Sheila J. Lenz, a Druid Hills Middle School teacher and Druid Hills High School parent, tackles an important issue today – the impact of annexation on students and schools in DeKalb.
Many of the points she raises have not been addressed in the early debate around annexing parts of DeKalb into the city of Atlanta.
By Sheila J. Lenz
Credit: Maureen Downey
Credit: Maureen Downey
Just over a month ago, the Druid Hills High School community finished a week of homecoming festivities with a parade that looped from the school through the Emory Hospital campus. The highlights of the parade were colorful, spirited floats that had been built by students in the back yards and driveways of homes in Druid Hills (freshmen), Laurel Ridge (sophomores), Medlock Park (juniors) and Clairmont Heights (seniors).
Float-building is a tradition that unites students and parents across the Druid Hills High School community – a community that is threatened with a break-up that is unwanted by its majority. Two of the homes that hosted float-building – Medlock Park and Laurel Ridge – and possibly, the home in Clairmont Heights, stand to be left without a high school if a small group of Druid Hills residents succeed in their efforts to annex their residences and our high school into the city of Atlanta.
What is upsetting to those of us who love the Druid Hills High School cluster is that the annexation efforts ignore what, or rather who, makes this community so special. It’s not the historic high school building located on the Emory campus, or any of the other facilities (including Adams Stadium and Fernbank Science Center) that stand to be drawn into the Atlanta Public School system.
This is an amazing and successful high school because of its incredible teachers and staff. The same goes for the cluster of five elementary schools and the middle school that feed Druid Hills High – excellent teachers, committed administrators, and great support staff.
Much of this could be lost if the annexation efforts succeed.
What would happen if the annexation proponents get their wish to move DHHS, Fernbank Elementary and Briar Vista Elementary to APS? The DeKalb-employed faculty and staff would need to find jobs at another DeKalb school or apply to move to APS (which surely can’t guarantee any jobs since it must remain neutral in this discussion). It seems likely current APS employees would have seniority over new hires at these schools.
The incredibly diverse student population drawn from the three other elementary schools will be uprooted and redrawn into a reconstituted high school district. Laurel Ridge, Avondale and McLendon elementary schools provide about 80 percent of the DHHS population.
Then, there’s the question of what would happen to the middle school, which changed its name from Shamrock three years ago to emphasize its unity with Druid Hills High School.
We hear about the property issues, in which very valuable land and facilities are at stake, including Adams Stadium and the International Center (also within the LaVista Hills proposed limits, and possibly Brookhaven).
Annexation allegedly would require DeKalb taxpayers to hand over these properties, as well as Fernbank Science Center and the newly built Fernbank Elementary (to be ready for the 2015-16 school year) for free. But on an individual, student level, there are ramifications that are much more serious than redistricting within a school system.
DHHS offers the prestigious International Baccalaureate program, which requires a two-year commitment beginning in 11th grade. Would rising seniors outside of a new DHHS attendance line lose their spots in the program, or would it be dissolved, since it’s funded by DeKalb? What happens to the STT program that offers high school science courses at Fernbank Science Center to students across DeKalb? Since Science Center employees are DCSD employees, they possibly would lose their jobs, as well.
What about sports?
The community has built great momentum in recent years, thanks to the Druid Hills Athletic Foundation, and there have been major improvements on the high and middle school facilities, including an indoor batting cage that is being finished at Druid Hills Middle School, as well as a beautiful baseball field. On many spring afternoons, you’ll find the high school baseball and soccer teams playing games on adjacent fields at the middle school, which is also home to the cross country squad.
There are many problems to be addressed in our school system, but breaking up the Druid Hills cluster is not a solution to any of them. This is a community with strong, long-standing traditions of academic excellence, arts programs, cultural diversity, and, even homecoming parades. These traditions are kept alive by the students, teachers, alumnae and neighborhoods, and they should be kept intact.
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