APS redistricting plans face strong resistance from some affected communities
The first citywide redistricting in Atlanta Public Schools in nearly 10 years is meeting with strong resistance from some affected communities.
More than 600 parents and community members attended a hearing on Monday night, many voicing concerns about the travel time to their children’s possible new schools, racial diversity and split neighborhoods, according to the AJC.
As many Kirkwood parents commented on this blog over the weekend, one of the latest proposals divides their neighborhood. A Kirkwood parent at the meeting said, “I don’t see a lot of other neighborhoods that are split up into thirds, and I think that’s because some neighborhoods get more respect.”
The proposed new scenarios reflect changes made after more than 8,200 comments and 800 e-mails to APS. There are more community meetings planned – tonight at Young Middle, Wednesday at North Atlanta High and Thursday at Price Middle. All meetings begin at 6:30 p.m.
I received this statement from the Old Fourth community of Atlanta, which is unhappy with the proposals:
Old Fourth Ward residents have roundly rejected both new scenarios proposing comprehensive redistricting of Atlanta Public Schools. Alarmed that the most recent plans proposed by APS demographers perpetuate a long pattern of racial and socio-economic segregation of children living in the middle of the Northeast sector, residents are pushing back.
In an official position statement to APS, Fourth Ward Neighbors, Inc. neighborhood civic association outlines its opposition to new maps that carve out a gerrymandered district excluding Old Fourth Ward children from the rest of the Northeast sector. (see official statement attached) Residents are demanding that APS reject the new proposals, and instead fully integrate O4W students into the sector which incorporates Hope-Hill Elementary School, Inman Middle School and Grady High School.
Hailed by the New York Times as “a cradle of culinary and artistic innovation and a symbol of gentrification,” and dubbed “The Best Bet for the Next Hot Hood” in 2010 by Creative Loafing, Old Fourth Ward is one of Atlanta’s fastest growing intown communities. It boasts an eclectic mix of history with the up-and-coming, seniors with hipsters and historic shotgun houses in close proximity to bold, modern homes. People come from near and far to enjoy the trendy restaurants, hot clubs, arts galleries and tourists attractions that make O4W a unique cultural experience.
With a sprawling new park, expansion of the Atlanta Beltline, transformation of the former Sears building to City Ponce Market, and a trolley line connecting it to Centennial Park, Old Fourth Ward is experiencing a renaissance of confidence. Education remains the one element that falls short of the community’s ideal. An influx of young, middle class residents who are starting their families and now considering their children’s educational opportunities, is bringing the community together to resolve the longstanding educational shortcomings.
Along with the OFW position statement, residents offer a number of possible solutions, including the sale of the old Walden Middle School to fund renovation of the David T. Howard to address middle school overcrowding.
And here is the neighborhood association’s letter to APS school chief Erroll B. Davis and the school board:
When first presented with the choices provided by the initial maps released in early December 2011, Old Fourth Ward was elated that it appeared that Atlanta Public Schools finally had the courage to end the racial and economic segregation in the northeast sector (Old Fourth Ward, Inman Park, Candler Park, Lake Claire, Druid Hills, Poncey Highland, Virginia Highland, Morningside, Morningside/Lenox Park, Midtown, Ansley Park and Sherwood Forest). Given the direction of the second set of maps it is clear that you have not demonstrated that courage.
The Old Fourth Ward deserves and requests full inclusion of our community and schools within the Northeast sector at the K-12 levels via Hope-Hill Elementary, Inman Middle, and Grady High School.
The new maps as submitted by the demographers are astonishing in their scope of racial and socio-economic segregation of the Old Fourth Ward population from their immediate northeast neighbors and the extent to which they violate a large majority of the Priority One guiding principles.
Herein are the guiding principles that the latest options violate with respect to the Old Fourth Ward:
1. Attempt to assign students to schools located closer to their homes
● Violation: In Option B, students living in the furthest part of Old Fourth Ward will travel 2.5 miles to Inman Middle School, while students in the furthest part of Kirkwood will travel 7.1 miles to Inman via surface streets. In addition, some students in the Old Fourth Ward would travel less than a mile to Inman via the Beltline or on surface streets.
2. Attempt to maximize/keep the school feeder concept intact. No more split feeders. Clusters only.
● Violation: Both options create a split feeder at the middle school level.
3. Ensure student safety and transportation efficiency by using major highway corridors and geographic features as zone boundaries. Give weight to traffic patterns, energy efficiency, etc.
● Violation: The Old Fourth Ward community attendance of King and Coan Middle School requires the crossing of a major interstate and/or major railway corridor.
4. Minimize impact on areas that have been redistricted within the last three years.
● Violation: C.W. Hill students were redistricted when they were sent to John Hope Elementary in the 2009-2010 school year.
