School closure list may be ready by fall
Plans to close more schools in DeKalb County may be announced as soon as September.
It would be the second time in three years officials have targeted under-enrolled campuses in an effort to save money and pool resources.
They closed five elementary schools last summer for the same reasons.
Patricia Pope, the system's chief operating officer, said officials will spend the summer considering which schools could close this time. She said attendance lines for others will be redrawn as well to balance out enrollment.
Any schools on the chopping block would remain open this coming school year and then likely shutter by August 2010.
Some instructional programs may also face cuts. Already, officials have put on hold plans to open the system's first single-gender schools as they continue belt-tightening.
The system closed the first five elementary schools as part of a sweeping proposal implemented in May 2007.
That plan also redrew attendance lines for 18 other schools and moved several school choice programs, including the high-profile Kittredge Magnet School for High Achievers, to different campuses.
The changes saved the system $4 million annually, by pooling rather than duplicating resources.
At the time, officials targeted schools that enrolled 300 or fewer students.
They did so because the state does not provide money to cover the full staffing and operations costs at an elementary school with fewer than 450 students.
The small schools were, in effect, low-hanging fruit. Now that the economy has soured and the state continues to cut school funding, officials are looking higher.
There so far is no indication of which schools are most in danger; a school may serve fewer students but be considered well-used given its space, such as housing a special-needs program.
Speaking generally at a school board meeting last week, Pope said 11 elementary, seven middle and six high schools are over capacity and need relief.
In comparison, 14 DeKalb elementary schools enroll fewer than 400 students. In higher grade levels, 13 middle and high schools have a combined total of 3,800 empty seats.
Officials expect to announce an initial proposal in September, with public hearings tentatively scheduled through October.
A final recommendation is expected by the end of November and may be put to school board members as early as December.
The last closings met with some controversy when parents of students from one school —- Nancy Creek Elementary in Chamblee —- fought a bitter campaign against closure, arguing that officials had underestimated their community's potential growth.
Their local board member, Jim Redovian, voted against the plan. Other members, however, felt it wasn't fair to single out one school for different treatment.
Redovian clearly remembers the bruising. "We need to tell [families] everything up front," he said last week. "We're not going to bend the rules because someone doesn't like it."
