Construction of a new school in Clayton County is still set to begin this year. Maybe it will happen. Sometime.
The new building for pupils attending Eddie White Elementary school is to have an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, and the groundbreaking was first scheduled to take place Feb. 12. It hasn't happened yet, and the lesson there may be that no amount of science, technology or engineering can outplan or outmaneuver Mother Nature.
It wasn’t coronavirus that caused the first delay, but a more mundane natural phenomenon, one that nobody in the metro area felt able to escape at the time last month: plain old rain.
The school might be viewed as one emblem of the gains Clayton County's school system has made. Some, like County Commissioner DeMont Davis, feel the southside county still gets "a bad rap because of what happened in the past." A long time in the past, too. The school district lost its accreditation in 2008 because of board of education infighting. (Clayton won back its accreditation in 2009, though it was put on probation for two years. It regained full accreditation in 2016).
They think it has not gotten recognition for the strides it has made over the past decade. Clayton, for example, did not have a single school on the list of Georgia’s worst-performing schools in 2018 (it had one in 2017) and saw improvements in eight categories on the last Georgia Milestone tests.
So the Feb. 12 groundbreaking would likely have been a welcome opportunity for Superintendent Morcease Beasley to note facts such as the 2019 graduating class of more than 3,000 being Clayton’s biggest, and that those graduates received more than $90 million in scholarships for the first time. Or that 71 students earned an associate degree while in school and more than 500 were enrolled in dual-enrollment classes for college prep. Or that the number of scholarships given out by Beasley’s office rose from 12 in 2018 to 160 in 2019.
But they didn’t want a mudbreaking or a puddle draining, so the groundbreaking was rescheduled for Feb. 20.
The planned new school is also a sign of growth in Clayton, where school officials are projecting enrollment growth of about 500 students each year.
It was among the projects to be paid for by the extension of the local education sales tax voters approved in March 2019, to provide $280 million over five years.
The groundbreaking was also for a planned transportation depot. But the Feb. 20 date was also scratched.
Washed out, rather. Rain again. The county, like all of the metro area, had experienced downpours throughout the month, even flash flood and tornado warnings. Schools had canceled outdoor athletic events and after-school activities because of the unrelenting weather.
Maybe the third try on the new school groundbreaking, on March 4, would be the charm.
But it wasn’t.
The climate hadn’t changed. The weather was still inclement.
Now, with groundbreaking scheduled for March 16, there have actually been some days without rain. Maybe the Clayton school officials, who have exemplified the old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed …” are feeling a few rays of optimism. If only that other cloud on the horizon, the coronavirus, dries up.
This column is based on reporting by AJCstaff writer Leon Stafford.
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