APS' school closure proposal met with resistance from community
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Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios
Parents and community volunteers are criticizing Atlanta Public Schools' proposal to close several elementary school and consolidate their student populations into other facilities.
Why it matters: Schools often serve as anchors in neighborhoods, and a closure could sever the relationships formed between students and their peers and parents and educators.
The latest: The Atlanta Board of Education heard from several parents who blasted the district's Comprehensive Long Range Facilities Plan during its Nov. 5 meeting.
- The plan calls for closing and repurposing several facilities, including Cleveland Avenue, Continental Colony, Dunbar, Finch, Perkerson, Peyton Forest, Scott, Stanton and Usher Collier elementary schools.
What they're saying: Several Spelman College students who volunteer at Dunbar said closing the elementary school would harm Atlanta's Mechanicsville community because it hasn't seen the redevelopment that other neighborhoods have experienced.
- Joasia Jacobs, a Spelman junior, said closing Dunbar would dismantle "the beating heart of Mechanicsville."
- "We haven't given up on Dunbar, and it's not time for you to either."
- Educator Claire Dozier, who has children enrolled in APS, said the plan "punishes the Black neighborhood for not being gentrified enough and consolidates resources and access in the more privileged areas of the Jackson [High School] cluster."
Zoom in: Monique Nunnally is a member of the advisory committee for the plan and has a child that attends Benteen Elementary School.
- She told Axios she has reservations about the district's proposal to convert Carver Early College, which offers post-secondary courses to high school students in that cluster, into a sixth- through 12th-grade School of the Arts serving students districtwide.
- She said students in the Carver cluster would have to compete with students who feed into other high schools.
- "It feels like it's unfair to children in our neighborhood who will now have to apply to get into this new program," she said.
Context: Since the 2015-2016 school year, APS enrollment has declined from 51,500 to 49,944. Fewer students means less state funding and higher costs.
The other side: Tracy Richter, vice president of planning services with HPM, the firm APS hired to help develop the plan, said at the meeting that closing schools is hard but sometimes necessary "to make the school business work."
- "One of the reasons we've emphasized repurposing is knowing that cities like [Atlanta] shift, they reinvest, they regrow, they shrink in other places," Richter said. "And so this district is going to need flexibility for the future."
What's next: The next public hearing for the plan will be held Dec. 3.