Decatur Elementary Schools To Become K-2
Decatur Metro | May 9, 2017 | 9:42 pm
Decaturish reports that the School Board voted tonight to change Decatur’s elementary schools to K-2.
The plan will turn the current 4/5 FAVE into a 3-5 school and the school system plans to also build a second 3-5 school at Talley Street. College Heights will remain as the Early Childhood Learning Center under the plan.
As Decaturish notes, community surveys heavily favored the K-2 plan.
Changes will go into effect for the 2019-2020 school year.
Is this an optimal solution? I don’t know; time will tell. But compared to the last reconfiguration (2004?), it seems CSD spent a lot more time and effort on getting community input this time around. Not everyone got what they wanted, but at least they had the opportunity for their voice to be heard.
It helps that CSD isn’t closing schools this time around (and then switching out which schools were doing what at the last minute!)
Any bets on the next configuration date?
With the now available safety valve of building a new ECLC downtown and converting College Heights back to K-2, I feel like the current configuration may actually last us a while. The only thing that might force something sooner is a population spike north of the tracks (would require something unexpected, like a big annexation or vast underestimation of the number of young kids moving into all the new apartment complexes — neither seems that likely).
The spike on the south side over the last decade wasn’t based on apartments filling with children but on gentrification, right? Teardowns, which have totally changed the south side, are now starting to accelerate on the north side. Trendy cottages, once considered high end on the north side, are being torn down for $cM#$%^ns. (Is there still a DM moratorium on the use of that term?) Tons of families are moving in. I hope that doesn’t mean that the population will spike further but I never thought that the population of Decatur would rise exponentially during the 2007-2010 recession, but it did.
Ha, did we write a sunset clause into the moratorium??