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Sandtown Community
Association
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From: Harvey Davis [harveydavis@bellsouth.net]
-----Original Message-----
Attached is an email I just sent to the Fulton School Board and the Superintendent. But the voice of a few “trouble makers” like me doesn’t turn up the heat high enough. IF you care as I do, click on the email links below and weigh in on overcrowding issues in South County. Ask them what their plans are to fix overdue South County issues.
Then show up at the Board Meetings
HFD
-----Original Message-----
To ALL School Board Members,
I am looking for solutions to the problems I am presenting. I welcome feedback from any of you on how we can solve the overcrowding problems in the Westlake cluster and definitive subsequent actions on which you can vote on the next board agenda.
There are two remedies that come to mind as we await resumption of the SPLOST II Construction projects in South County
Ø Redistricting of the Sandtown and Randolph Attendance Zones Ø Residency Validation of all students in schools over capacity
Overcrowding and its impact –
We value nutrition enough to provide free breakfast for schools not making AYP, but now with 1,400+ students at Sandtown Middle 6th graders must start LUNCH at 10:15 AM in the morning. When they leave for they day they have not eaten in five hours!! Trailers will not solve this problem. We cannot build a MS in less than two years - will we have 2,000 students in a few years at SMS and a parking lot full of trailers?
Let’s recall that Sandtown Middle was projected to open with 900, first year actual 1,100, second year actual 1,403 and counting. Meanwhile Camp Creek has roughly half the population - 720! We built a long overdue SPLOST II Middle School smaller than the community insists it should be and bring in trailers in the second year.
At least one new parent at Sandtown MS withdrew her child because she said it was ridiculous for her to pass two middle schools to get to SMS. Look at the MS attendance map and tell me it makes sense given the overcrowding at some and sparse populations at others.
It is a tragedy to take this great aesthetic view and ruin it by putting: doublewide trailers in the front parking lot in its second year. There’s already a shortage of parking, this will make it worse. These trailers only provide additional classroom space; they don’t make the cafeteria, the gym, or the media center any larger.
It is time to bite the bullet and start plans to redistrict. There is already precedent for redoing the redistricting exercise for a middle school in a short timeframe. Autrey Mill Middle was redistricted after 2 years.
The facts:
Ø In the case of Autry Mill when parents asked about trailers as an alternative to redistricting the school system said “Staff seeks to use available capacity at schools before utilizing portable classrooms.”
Ø You said further that “Moving students is necessary in order to improve the balance in enrollment between River Trail Middle and Autrey Mill Middle.”
What is the planning staff doing differently now in the forecasting process to prevent further mistakes like Autry Mills and Sandtown? Will residency validation tests be implemented across the board in overcrowded schools?
There are several thousand homes coming online in the Randolph Elementary and Sandtown vicinity. Some children in those homes ½ mile from Randolph take a 40 minute bus ride to Stonewall Tell – does this make sense?
Action Item: Let’s start to process to create a “Fall 2005 Redistricting Process” for the 2006-07 Sandtown Middle School Attendance Boundaries.
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