5. Attempt to avoid splitting neighborhoods.
● Violation: Option B currently presents a split Kirkwood neighborhood, choosing to select a whiter portion of Kirkwood to go to Inman Middle School, forcing out the Old Fourth Ward.
6. Retain ES splitting as a planning tool
● Violation: This planning tool was used in 3 of the 4 Round One options and has since been discarded for Hope-Hill, while this planning tool was kept as a valid tool for a Mary Lin/Toomer merger.
7. Consider SPLOST funded school expansion as a planning tool
● Violation: Old Fourth Ward holds a significant portion of dormant APS sites that could be used for expansion for our NE cluster.
If you accept either of the proposed Options, you, as board members:
1. Admit that it is acceptable to racially gerrymander lower income, minority students out of the Northeast sector at the elementary and middle school levels so that their largely more affluent, non-minority counterparts in close proximity may attend schools without them;
2. Accept that it is a preferable objective to racially segregate children from kindergarten to the 8th grade in the northeast sector;
3. Accept that, as educators, you have decided that in the northeast sector, lower income children are the only student population appropriate to send to middle schools that act as split feeders while a body of largely high income, non-minority students are not sent to split feeder schools;
4. Accept that, as educators, it appears that you have only allowed the low-income minority children of the Old Fourth Ward to attend Grady High School for the sole purpose of retaining Grady High School’s Title I money/subsidies;
5. Accept that, as residents of the City of Atlanta, you have chosen to hyper-segregate the population of students surrounding Dr. Martin Luther King’s home in the Old Fourth Ward to an overwhelmingly lower income, minority school population;
6. Admit there is a perception that your demographers have been heavily influenced by the seemingly segregationist arguments of some within the largely more affluent, non-minority neighborhoods in the northeast sector (based on the comparison of round one and round two maps);
7. Accept that busing non-minority students from the far away neighborhoods of Lake Claire, Kirkwood and Candler Park into Inman Middle School is an acceptable practice even though minority students in the Old Fourth Ward reside within a largely walkable distance to Inman Middle School and should rightfully attend that school;
8. Accept that racially gerrymandering the largely more affluent, majority white neighborhood of Inman Park into the Mary Lin Elementary attendance zone is an acceptable practice even though its walking-distance proximity to Hope-Hill Elementary should have demanded that it is part of the Hope-Hill attendance zone;
9. Accept that you as a board and superintendent have been complicit in the historic and systematic discrimination against poor minority students from the Old Fourth Ward for decades by excluding them regularly from attending elementary and middle schools with the student populations from Inman Park, Poncey Highland, Candler Park, Lake Claire, Virginia Highland, Sherwood Forest Morningside/Lenox Park, Midtown, and Ansley Park;
10. Recognize that it appears your demographers were heavily influenced by supporters of Mary Lin Elementary, Springdale Park Elementary and Morningside Elementary to the complete and total exclusion of the Old Fourth Ward interests that were clearly communicated via the same feedback process;
11. Admit that you have chosen to repeatedly and systematically devote financial resources to majority white neighborhoods in the northeast sector through the construction of new schools and additional classroom space that maintain and support historic racial segregation.
12. Accept that you created an academic and social disadvantage for segregated students’ ability to successfully integrate at the high school level.
13. Accept that as a board, the capacity issues in the northeast sector remain unresolved; that you refuse to allow Hope-Hill’s excess capacity to assist in relieving overcrowding at Springdale Park or Mary Lin Elementary schools; and that you did this in order to satisfy non-minority neighborhoods’ desire to exclude Hope-Hill at the elementary and middle school levels; and that you in turn propose new plans/maps to fill Hope-Hill beyond capacity with lower income minority students as an alternative;
14. Accept that Priority One guiding principles were selectively applied to favor certain communities.
We respectfully request that you immediately reject the revised maps as they pertain to the Old Fourth Ward. We look forward to an immediate revision of these maps that better integrate all communities in the Northeast sector.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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310 comments Add your comment
Alex
January 31st, 2012
2:17 pm
keepusaps, you can’t solve the overcrowding and under capacity issues if you don’t address the segregation of the schools by race and income. And I’ve got news for you. When I asked the Board Chair last night why the demographers didn’t factor in eliminating segregation by race and poverty as a Guiding Principle, he said it was because that was the job of the Superintendent and Board. This is not over by a long shot.
JohnK
January 31st, 2012
2:22 pm
Thanks Maureen – my last comment was actually directed at poster “Kirkwood – Split.”
Former SPARK parent
January 31st, 2012
2:23 pm
@Intown: please go back on your meds. The parents in Va-Hi/MES/Lin are not getting “plenty of what they need” from APS. NOBODY is getting plenty of what they need from APS, although Erroll Davis will, over time, make things much better.
