In a city where less than a third of elementary school students are on grade level, admission to Atlanta's high-performing Drew Charter School is a golden ticket offering the promise of a better education and a better future.
As competition to get into Drew grows, the school’s board is considering giving children from its gentrifying East Atlanta area a significant edge over children from elsewhere in the city. At the same time, proposed changes could give children from low-income families a better shot at getting in.
It’s an attempt to shape the school’s demographics and make Drew a “neighborhood” school, board members say.
But the proposal has infuriated some current Drew parents, including many who live outside the area around Drew.
"It's a real betrayal," Stacie Davis, who has two children at Drew and a 2-and-1/2-year-old, said earlier this month.
Davis’ family lived in Kirkwood, but moved out because they couldn’t afford it any longer. She assumed her youngest child would still be able to attend Drew under a policy that automatically admits the siblings of current students.
The board’s proposal would eliminate that preference. Instead, siblings of current students who live outside the East Lake and Kirkwood neighborhoods would be near the back of the line in Drew’s annual admissions lottery.
“I don’t want to have my kids at different schools,” Davis said.
The proposed changes are part of an application for a renewed charter from Atlanta Public Schools. Drew’s governing discussed them at a Tuesday meeting and asked the board’s enrollment committee to explore alternatives. The board is expected to meet in July to vote on the plan.
The proposed charter would also change the school’s academic goals, financial management and board oversight. Both the Atlanta and state boards of education must approve the new charter.
Drew was founded 16 years ago as part of a larger effort to redevelop the East Lake area. Educating children living in the Villages of East Lake, the mixed-income development that replaced a public housing project, is the Drew board’s top priority, said Carol Naughton, chairwoman of the board committee on admissions and enrollment.
Families in the neighborhoods close to Drew come next.
Where does that leave other Atlanta families?
“We’d love to be able to serve everybody, but we don’t have the resources and capacity to do that,” Naughton said. “There have got to be other great schools in Atlanta.”
As a charter school, Drew is publicly funded and has its own governing board. It is authorized by Atlanta Public Schools but operates independently of the district.
Like most charter schools with more prospective students than available seats, Drew admits new students through an annual lottery. This year, about 2,500 children applied for about 400 spots.
About 1,700 students attended Drew this past school year. Drew expects to enroll 2,170 by 2026.
Charter schools can give certain students preference in an otherwise random admissions process. At Drew, the children of board members and employees are automatically admitted. So are children in the early-childhood programs associated with the school, and siblings of current students.
That sibling preference would change under the new charter. Siblings would no longer be admitted automatically, but would be admitted ahead of other students in their neighborhood. The new charter would also allow the board to give students from low-income families preference in admissions, to help the school meet its goal of having about two-thirds of its students come from low-income families.
About the Author
