Just over a month ago, the Druid Hills High School community finished a week of homecoming festivities with a parade that looped from the school through the Emory University Hospital campus. The highlights of the parade were colorful, spirited floats that had been built by students in the backyards and driveways of homes in Druid Hills (freshmen), Laurel Ridge (sophomores), Medlock Park (juniors) and Clairmont Heights (seniors).
Float-building is a tradition that unites students and parents across the Druid Hills High School community — a community threatened with a break-up that is unwanted by the majority of its residents. Two homes that hosted float-building – in Medlock Park and Laurel Ridge – and possibly the home in Clairmont Heights may be left without a high school if a small group of Druid Hills residents succeeds in its efforts to annex their residences and our high school into the city of Atlanta.
What is upsetting to those of us who love the Druid Hills High School cluster is that the annexation efforts ignore what, or rather who, makes this community so special. It’s not the historic high school building on the Emory campus, or any of the other facilities that may be drawn into the Atlanta Public Schools.
This is an amazing and successful high school because of its incredible teachers and staff. The same goes for the cluster of five elementary schools and the middle school that feed Druid Hills High – excellent teachers, committed administrators and great support staff. Much of this could be lost if the annexation efforts succeed.
What would happen if the annexation proponents get their wish to move DHHS, Fernbank Elementary and Briar Vista Elementary to APS? The DeKalb-employed faculty and staff would need to find jobs at another DeKalb school or apply to APS (which surely can’t guarantee any jobs since it must remain neutral in this discussion). It seems likely current APS employees would have seniority over new hires at these schools.
The diverse student population drawn from the three other elementary schools will be uprooted and redrawn into a reconstituted high school district. Laurel Ridge, Avondale and McLendon elementary schools provide about 80 percent of the DHHS population.
Then there’s the question of what would happen to the middle school, which changed its name from Shamrock three years ago to emphasize its unity with Druid Hills High School.
We hear about the property issues, in which very valuable land and facilities are at stake, including Adams Stadium and the International Center (also within the LaVista Hills proposed limits, and possibly Brookhaven).
Annexation allegedly would require DeKalb taxpayers to hand over these properties, as well as Fernbank Science Center and the newly built Fernbank Elementary (to be ready for the 2015-16 school year), for free. But on an individual student level, there are ramifications that are much more serious than redistricting within a school system.
DHHS offers the prestigious International Baccalaureate program, which requires a two-year commitment beginning in 11th grade. Would rising seniors outside a new DHHS attendance line lose their spots in the program, or would it be dissolved, since it’s funded by DeKalb?
What about sports? The community has built great momentum in recent years, thanks to the Druid Hills Athletic Foundation, and there have been major improvements to the high and middle school facilities, including an indoor batting cage being finished at Druid Hills Middle School, as well as a beautiful baseball field. On many spring afternoons, you’ll find the high school baseball and soccer teams playing games on adjacent fields at the middle school.
There are many problems to be addressed in our school system, but breaking up the Druid Hills cluster is not a solution to any of them. This is a community with strong, long-standing traditions of academic excellence, arts programs, cultural diversity and even homecoming parades. These traditions are kept alive by the students, teachers, alumnae and neighborhoods, and they should be kept intact.