This is the point that’s getting missed by all of you who assume our midtown neighborhoods are homogeneous (wrong) enclaves of privilege (wrong again) unconcerned about the many poor Atlanta children who had the misfortune of being born to parents who are utter failures (wrong a third time).
Parents here have had to work their butts off to MAKE schools like SPARK into decent schools. And let’s not get carried away–SPARK would be WAY better off if APS were to walk away tomorrow and deed it over to a parent-led charter board. SPARK is what it is because of parent involvement and IN SPITE OF APS, not because of it. APS couldn’t figure out how to get our parking lot done. Couldn’t get our gym rented and renovated. Couldn’t –and still can’t–run a special ed program. Couldn’t find a qualified person to teach in the school’s beautiful Mac lab. And on and on and on….but despite APS’s failures, and the limp leadership of a principal compromised by cheating at her former school and by her close relationship with Bev Hall, SPARK parents have been relentlessly upbeat and positive in making the school a place other families want to be. Kudos to them.
SPARK parents understand that if they bused their kids to Hope-Hill they’d be putting their kids into classrooms where some students were literally years ahead of their age-level peers. And we all know APS has neither the skill nor the budget to teach both groups and keep the high-achieving students on their higher trajectory (if such unprecedented differentiation were even possible). The high-achieving students would pay a stiff price for helping float the boat for the Section 8 kids in 04W, who–don’t get me wrong–are blameless in all of this and deserve every good thing in life.
We must figure out a way to help the children of failing parents in a way that does not require high-achieving parents to sacrifice their own childrens’ educational futures. That is the stickiest part of this issue; the one leftist whiners won’t address, because they have no solution. The actual solution is loads and loads of money + a gargantuan surge in volunteerism + a very public and very painful campaign to cajole, incentivize and, yes, shame bad parents into doing better by their children. When inner-city leaders are ready to square up and face this problem, they’ll find plenty of allies in our little enclaves of privilege.
keepupaps
January 31st, 2012
2:33 pm
@IED The issue is not whether or not there are problems with income/racial imbalance. There are. The difference is who we expect to solve that problem.
You seem to think APS should solve these problems through gerrymandering and busing. I think the problem and solution largely fall with the parents of poor performing students. For now, it is also beside the point.
That very point that keeps getting conveniently overlooked is that this is supposed to be about capacity and budget. Not income and race. Again, demographers are not factoring those items in.
Recently, it honestly doesn’t look like they’re factoring in budget or capacity any more either. To keep so many disparate and emotional parents from losing it, they’re now leaving several schools at over-capacity since every solution seems provoke somebody’s ire.
I’m surprised we haven’t seen recommendations to start stacking multi-story classroom/trailers rather than mess with the attendance zone boundaries.
Perhaps we should start busing some of those those E. Rivers, Brandon, MES and Spark kids down to South Atlanta. That’s going to solve everything. The federal government can force Atlanta to do it. I’m sure the parents will be cool with that. It will instantly help all those students with parents that don’t care about their education. Great!
C Jae of EAV
January 31st, 2012
2:39 pm
@Y’all are pathetic 2:07pm – Trying to get meaningful and progressive change out of the kabal in the ebony tower (pun intended) down on Trinity Ave is like banging your head againest a brick wall. I’ve come to learn the upper level decision makers have skillfully developed the art of public relations spin.
The Board (at least during Dr. Hall tenture) was under the thumb of city business leaders and would be do-good state legislators (inclusive of current Mayor Reed)who stood poised to construct bills to weaken their goverance authority and oust them from office (dispite the fact they are elected officals for better or worse) if need be to ensure the stat quo prevails.
I say all that to if a real systemic change gon’ come (cue Sam Cooke), it certainly doesnt appear to be on the horizon any time soon.
skipper
January 31st, 2012
2:39 pm
10-4…Inner city leaders need to be stressing the importance of education to their folks!! Yes, there is some disparity, and always will be. But kids coming to school with their pants below their butts and bragging about NOT making decent grades is a real problem. Who in the world (black or white) is going to send their kid for the sake of political correctness and racial harmony? This is not all race….its culture! Many black parents are getting the heck out when they get the chance. Brown vs. Board of education was supposed to make things better, but it DID NOT and CANNOT make the kids WANT to learn! When folks feel safer and feel that their kids are in a decent (not perfect, but decent) place, things will get better. Until then, these blogs will go back and forth, left and right, black and white, poor and rich, and nothing will change!
Really?
January 31st, 2012
2:40 pm
@FormerSPARKParent – are you hearing yourself? My son’s best friend lives in “Section 8″ housing. This boy is a great kid and is in the “oh-so-coveted” gifted program, and his mom works her butt off trying to finish her college degree, hold down a full time job and raise her son. She doesn’t have time for PTA stuff right now.
