Parents, kids demand Cobb school be moved

Parents and children protested in front of a Cobb County elementary school Wednesday, waving signs and demanding that the school board move the school away from a busy road expansion.

“Enough is enough! Move our school!” children chanted as passing traffic beeped.

Johnny Crawford/ jcrawford@ajc.com

Yasmina Pierre, 16, takes part in Wednesday’s protest.

See protest photos

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Milford Elementary School will be bordered by multilane arteries once Cobb County completes the Windy Hill/Macland Road connector, said Christine Able, executive director of the nonprofit Osborne Community Coalition. The coalition provides community support to residents south of Marietta.

Protesters want the school board to use part of $40 million in unused construction money from a special sales tax to build a new school and use the old school as a government building.

That’s not in the cards, a school board spokesman said.

“We don’t have the resources to relocate a school,” Cobb County school spokesman Jay Dillon said. “We’ve been working with the county, and we believe the county has gone to great lengths to make sure this is a safe project.”

The road project is meant to make it easier for commuters to go from west Cobb to I-75.

But Teretha Burns, president of the Milford Elementary School PTA, said it will put students in danger because the busy road will be 20 feet away from the school’s front door.

“It’s not safe to close this school in with increased traffic and speed,” Burns said.

On the other side of the school is a closed landfill and a police shooting range, Burns said.

“Now they want to give us the road,” she said.

Cobb County spokesman Robert Quigley said the county plans to use part of the school’s parking lot as a buffer for the road. The road will actually be 100 feet away from the school, not 20 feet, he said. It will be five feet lower than the school and will have a retaining wall, a fence and landscaping, Quigley said.

The county has also offered to build a $1.2 million pedestrian tunnel under the road, but residents say it’s unsafe for children to enter a dark tunnel in an area with a lot of adult pedestrians.