking about that CSD can’t change course? There’s a ton of money being spent on all sorts of things, including lawyers and consultants, so I’d think that it would not be disastrous to go all IB K-5 or all EL K-5. Our excellent teachers could handle it. There might even be interesting overlaps and insights that would come from a switch.
I’m not against a 4/5 Academy if it fits in with our priorities and goals. I would describe its merits, disadvantages, and alternatives differently than the letter does.
Interesting quote from Decaturish (http://decaturish.com/2013/11/01/f-ave-or-fad-45-teacher-school-superintendent-defend-academy/):
School spokeswoman Heather Borowski followed up Edwards’ letter with another point the superintendent forgot to mention. She said in an email that, “According to (Georgia Department of Education) standards, the 4/5 Academy at Fifth Avenue will never be able to house kindergarten students. There aren’t classrooms on the bottom floor of F.AVE and kindergarten students cannot be in housed in classrooms on a second floor. The 4/5 Academy was constructed specifically for older students.”
Good point, but there IS at least one classroom on the first floor! It was originally a science lab, but with the overcrowding, it’s become a classroom. So, another piece of the puzzle is that the first floor of FAVE would have to be reconfigured or maybe added onto.
I think that both Glennwood and Oakhurst had to face the K=first floor issue with renovations in the late 90s/early 2000s. It means that offices and media centers have to be moved upstairs and classrooms moved downstairs. All doable. Inconvenient and costly but what isn’t with an exploding enrollment? Not saying that making FAVE a K-5 is the solution, but it’s an option. On the other hand, CSD is mentioning College Heights becoming an elementary school eventually so maybe that’s where another building will come from. A new Board and new Superintendent will have to deal with that! Given how beloved the ECLC is, that won’t be easy.
I can state with authority that my two dots are not represented on those maps. We are in this position because attempting to balance capacity with demand is bad planning.
Re “…attempting to balance capacity with demand is bad planning.”: That sounds wise. But I don’t know what it means. Explain please. What else would you balance?
At Home – basically the idea is that if demand fluctuates and you try to keep your capacity in line with demand you’ll always have too much when you don’t need it and too little when you do. My limited operations exposure says it’s better to have excess capacity than to try to nail it based on today’s needs.
Makes sense. If you have a little too much capacity, you can use extra classrooms for teacher lounges, science labs, whatever. Too little and you’re up a creek and forced to do something; can’t just turn away students.
Re “…attempting to balance capacity with demand is bad planning.”: That sounds wise. But I don’t know what it means. Explain please. What else would you balance?
The superintendent’s letter is one more piece of evidence that we cannot get objective, honest advice from the professionals we have in our top administration. They insist on providing Fox News-like revisionist distortions of our school system history and our current situation. She asks that we “allow the current process to work.” The current process is rigged. Eight of the 23 members of the committee are CSD employees. Their input is important, critical and wanted, but they cannot provide independent voices to the discussion. The data being supplied comes from the administration which is hell bent on making any option they don’t like appear expensive and unworkable. At a time when we should be stepping back and taking a broad look at all options, the superintendent and the board to whom she is responsible removed key options from the committee’s consideration. That is crazy. We will just have to do this all again in a couple of years.
I recently attended a meeting of concerned parents. So many of them were not here and have no sense of how we came to be in this situation. The administration is trying to fill that void with self-serving half truths to bolster their weak arguments for not questioning them today.
UNITARY STATUS: In the years before we finally asked to be declared unitary, virtually every school that asked for unitary status got it, including such places as the DeKalb School System which has markedly racially divided school system. The reconfiguration was not needed for us to achieve it. Our board just never wanted to incur the legal fees associated with that. Then, it was trumped up to serve as a fig leaf to further justify the reconfiguration.
FAVE CAN’T HAVE KINDERGARTNERS: There may be reasons that FAVE is not a good fit as a K-5, but the announcement that FAVE can’t handle kindergartners ain’t one of ‘em. As was noted in another post, bottom level classrooms have been created in other CSD schools and there’s no reason we can’t do that at FAVE, as well. It is something that can be done and is not a huge impediment to FAVE becoming a K-5.
THE TWO GRADE SCHOOL IS GOOD FOR OUR KIDS’ EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT: The two-grade school system hurts the kids that we should be most concerned about helping. Research almost uniformly shows that longer grade spans, especially in the early years, helps and extra transitions from one school to another hurt. For the latest in that series, see the study released in August, “Math and Reading Differences Between 6-8 and K-8 Grade Span Configurations: A Multiyear, Statewide Analysis,” by David M. Clark, John R. Slate, Julie P. Combs, and George W. Moore, as published in Arizona State University’s “Current Issues in Education.”
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IS HURT BY THE TWO GRADE SCHOOL: How about parental involvement? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that truncating the primary school and creating a two-grade school cuts into parental involvement. Folks don’t know whether they are coming or going, and just when they get a feel for the teachers and administrators, their kids move on. Of course, for families with multiple kids, it also means being spread over more schools. None of that helps parental involvement, something that every study shows is critical to high achievement.
OPERATING COSTS ARE HURT BY THE TWO GRADE SCHOOL: We have had to pay for operating, maintaining and storing a fleet of buses solely to sustain the two-grade school. The buses, as well as all of the cars that non-busing parents use to get to FAVE add to traffic problems across the city. One resident who lives near FAVE described the morning and afternoon traffic as putting Peachtree and Piedmont to shame. All of this is to say nothing of the pollution this creates.
