Gwinnett County school board members unanimously approved a contentious plan Thursday evening to ease overcrowding at some schools.
The redistricting plan would send about 14,000 students — more than 8 percent of the district’s enrollment — to new or different schools at the start of the 2015-16 school year.
Gwinnett officials offered to allow some parents to apply to keep their children at their school or transfer to another school that is not overcrowded through a process called permissive transfer. Parents would have to provide transportation for their children if the application is approved. Some parents said that option will not adequately accommodate everyone affected by the changes.
“It’s a mealy-mouth solution,” said Peachtree Elementary School parent Terri Stalker.
School board members said after the redistricting vote they wrestled with the decision. Several acknowledged it would not be supported by everyone, but defended their vote.
“I think we did it in the least disruptive way possible,” said board member Robert McClure.
The redistricting plan was designed in large part to ease overcrowding in the central and western parts of Gwinnett, Georgia’s highest-populated school district. The district plans to open a new high school, a new middle school and two new elementary schools in August 2015 to accommodate the growth — thus the redistricting.
However, many parents, particularly whose children attend Peachtree Elementary School, said the changes did not go far enough to ease overcrowding. And some parents do not want their children attending new schools. Nearly 30 people spoke at a public hearing before the vote. Nearly all of them criticized the plan.
Several Peachtree Elementary School parents supported a plan that would move an additional 175 students from the school, which has about 1,800 students and is one of the district's highest-populated elementary schools. The current plan, Stalker said, would only transfer about 90 students.Gwinnett plans to open a new elementary school in the area by 2017, but critics said that will not help students who will still attend Peachtree Elementary next school year.
Some parents made their own redistricting proposals to Gwinnett administrators. District officials revised the maps twice, including earlier this week, but several parents — and a student — said the changes were still insufficient.
Simran Rajput, 17, a senior at Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology, asked the board to reconsider the plans. Under the plan, her younger sister, who’s a second-grader at Gwin Oaks Elementary School, would attend a middle school and high school she fears do not measure up academically.
“I wish to go back to my school and say ‘Yes, the Board of Education did listen to our youth,’ ” Rajput concluded, drawing loud applause from the audience.
Rajput said afterward she was disappointed the board did not make wholesale changes to the maps.
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