Atlanta Public Schools will close 10 schools and eliminate about 5,500 of 13,000 extra seats under the final redistricting proposal released Saturday by Superintendent Erroll Davis.
The proposal, which goes to the school board for a vote on April 10, reduces the number of elementary and middle schools with less than 450 students from 38 to 17. The plan also organizes schools in a "cluster" format, where groups of elementary schools feed into the same middle and high school.
The recommendations are the final batch of plans that are to be submitted to the school board at the April 10 board meeting. But the report said Davis reserves the right to modify the final recommendation if new, compelling information or data are received before that meeting.
In a letter posted on the district's website, Davis said the district is wasting resources by continuing to staff, heat, cool, clean and maintain schools that are not near capacity.
"While it is difficult to propose the closing of any school, it is a necessary step to ensuring that all of our schools are enrolled to minimum capacities so that essential educational resources can be equitably distributed," he wrote. "As it is now, under-enrolled schools are not eligible for the resources that schools that are at or near full capacity receive."
Davis said that many schools with low enrollment are not eligible for state funding for the resources they receive, such as assistant principals, full-time counselors and paraprofessionals.
Keith Bromery, spokesman for the school district, said APS pays for certain resources that the state does not. But in other cases, schools do without non-critical resources.
"We don't have the money to totally compensate for resources the state does not fund for schools without a minimum numbers of students attending them," Bromery said.
The district employs more than 700 employees that exceed staffing formulas set by the state, Davis said in his letter.
"It not only wastes resources; it deprives students attending under-enrolled schools of the resources they need for academic success," he said.
The district originally proposed closing 13 schools under a plan released earlier this month. Since the process started last fall, thousands have crammed into community meetings, and the district has received more than 9,000 comments on proposals released by demographers in the past few months.
Several schools were moved off the closure list, while some new schools were added to the list. Notably, the district has decided to keep Coan Middle open after parents in the East Atlanta community protested. The district plans to make a "significant investments" in the school.
"We were very surprised, very shocked" by the initial recommendation to close Coan Middle, said Sally Alcock, co-president of the PTA at nearby Toomer Elementary. "Our focus had to be on saving our middle school. We wanted to have a walkable middle school. For the past month, we've all been vying to keep Coan open."
Tris Sicignano of East Lake, who helped lead the effort to get Coan Middle off the closure list, said a major goal now is to keep parents heavily involved and to make sure decision-makers are aware of the school's work in science, art and urban gardening.
"We're always going to be heavily involved," she said. "We know the work begins now."
Although never popular, attendance zone changes are necessary as school officials balance population shifts and costs. Several large school systems, including Cobb and DeKalb counties, have recently attempted massive changes. In February, Cobb approved a redistricting that will affect more than 2,500 students in two dozen schools in the next two school years.
After fighting through criticism and political pressure for more than a year, DeKalb officials approved a plan that moved about 7,000 students, closed eight schools and saved an estimated $12.4 million annually.
It's the first time in almost a decade that APS has attempted a redistricting of this size. Four scenarios were released in late November to start discussions about new boundaries. The maps were created by outside demographers and mapping specialists and changed as the district received input and results from a demographic survey. Two revised options were released in January. The superintendent released the first version of his proposal in early March.
Below are the Atlanta schools identified to close. Check back to AJC.com for more details.
Parks Middle
Capitol View Elementary
F.L. Stanton Elementary
White Elementary
Towns Elementary (new to the list)
Cook Elementary
East Lake Elementary
D.H. Stanton Elementary (new to the list)
Kennedy Middle
Herndon Elementary
Staff writer Jeremiah McWilliams contributed to this article.
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