Plan for Cross Keys overcrowding includes renovations, new schools

About $9.5 million from the DeKalb County School District’s local-option sales tax will be used for improvements district officials hope will alleviate overcrowding in the Cross Keys cluster of schools.

Joshua Williams, chief operations officer for the school district, said in a presentation Monday to the DeKalb County Board of Education that improvements to several schools and the design of several others would help immediately with the overcrowding in the Cross Keys cluster and begin work on a long-term plan to avoid a recurrence.

Among the changes:

• Renovations at Warren Tech, the International Student Center and the DeKalb School of the Arts

• Use of fewer portable classrooms while improving parking

• Design of two elementary school buildings

• A feasibility study on middle- and high-school capacity

The plan presented last month to help fix overcrowding in the Cross Keys cluster also included establishing academies in difference locations for specific grades, an idea that drew some concern. Parents and teachers at public hearings said then that the plan would separate siblings, wreaking havoc on family schedules.