DeKalb County school officials for the first time want to try housing a community's fourth- and fifth-graders together on one campus. It would happen in Dunwoody, where the system is building a new elementary school.

Three of Dunwoody's five current elementary schools would send their fourth- and fifth-graders there: Austin, Chesnut and Vanderlyn. The other two, Hightower and Kingsley, would remain schools for kindergarten through fifth grade. The new school, dubbed Dunwoody Academy, would have an initial enrollment of 756, with a designed capacity for 986 students.

Enrollment in Dunwoody long ago blew through the roof. Vanderlyn Elementary, for example, enrolls 933 students yet has an instructional capacity of 572. The new elementary school was initially conceived as a regular k-through-5 school. Parents, however, began during the last year to protest the potential re-drawing of attendance lines away from top-drawer schools. System officials responded two weeks ago with the fourth- and fifth-grade academy proposal. It would work, they said, for three reasons:

• It relieves major overcrowding.

• It balances enrollment among the three schools feeding into it; the three are all over-capacity.

• It avoids changes in attendance lines. Parents could still send kindergartners to third-graders to the popular elementary schools they've come to know and love.

Response from parents

"I think a lot of people are feeling left out," said Austin PTA co-president Dana Gaines, adding that this was her personal view. A group of parent leaders, including Gaines, have begun talking about the plan's pros and cons and want to meet with system officials to talk about it.

Gaines said it caught many parents off guard, since they didn't know it was a possibility. Worries include whether kids from Hightower and Kingsley — the two schools not involved — will feel left out, and if particular programs at the different schools — such as Austin's German language program — can be continued at the new campus.

For her part, Gaines is trying to be practical: "If we've got to deal with it, then let's do everything in our power to make sure it goes through correctly."

With construction expected to be completed in summer 2009, the school's doors would open for the 2009-10 school year.