Parents and teachers in the Cross Keys cluster of schools, where overcrowding has forced nearly 2,000 students into portable classrooms — trailers — don’t think the district’s planned solution is the best one.
They began making a case for redistricting instead, at public hearings this week. The hearings came after officials pitched a tentative plan to the DeKalb Board of Education that would shuffle off fourth- and fifth-graders to create grade-level academies for them while a new high school, middle school and two elementary schools are built in the area around the cluster.
The Cross Keys Cluster consists of six schools in neighborhoods along Buford Highway that are populated mostly with minority students whose primary language is anything but English. The schools are Woodward, Montclair, Dresden and Cary Reynolds elementary schools, Sequoyah Middle and Cross Keys High. The schools have a capacity for 5,700 students, but more than 7,500 are enrolled.
Officials said 81 “portables,” trailer classrooms, are used at the four elementary schools, with another 32 at the middle and high school. There are an average of 17 students in each trailer.
Those objecting to the district’s scheme said, among other things, that redistricting would keep siblings in the same schools or at nearby schools, which would be beneficial when school events wreak havoc on family schedules.
“Having children in different schools in the same district is a logistical nightmare,” said Leslie Oliver, whose children attend Oak Cliff and Kittredge, during a public hearing at Sequoyah Middle School in Doraville.
DeKalb County has become the unofficial resettlement district in Georgia for immigrants and international refugees, mostly due to the services available for them throughout the county. Because of that, student population in the area is expected to increase about 550 per year. That would add another 33 portables to the schools each year based on current figures.
More than 1,000 people attended the two public hearings. There was standing-room only in the one Thursday night in the Sequoyah Middle School gym. Interpreters on hand for the meetings translated the district’s plan, as well as the mostly Spanish-speaking parents’ concerns as district officials laid out their hopes for alleviating the crowding.
Emma Geiger, a teacher at Dresden Elementary School, suggested Cross Keys’ role as the immigrant district contributed to its overcrowding.
“If this were any other district, it wouldn’t have gone on this long,” she said.
Brian Bates, who lives down the street from Sequoyah Middle School, mentioned that 46 portable classrooms were in use in the Dunwoody cluster, and 16 were in use in the Chamblee cluster.
"This cluster deserves a new school," Bates said of Cross Keys.
One parent, through a translator, said Thursday night she felt redrawing the districts would add schools to the area that are closer than schools suggested in the district’s plan.
Jill Thomas, a teacher at Cary Reynolds Elementary School, said after leaving Thursday night’s meeting that she eagerly anticipated implementation of any changes sought to ease overcrowding. She was pleased with what district officials had presented.
“Capacity issues impede the learning of students,” she said, “and the chance to teach effectively.”
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