Every morning, Celissa Satterwhite walks her daughter Janessa to kindergarten at Fain Elementary School.
Every afternoon, Janessa’s father, Kenyatta Williams picks her up for the walk home.
But with the latest recommendations from Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Erroll Davis, that might all change. Fain Elementary is one of 13 schools – mostly under-enrolled – that is slated to close as part of a major and often controversial redistricting plan.
“We are concerned about how we are going to get her to school,” Williams said. “They have just looked over this [part of the] district, when you can take that school away from us.”
At a community meeting Monday night – which focused on schools zoned to Douglass, Coretta Scott King, B.E.S.T. Mays, Therrell and Washington high schools -- Davis laid out the district’s plan to an auditorium full of concerned parents at Douglass High School.
He called the plan, which would displace about 2,500 students while saving the district millions in expenses, “a difficult process.”
“I want the community to hear and understand some other facts,” Davis told the parents. “Every one wants what is best for their child. I want that. ... Atlanta is changing and our schools have been affected by that change.”
APS serves about 47,000 students, excluding those in charter schools, but it has space for 60,000. The district spends $27 million on salaries for 450 teachers who work in schools too small to qualify for state funding, Davis said. This is the first time in a decade that APS has attempted a redistricting of this magnitude.
“I want to keep open every school. We do not want shuttered buildings any where,” Davis said. “But we cannot continue to protect buildings when we should be doing a better job of protecting our children.”
During the question-and-answer portion of the meeting, one parent asked Davis – who was joined on stage by school board members Byron Amos and LaChandra Butler Burks and deputy superintendent Steve Smith – when was he going to close schools in the northern portion of town.
The Buckhead cluster, for example, went basically unscathed during the redistricting process.
Davis said those schools are fully enrolled and staffed. "This is not a class issue,” Davis said.
Davis' plan calls for schools to be reorganized into "clusters," meaning students would stay together as they move to middle and high school.
In closing the schools, APS can save around $6.5 million, which would be re-invested into the schools, Davis said.
There are some cases throughout the district where 70 percent of a building is being heated, cooled and powered, yet the space is not being used.
“This is not [only] a financial concern. I am closing schools to give students a better education,” Davis said. “... This is money that is desperately needed to be spent somewhere else.”
APS officials will have a follow-up meeting Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. at North Atlanta High School for schools zoned to that high school. Two additional meetings will be held March 21 and March 22.
The Atlanta Board of Education will vote on final recommendations for redistricting April 10.
At Monday’s meeting, Fain music teacher Nadirah Simmons stood at the entrance to make sure her students and their parents found seats. She drifted in and out of Spanish and English, to address the school’s diversity.
Too young to fully understand that Fain is on the closing list, the students lined up to hug her.
Simmons was hoping it was not for the last time.
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