Not all “Section 8″ kids will hurt your little angel’s “high trajectory.” A lot of the parents of such kids have achieved a heck of a lot more in their lives than you and your “high achieving” parent friends. They had a lot less starting out so it appears to you that they haven’t done much.
I’ve seen lazy poor people and just as many lazy rich people. I’ve lived in Candler Park for 20 years and am ashamed at the attitudes that I see among the newer residents. I’m completely amazed that they call themselves “Progressives.” It’s almost a joke.
I have a friend whose kid was transferred from a “high achieving” (aka mostly white) Decatur school to a “low achieving” (aka mostly black) school. You should have heard the whining from the “parents of “high achievers.” My friend says that the “low achieving” school was in reality the best school in the district, but no one could see beyond the brown faces.
skipper
January 31st, 2012
3:17 pm
@Really,
Thats how you want it to be, but not how it is. If it were like that even occasionally, nobody would have any problems. These situations have festered, and some of the schools talked about in this blog are terrible. We all have seen instances you mention, but if it happened like that more than once in a blue moon all problems would be solved. You must not have done your homework on these schools…..and again the problem is culture, or lack thereof. The playing field will never be level as long as a good education is debunked by such a major portion of the population, and the area is not safe. People can lie….crime statistics and what area they are from cannot. People will change when they feel true meaning, not when folks force them to believe something that “ain’t so” or cram something down their throats w/o backing it up.
Former SPARK parent
January 31st, 2012
3:32 pm
No matter what anybody says to the libs on this thread, they remain convinced it’s all about “brown faces.” Even if somebody were to take them on a tour of the way-more-diverse-than-Hope Hill SPARK so they could SEE all the brown faces, it wouldn’t matter. Because you should never let the facts get in the way of a good left-wing racial narrative!
APS cannot fix the parents who send kids to school unprepared and unwilling to learn. We can’t expect ANY school system to fix that problem. And until that problem IS addressed, households which do value education need not feel any pressure from you or anybody else to toss their kids into a maelstrom — like a forcibly split HH/SPARK hybrid.
Reality
January 31st, 2012
3:37 pm
I realize that this type of thing goes on all around the country. Redistricting used as a tool to insulate more affluent neighborhoods. But in this city, where Dr. Martin Luther King jr was born? And to gerrymander around his boyhood home?!?!? Wow, just Wow.
Former SPARK parent
January 31st, 2012
3:49 pm
@Reality: What would MLK say about inner-city parents’ disdain for education? About the thug-culture mantra that being educated is “actin’ white?” About the saggy pants? Would he feel that he had freed black Americans from the shackles of segregation only to see them self-segregate via Section 8 vouchers? Would he blame Va-Hi for trying to stay as far as possible from HH, or would he blame the parents around HH for not sending their children to school ready to learn?
Is every misfortune that happens to black people STILL the fault of some white person somewhere?
Answer honestly now.
By the way, even his MLK’s own CHILDREN aren’t proving themselves worthy of the sacrifice he made, much less the denizens of SectionEightsVille.
O4wParent
January 31st, 2012
3:56 pm
@Former SPARK Parent. Please keep in mind that the Old Fourth Ward is not advocating to come to your elementary school. In fact, our preference would be to have Hope-Hill remain open. If you read our position, it is about inclusion primarily at the middle school level. This would enable there to be a true feeder pattern. Ultimately, the kids end up in school together in high school anyway. We are seeking an earlier entry point.
Many of the posters keep making this about race whenever the word segregation is heard people assume race. Segregation can also be based upon class. I do not fault anyone for wanting the best for their children however I don’t feel you can ignore what is right in front of you. While we in the Old Fourth Ward are advocating for ALL of the children in the O4W, the people who are advocating don’t fit into the Bedford Pines box either. Ironically, two city blocks on Boulevard have more precedence than all of the Doctors, Lawyers, CPA’s, and CFP’s I have met through this process,my neighbors.
You are correct that APS cannot fix parents who send their children to school unprepared and unwilling to learn and I don’t believe we are asking them to. We are asking for inclusion and for them to fix under-capacity and over-capacity issues in a fiscally responsible manner.
keepupaps
January 31st, 2012
3:56 pm
*sigh* When I start to hear people sarcastically call each other “liberals” and “conservatives” I get really worried.
Somewhere out there, there is some compromise. There is some unknown ratio of higher-income students and lower-income students that can work well together without causing the higher-income families to freak out and leave the public school system.
Even if you could figure out that ratio, you’ve got two big problems left: 1) How to pay for that compromise, since it probably means spending more than less on strategically located gerrymandered districts. 2) You’re still not solving the problem for many more low-income students who aren’t located in adjacent districts to better schools.
Fix the incomes, fix the parental involvement. Strong parental involvement doesn’t have to mean attending PTA meetings and volunteering at the school. It can be a simple as telling your kids that they must try hard and succeed at school.
