Last night, the Decatur School Board approved the city’s reconfiguration of K-3 schools (a slightly tweaked version of Map #9) in order to reintroduce Glennwood back into the mix.

Thanks to greater outreach and cooperation between all parties – and the fact that a school was being added and not subtracted from the mix – the process was much more amicable than the now legendary 2003 reconfiguration, which closed Westchester Elementary and rezoned much of the Northwest side of the city to Oakhurst Elementary.

And one of the most discussed topics between disgruntled Northsiders and pleased Southsiders has been private school enrollment numbers, pre and post 2003 reconfiguration, which are generally assumed to measure affluent satisfaction with the school system.  Well, thanks to the just released 2005-2009 Census Survey – and a nifty map on the New York Times website, we can now look at private school enrollments pre-reconfiguration (2000) and post-reconfiguration (2005-2009).

The data does in fact verify much of what was being said on both sides of the tracks.

The northwest corner of the city saw a 9% increase in private school enrollment from 2000, while all the other areas of the city registered declines.  This can presumably be partially attributed with dissatisfaction with the closing of the neighborhood’s school in 2003.  Conversely, private school enrollment in Oakhurst dropped from 2% in 2000 to 0% in the current survey, while Winnona Park dropped 7 points to just 6% today.

But the really drastic change was in the area of the city that rarely comes up in the endless 2003 reconfiguration discussion – the northEAST corner of the city.  Even though this neighborhood in effect lost their school – Glennwood – to a 4/5 academy in 2003, private school enrollments dropped 27 points to 19% in the recent survey after the 2003 reconfiguration.

Interesting, no?

Thanks to Golazo to pointing out the NY Times maps!