DeKalb schools rethink where to build

With student enrollment beginning to shift in south DeKalb County — as students transfer from struggling schools and home foreclosures displace families — county school officials expect to recommend changes soon that could shift millions of construction dollars away from the area.

It’s a move that could reignite old north/south rivalries.

No formal announcement has been made. But by all indications, the changes would include not building a planned 31-classroom addition at Lithonia High School. The $11 million project was originally included on the system’s construction priority list when voters reaffirmed a penny-on-the-dollar sales tax for school construction in 2007.

School officials now say that a newly built high school nearby will do enough to ease overcrowding at Lithonia High, where 21 portable classroom trailers dot the campus. But doing away with the Lithonia project, which would require school board approval, could set off fireworks in a struggle for resources.

Schools Superintendent Crawford Lewis warns he’ll have none of it.

“The district has to send a very clear message that when there are additional dollars to be used, we’re not going to go back” to a parochial mind-set, Lewis said last week. “We need to look across the district and see what needs are systemwide.”

Jay Cunningham, the school board member whose district includes Lithonia High, echoed that sentiment, although he declined to specifically address that school’s situation.

“They’re going to bring forward the recommendation and we’re going to look at it,” Cunningham said. “We’re going to do what’s financially sound and do what’s best for our kids, period. And that means the whole county, not just one area — those days are over with.”

Historically, north DeKalb has been predominantly white, south DeKalb predominantly black — although those lines are now blurry, especially given an influx of Latino and immigrant families in north DeKalb along Buford Highway.

For years, south DeKalb parents complained that their schools were overlooked. Until the recession, the area experienced booming enrollment growth, prompting the school system recently to build a string of new schools in the area as well as planning several other classroom additions, including at Lithonia High.

But with the new Arabia Mountain High School set to open in August, officials expect to zone enough students away from Lithonia High that the school’s enrollment, for the first time in years, will be within capacity.

Now, a handful of parents who have become aware of the shift want any re-prioritized money to fix up schools in north DeKalb, which they say have needs not met over the last several years.

Case in point, these parents say, is Lakeside High School in unincorporated Atlanta. The school has 21 classroom trailers to handle an overflow of 336 students.

There’s no new campus being built near Lakeside to siphon off students, a number of whom transferred to the school this year as allowed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The school is slated to get more than $11 million for construction of a new auditorium and “career technology” classrooms, but not for a regular classroom wing.

“We’ve been complaining a lot; the building’s crumbling,” said Lakeside supporter Sue Heslup about the 44-year-old campus.

“I’m not saying other schools don’t have needs,” Heslup said.

Other schools in DeKalb are likely to make similar claims. Southwest DeKalb High School, in unincorporated Decatur south of I-20, has been renovated but still enrolls 1,855 students — 595 students over its capacity. The campus has 24 classroom trailers and is not scheduled to get a classroom addition.

The school board would have to approve any changes to the construction list. Patricia Pope, the system’s chief operations officer who assembled the list, has indicated a recommendation for changes will be put forward over the next 90-120 days.

Board member Paul Womack, whose district includes Lakeside High, acknowledged that the school needs work. But he said the board was unified in considering the overall needs of the system over the demands of any particular region of the county.