APS and restricting cannot solve the problem of uncaring, unmotivated or uninvolved parents.
Always Skeptical
January 31st, 2012
4:07 pm
OK SPARK folks….You say you didn’t want a “forced merger” with Hope Hill…Well how about this…Your attendance line runs right along Ponce de Leon. You could easily drop it south to Angier Ave between Boulevard and Parkway and pick up those students. I’ll bet those folks in the Old Fourth Ward might then be able to find a reason to argue for more money coming your way for an expansion.
yagottabekiddingme
January 31st, 2012
4:14 pm
@former SPARK parent: bravo! ” We must figure out a way to help the children of failing parents in a way that does not require high-achieving parents to sacrifice their own childrens’ educational futures.” BINGO!!!
Parent
January 31st, 2012
4:23 pm
This isn’t about race it’s about school performance, period. We all want our kids in the best schools. I’ll bet most of us value a diverse student body just at highly.
The cold hard reality is that some schools have stellar test scores and other’s don’t. The schools with the higher test scores historically have high levels of parent involvement and less interference from APS. The schools that don’t have high test scores have been implicated in the cheating scandal and require significant investment by teachers/parents to close the gap with their higher performing peers. The parents that have been working tirelessly to improve school A do not want to start over at school B, only to see it turn around after their kids move to middle or high school.
If all parties would quit making this a racial issue and focus on the corruption at APS and how to best recover from the cheating scandal, I think we would be surprised by how closely our interests align.
Alex
January 31st, 2012
4:28 pm
Oh, Former SPARK Parent, aka Rick Lockridge, and all who support him, wouldn’t it just be easier to direct everyone to Rick’s blog rather than having this back and forth? His blog is a great example about how such comments are really just about a particular culture:
http://vahiblog.blogspot.com/
The one on the “elephant in the room” is particularly instructive. And look! There’s SPARK (or maybe Lin?) parents who have made comments supporting the “elephant in the room” posting, just like the comments on this blog.
Maybe the MLK National Historic Site can just link to Rick’s blog?
bu2
January 31st, 2012
5:13 pm
@GM
My HS had 2100 students and my graduating class was 625 (it was 10th-12th only). I certainly didn’t know everyone or close to everyone, but like most of the kids in the school, we weren’t in the same place for 12 years, so noone could know everyone even if there were only 1200 kids. I think there were only 20 kids out of the 625 who had been in that school district all 12 years.
We had good teachers and the teachers knew you. I wasn’t an extrovert, so not knowing everyone wasn’t stressful. Everyone seemed to find their own niche.
Y'all are pathetic
January 31st, 2012
5:13 pm
Let just put a giant concrete wall around all those folks in candler, lake c, inman p, va-ha, morningside and be done with them! Of course all us humans will have to get out first so all those “highly educated and well paid,” hate mongers can eat each other alive! DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN READ WHAT YOU WRITE? IT’S AS MUCH NONSENSE AS THIS! SHAME ON YOU…IT’S 2012 FOR GODS SAKE! YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN ANYONE!
@Alex
January 31st, 2012
5:19 pm
Alex said: “There’s SPARK (or maybe Lin?) parents who have made comments supporting the “elephant in the room” posting, just like the comments on this blog.”
Actually, that’s a Morningside parent. Not that you probably really care.
WSmom
January 31st, 2012
5:57 pm
Oh “Frustrated APS mom” are you truly stating that with the “flight” of Brandon parents from a new middle school means that Bolton, Garden Hills, Rivers, and Centennial Place students will be destined to fail? Seriously? Brandon parents hold the key to whether a school will thrive or fail? It is comments such as yours that I have found to be one of the most disappointing things about the redistricting process. Ignorance breeds fear and from what I have heard in conversations and have read on blogs over the past few months, there is a great deal of ignorance out there. Yes, each of the aforementioned schools are Title I. Yes, there are economically disadvantaged students at each of these schools. Poverty, unlike a cold is not catching, however, ignorance is.
Intown Educational Disparity
January 31st, 2012
6:07 pm
I agree with the Former SPARK parent if truth be known.
No APS school has it right because it is an APS school. The parents that lead you to believe Grady is the promised land are only luring others into their fold to increase their own numbers so that MES or SPARK or Lin kids won’t feel like the SPARK or Lin families looking at the k center concept.
White people and know affluent people of all races aren’t comfortable with any group that does not fit in their demographic range.
I chuckle when I hear the Grady lady say they want ALL at Grady. If she’s been that actively involved at Grady and really means that, then she would have built four strong schools for the students coming in. I’ll bet the daughter she mentioned last night is in the Communications Magnet which might as well be a charter school nestled within Grady High the way they have set that school up.
