Decatur district to own its first school

By April Hunt

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Decatur school district will soon be the owner of something new: its first school.

The city has owned the district's schools since they were built, because the district was formed out of the city's charter.  When state law changed in the early 1990s, requiring school board members to be elected, the city held on to the titles.

But last week, the Decatur City Commission agreed to transfer the title of shuttered Fifth Avenue school to the district, in anticipation of a renovation project to turn the building into a fourth- and fifth-grade academy.

"This means less paperwork for them to get the financing in place for the project," City Manager Peggy Merriss said. "Otherwise, we would have had to have some letter of agreement for repayment or a full intergovernmental agreement. This is just easier."

The district plans to borrow between $8 million and $10 million to renovate the school. It plans to pay for the project using its share of sales taxes -- about $13 million over five years -- that it now uses for similar projects such as an early childhood education center.

‘We feel this is one of the first steps that we as a school system need, to move forward with our future plans for this building," said district superintendent Phyllis Edwards.

Fifth Avenue was among three elementary schools closed five years ago, amid declining enrollment. The district had just 2,500 students in 2004.

Now, more than 2,800 students are enrolled in Decatur schools. Projections show several hundred more in the coming years.

Edwards said reopening Fifth Avenue will handle that grow, while allowing the district to better plan for future use. Once renovated, the school will be able to handle 120 more students than the current academy at Glennwood.

The project also allows the district to convert Glennwood into the fourth in the system to house grades K-3.

There are no current requests from the district to be granted ownership of those other schools. But more title transfers are just a matter of time, Mayor Bill Floyd said.

"We will have to start to look at that," Floyd said. "They're grown up now. It's time for them not to have to depend on us."