RE-ZONING IS MORE DIFFICULT BECAUSE OF THE TWO-GRADE SCHOOL: We have been told that the bulge of kids on the south side makes re-zoning more difficult. Make FAVE, Oakhurst, Winnona, Glenwood, Clairemont and Westchester K-5 and you can go a long way towards addressing that. There still will be problems, and pain, but there should be less of it because we can pull back the reach that each school has to make into neighborhoods outside their immediate one. We can preserve the ECLC which was proposed well before the Superintendent came on board, but which was rightfully and well implemented by the administration.
OUR THIRD RECONFIGURATION IN TEN YEARS: One of the reasons the administration faulted the K-5 system was that it had too much excess capacity. Oh, for some excess capacity today! The current configuration is much less able to absorb ebbs and flows of student populations than a K-5, so we should be better able to whether changes in that number with less resort to re-configurations.
The two grade school configuration leads to more traffic, more pollution, more problems for at risk kids, more problematic school zoning and less parental involvement. There are advantages to the two-grade school. I just can’t think of them. They sure aren’t substantiated in the literature or and they sure aren’t quantifiable. They did not cause the gentrification of Oakhurst which was well underway before the reconfiguration. There also is no way to untangle the meltdown of DeKalb and Atlanta school systems from the two-grade school and the impact of higher gasoline prices that has led to a move towards Atlanta from the distant burbs as a causal factor for our student population growth. Tying any success at Renfroe to the two-grade school is also ridiculous. How do you untangle the effect of new principals, new student population composition and the multitude of other factors from any effect of the two-grade school? You can’t and to claim otherwise only shows how much the person is willing to twist things.
Finally, the board does not serve as a meaningful check on the superintendent. The majority of our school board is tied to the two-grade school system in a way that precludes them from questioning it. Their decision inflicted a great deal of pain and they can never appear to be questioning its wisdom. So, you cannot look to them for objective evaluation of other alternatives or any challenge to the administration about the costs and viability of other options. (One board member was not a member at the time of the original vote, but she was appointed to her seat by the three members over someone who had questioned the wisdom of the current configuration and has been in lockstep with them on this issue ever since.) There is only one board member not tied to that decision. This would be the time for that board member to stand up.
“The data being supplied comes from the administration which is hell bent on making any option they don’t like appear expensive and unworkable. At a time when we should be stepping back and taking a broad look at all options, the superintendent and the board to whom she is responsible removed key options from the committee’s consideration.”
This is exactly how Dr. Edwards acts in every situation. I was on the calendar committee for one year several years ago. It was back when they were first considering the calendar option of one week vacation every six weeks that the system now uses. Dr. Edwards’ minion opened the meeting by saying we as a group “were charged with finding a workable calendar for the next school year” and then gave us a list of parameters with which we needed to follow. Some were pretty basic….she wanted the first semester to end before the winter break, the teachers needed 2 days off for workshops, 90 days for each semester, etc…but the one that really stood out was there needed to be a week off every six weeks so students can ponder their learning. Given that we were “charged” with these parameters we did as we were told. We were given the opportunity to discuss other options but never given the opportunity to vote on them as they didn’t fit the parameters. The calendars came out exactly as she wanted, with school starting on the first or second day of August because once you start filling in the slots with her requests there aren’t many other ways to fit it all in. When the inevitable complaints started coming in from parents, the official statement from the administration was (paraphrasing here) Well, we didn’t make these calendars, a committee of parents, teachers and staff determined this to be the best options. Dr. Edwards laid the entire thing at the feet of the calendar committee. I’ve never believed another word out of her mouth since then.
Wow. This is what I was afraid of, based on things I have heard over the last few years. But I am really disturbed to hear something laid out this blatantly.
Dr. Edwards: “It is my hope that we can come to some consensus on the most viable maps to present to the School Board at the November 12th Board of Education meeting.” From Decaturish: “Edwards said one of the main reasons she’d like to get the rezoning wrapped up by the end of December – and she concedes it may not happen – is to give parents enough time to prepare.”
That timeline would also prevent two newly elected school board members, who will be sworn in at January’s meeting, from voting on this issue.
Yep, I have no personal stake in this vote b/c I don’t have K-3 kids anymore. However, it does seem that this vote should be put off until we have our two new school board members. It really doesn’t make sense (and just kind of smells fishy) to have board members who are in the last few days of their tenure and will not be accountable to the voters making big, long lasting decisions like this.
That’s how I’ve thought–the Board members who have to deal with the consequences are the ones who should decide and vote. When I first asserted that, the counter-argument was that the election was too far in the future. But now the election is here and the new Board members will step up in 2 months. Whoever wins can be doing their homework and talking to the community and CSD Admin while waiting to become official and vote. I suppose the new Board, if they didn’t like what the current Board decided, could undo the vote with a new one, but that would be a lot more divisive and messy than just waiting.
I find it interesting that there’s more chatter around town about the redistricting than there is about the election. There’s folks who know exactly what each map shows but can’t remember if it’s Mark Jones or Lewis Arnold or whatever. The candidate websites and the taped forum with Q&A are good resources for folks who are still making up their minds.