Intown parents of affluence, beware. You are being sold a line of propaganda about the schools beyond elementary. Your elementary school experience may be the best years of your APS life because it doesn’t get any better for you.
All other intown parents, you will never have a fair shake in APS unless Davis and the ABOE step up to the plate, override these maps and draw lines that are designed to address the over/undercrowding issues within SRT3.
Let’s see if the majority black ABOE members including a black Chair and Vice Chair along with a black Superintendent can just stick to the job and draw logical plans that leave no overcrowded school in SRT3. There is space to do it. I think they will chicken out to the white community’s noise and unreason.
To Alex from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
6:22 pm
ALex, good schools don’t happen by osmosis.
Alex, you sound more interested in being a social climber than a real advocate for education. Time and again on these blogs you’ve suggested that higher-income families should b e required to move their children to an old fourth ward school to solve the poverty or that old fourth ward should be divided into four parts and sent to higher income schools and when Inman Park suggested you roll up your sleeves and do the work, you replied “@Inman Park Resident, we’d love to roll up our sleeves with you. Thank you!”
Not once have you asked how to get improvement started or asked for advice for improving your school. You continually advocate some other families doing it for you.
Good schools don’t happen by osmosis. You can’t put a poor child next to a rich child and expect the knowlege to just rub off somehow.
If you really are interested in improving your school, then get involved in YOUR community. Gather all your neighbors together and form study groups. Include some at risk kids in your group and help them with their homework. Be a leader in your gruop and then recruit some more leaders to do the same. Build it from the ground up — get YOURself involved. Do the hard work and stop expecting everyone else to do teh work for you.
Good day,
Good Mom
Former SPARK parent
January 31st, 2012
6:58 pm
@Intown: Don’t forget to include the feckless Cecily Harsch-Kinnane in your calculus. She can’t and won’t stand up for the constituents who unwisely elected her (don’t worry, we’ll fix that mistake next election, you can count on it). If you’re right and the BOE wants to punt this overcrowding problem down the road, they’ll steamroll right over her as per usual.
Kirkwood - Split
January 31st, 2012
7:23 pm
@John, please look at a map before you speak. There is a Clifton in Kirkwood. The map of Kirkwood via google maps may help you a little bit. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Kirkwood+30317&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0×88f50132527cc6e3:0xbbac598e1d379cf2,Kirkwood,+Atlanta,+GA&gl=us&ei=kYUoT-jFG6bs2QWVxsTDAg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ8gEwAA
Question
January 31st, 2012
7:26 pm
@ To Alex from Good Mom, 6:22: “Alex, you sound more interested in being a social climber than a real advocate for education.”
Typical snide, cruel Good Mom/Mother comment. Why are you so concerned about giving other people advice when you’ve already announced that you’ve signed up for a private school and will move out of APS? What business is it of yours what Alex does, or anyone else involved here? You’re just a self-important outsider who doesn’t have to worry about any of this.
To Question
January 31st, 2012
7:38 pm
Nah, I’m not an outsider. I was raised in public schools. I will also send my childen to public schools in the future. My private school pit stop is just an insurance policy against whatever APS does. My ultimate goal is just to get my kids out of GA public schools and my immediate goal is to get them out of APS. As a property owner in APS I have a dog in this fight and as a mother, I simply care about kids.. As a citizen, I am an advocate for a strong, public school system as I believe it is necessary for a Democracy.
Crickets....
January 31st, 2012
7:52 pm
What….? isn’t everyone everyone standing up to applaud Good Mom and her self-aggrandizing praise?
bu2
January 31st, 2012
8:10 pm
@crickets
Seems like a lot of people could use some diversity training. True diveristy, differences of opinion. A lot of people don’t want to hear people with differing opinions.
keepupaps
January 31st, 2012
8:17 pm
Someone earlier raised a good question. For MES, Spark and Lin parents, what do you plan to do when your children graduate from Inman?
The demographics at Grady are not all that different that Hope-Hill. There’s some diversity, but not much.
It’s interesting to see the current breakdown of Elementary schools that feed into Grady. It appears that many of them drop out along the way. Where are they going in such large numbers?
MORNINGSIDE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 772
LIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 567
SPRINGDALE PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 366
CENTENNIAL PLACE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 482
HOPE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 409
TOOMER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 197
EAST LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 234
The elementary schools that feed into grady in 2009-2010 had 3027 students. That same year Grady had 1481 students. While growth has occurred over those gap years, those numbers don’t seem to work out.
To GM from Nashvilleo4w
January 31st, 2012
8:26 pm
Wow GM….I really do feel sorry for you. Your hatred is so explicit that you call people liars? Really? You honestly don’t think a stranger in an empty auditorium can’t pull one of the demographers aside and talk to them? You honestly think that I would have to make that up?
