Earlier this month City Schools Decatur set its Fiscal Year 2018 PK-12 tuition at $4,793. The district is still required by law to charge tuition to non-resident students based on a state-mandated formula.

But that number has been dwindling since the CSD stopped accepting new tuition-paying students in March 2013. All existing tuition-paying students at that time were grandfathered in and there are now only 35 remaining.

In 2013 CSD had 160 students paying $5,926 per year in tuition when new tuition was suspended by then-Superintendent Phyllis Edwards because of the system’s rapid growth. Her successor David Dude said he has no plans to reinstate it.

CSD’s K-12 enrollment reached an all-time high of 5,040 in October, an 8.1 percent increase over 2015-16. Enrollment has increased 7 to 12 percent each year since 09-10, which shakes out to an 87.6 percent increase over 2009-10’s enrollment of 2,687.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

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