How should Atlanta Public Schools decide which properties to get rid of?
The public will get a chance to help answer that question when APS officials hold meetings this week as part of the district’s facility master planning effort. Consultants recently recommended the district consider selling or trading 16 properties that may no longer be needed. Those sites include vacant school buildings and inactive land.
A virtual meeting will take place at noon Thursday; registration is open online. At 6 p.m. Thursday, district leaders will hold an in-person session at the Atlanta College & Career Academy, 1090 Windsor St. SW.
Officials want to discuss the criteria the district uses to decide which properties to get rid of. APS owns 152 properties, including 47 potentially excess sites.
To identify which of those properties could be sold or traded, consultants reviewed enrollment projections, risk hazards such as a site’s proximity to railroads and highways, and property size and location and came up with a list of 16 sites.
”One of our desires in engagement is not to get to individual conversations on individual pieces of property at this point because it’s more about the process of identifying properties — not what to do with specific properties,” APS chief strategy officer Travis Norvell said at a board meeting earlier this month.
The upcoming community meetings are one step in the property disposal process. The school board is expected to consider the matter in October and make a final determination in November.
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