Based on your reaction, I bet you were probably one of those parents that did send the hateful emails. I hope you get some help and please, stop sending those hateful emails to the demographers or APS because Its obvious to me that you are part of the problem.
JohnK
January 31st, 2012
8:50 pm
@Kirkwood split – Option B does not divide Kirkwood. The western boundary of Kirkwood is Rogers. The Toomer zone in Option B extends west of Rogers. Clifton street is in Edgewood.
JohnK
January 31st, 2012
8:51 pm
I meant Option A does not divide Kirkwood…
To Nashvilleo4d from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:06 pm
Of course I believe anyone can pull aside a demographer. I did as well but certainly not to gossip. You obviously have an agenda. You want everyone to believe that all the decisions are based on race and you want to play that tired, worn out race card.
The demographers told you over and agaiin that race and income were not considered. It’s about numbers of butts in seats at school and numbers of dollars it takes to get them there.
I absolutley believe every neighborhood in APS sent and received hateful emails. No one neighborhood has a corner on emotional outbursts. What is sad is that you and Alex can try to throw affluent neighborhoods under the bus and whine about hateful emails, if the demographers care. They are there to do a job and follow the APS guidelines. They want to get paid, THey don’t give a rats azz about you and your complaints about hateful emails. I am sure the demographers have been there done that a hundred times. You didn’t drop a bombshell on the blog by “revealing” that gasp and oh horror, someone sent a naughty email.
…and the point is that nothing of what you said has absolutely any impact on the proposed plans. You can spend your time and energy whining about perceived racism or you can spend your time fixing what’s wrong with your neighborhood school. If you put all your apparently limitless time into making a positive change at your school instead of trying to make everyone believe that every white person is a racist who is out to get you, you might have a better school. Why don’t you make some progress? Start with Alex. He claims he has an idea to bring a playground to Hope Hill.
To Keepupaps from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:11 pm
You ask “Someone earlier raised a good question. For MES, Spark and Lin parents, what do you plan to do when your children graduate from Inman?”
Keepup, why do you care? It isn’t any of your business wshat MES, Spark and Lin parents plan to do after Inman.
Always Skeptical
January 31st, 2012
9:16 pm
Good Mom, as usual you have it all wrong…..starting with the large field behind Hope-Hill. If you had driven by today around 12:30 you would have seen instructors running a loop around the field with a group of children while another group of students did jumping jacks. The playground is owned by the City of Atlanta. The children use it everyday.
keepupaps
January 31st, 2012
9:24 pm
@Good Mom You’re right, it’s none of my business. I should’ve asked what color shoes they’re wearing tomorrow.
By the way, I’d still like to understand where all the Elementary students end up in such great numbers, if not at Grady. Are that many Inman grads going to private High Schools?
Alex
January 31st, 2012
9:28 pm
@Good Mom, you can stop sending me posts because I won’t feed the troll. I have put you in that same category as Former SPARK Parent aka Rick Lockridge. Why don’t you head on over to big tent?
yes i am worried
January 31st, 2012
9:29 pm
Here is the problem with Atlanta and DeKalb schools — A parent shouldn’t have to have an idea on how to bring a playground to a school. The school system should simply assure that each school has one. Atlanta schools spend more per student than any other system in the southeast and they can’t figure out how to put playgrounds at each school?
However, because parent groups are busy raising funds to get their schools a playground, no one is pushing the board and system to do what is right. A single mom working two hourly jobs is less likely to have time to make it to a board meeting than a stay at home mom or one who has flex time or an understanding boss.
PS — Good Mom, you frighten me. I don’t understand your angle or your anger. I am curious what you have contributed at Mary Lin that has helped improve the school.
To Alex from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:34 pm
Ah Lex, you whine “Why don’t you head on over to big tent?”
Alex, Alex, Alex, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
To Yes I am Worried from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:35 pm
You asked what I do to contribute to my school. Just read my earlier blogs. You’ll find it all there.
To Yes I am Worried from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:41 pm
Yes I am worried — you have an entitlement mentality. You write “The school system should simply assure that each school has one. Atlanta schools spend more per student than any other system in the southeast and they can’t figure out how to put playgrounds at each school?”
No, Yes I am worried, playgrounds don’t just happen by APS bringing them there. Hard-working parents work to bring them there. We raise money to buy the equipment, get the approvals to ensure they are safe and we have work days to bring in mulch and spread it ourselves. I’ve done this since my kids were two years old in pre school. We got out there on Saturdays with shovels of sand and hoes and rakes and worked on the playground. We’ve done all of that since my kids were two. Every year.
Go read the Smoke Rise elementary school controversy on the other blog. The parents raised 34,000 and the principall tried to steal the money.l The money was intended to replace the rotten playground.
Your comment is so frustrating. The school “should” do it. WHo do you think the “school” is?
YOU ARE THE SCHOOL. Parents are the schools. Students are the schools. Teachers are the schools. The community is the schools. Your attitude that the playground is not your job is infuriating. If you want your kid to go to a good school then YOU have to do the work.
To Keepusaps from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:45 pm
Keep up, I really wished you’d keep up. You ask a downright obvious que”By the way, I’d still like to understand where all the Elementary students end up in such great numbers, if not at Grady. Are that many Inman grads going to private High Schools?”
Some go to private schools. Some leave and go to other school disticts but the main reason is that those elementary schools are still at Grady.
You see, you add all the nubmers and see that the high school has far fewer numbers than the combined enrollments of the elementary schools. There is of course, another explanation. Drop outs. Kids drop out of high school. Guess which ones.ith P.S. It doesn’t have anything to do with the color of their shoes.
To Always SKeptical from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:49 pm
AS, the field you describe is a practice baseball field where there is:
No slide.
No swing.
No merry go round.’
No monkey bars.
No tree house.
It’s just an empty lot.
That’s your idea of a “play”ground?
Sad. So sad.
anon
January 31st, 2012
9:54 pm
Someone made a reference to Brown v Board that shows a basic misunderstanding of how constitutional law applies in this area. Brown involved a challenge to de jure segregation. Here, we have de facto segregation or self-segregation. That is unfortunate, but this is not the old south. The Old Fourth Ward advocate is not complaining because the demographers took race into account when drawing proposed district lines. Rather, she is complaining because they failed to take race into account. What she may not realize is that if the Board takes race into account, even if their purpose is to promote diversity, the redistricting plan that emerges will be vulnerable to an equal protection challenge; strict scrutiny would apply. And while increasing diversity and reducing racial isolation are compelling state interests (and laudable goals, to be sure), a redistricting plan that takes race into account must be narrowly drawn to achieve those goals. A redistricting plan that overburdens one group to achieve those goals will fail this test and be struck down. E.g., a plan that requires one disproportionately white school to be bused far away even though there is a much closer school in their area would likely fall into this category. On the other hand, where you have two roughly equidistant schools with different racial mixes, a redistricting plan that favors the more diverse school would probably pass muster. Anyway, for a more recent Supreme Court case in this area, you might want to look at Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1 (2007).
Always Skeptical
January 31st, 2012
9:58 pm
Good Mom…you don’t get it….You never will. You say they don’t have a play ground..like they have no place to play…They don’t have play ground equipment, and we are working on that…They do have a gym…a well equipped gym….But you really don’t care about that. The Old Fourth Ward will win this debate. We will win it for our kids…and it’s about far more than monkey bars. I grew up in the city and we didn’t have any of the stuff you mention. We did have kickballs, jump ropes baseballs, bats, our imaginations and each other… and so do these kids. Give it your best shot “good mom”….You’ll come up short every time…
Question
January 31st, 2012
9:59 pm
To Yes I am Worried from Good Mom
January 31st, 2012
9:35 pm
You asked what I do to contribute to my school. Just read my earlier blogs. You’ll find it all there.
___________________________________________
Indeed. Your earlier blogs on “Get Schooled” go back at least 6 months, at least 5-10 per thread at great length, written day and night, always attacking someone–usually teachers–and presenting changing sob-stories about yourself. “Whine” is your giveaway trademark word. Your posts are very often cruel, telling teachers posting they’re failures and should quit, always giving other posters advice about what to do and how to teach.
As many, many “Get Schooled” bloggers have advised you: get therapy and stop seeking constant attention and validation from a blog.
J.G. in EAV
January 31st, 2012
10:00 pm
“Just read my earlier blogs,” she says without providing a link…
Also, regarding playgrounds: What idiot builds an elementary school without including a playground in the first place? How does that even happen?
yes i am worried
January 31st, 2012
10:05 pm
Entitlement mentality? Who in the world thinks that it is appropriate for school’s NOT to have a playground? Are you kidding me?
It is a joke that Atlanta Public schools has allowed some children to have playgrounds while other’s don’t. Not every school community can raise money. It is beyond wrong.
Every school needs a playground and it is up to the school system to provide it.
Good Mother, For the last few months, I have seen you do nothing but complain about teachers, administrators, the system etc. You complain about working and you complain that readers of this blog have expectations that parents will contribute to their child’s education. You just complain.
Mary Lin is lucky you are leaving. I suspect you won’t be missed.
yes i am worried
January 31st, 2012
10:07 pm
And by the way, I did help raise significant $$$ for a playgound at my children’s DeKalb school. And it is a beautiful thing. But my children attend a school with less than 20 percent free and reduced lunch and only 1 apartment complex. And the majority of the families are upper middle class or higher. So, get over yourself.
I still think it is wrong that PTAs and parent groups are doing this in lieu of the school systems. It is wrong — all children should have access to a playground. PERIOD>