"Dekalb Ave is not the Himalayas"
-Overheard at an APS redistricting meeting.

There is valid concern that the "walkability" issue is only being brought up by Mary Lin parents as it relates directly to them and their school, but are largely silent on the issue when school closings and re-zonings (that would send children several miles further to a new school) are discussed for others.

Walkability is an issue for all APS schools, not just Mary Lin.

I would add that Dekalb can also be crossed at Arizona Avenue. Obviously modifications in cross walks, etc would have to be made to Dekalb Ave to ensure safety, but it is no more dangerous than crossing Moreland or Ponce.

I urge residents to go to the Talk Up APS blog and read through some of the comments from the SRT1/4NW and SRT2 community meetings for some perspective on this issue. There are residents of Atlanta - our neighbors - for whom walkability is critical to being able to get their kids to school. They simply do not have a car to hop in to drive their kids to school if they miss the bus or have to be late for some other reason. For them, walkability should be a priority. For others, it's a "nice to have." While I agree that it isn't safe for kids to walk across DeKalb Ave., I don't think it's the end of the world for residents to have to get into one of their two family cars and drive their kids to school.

I don't have a strong opinion about the redistricting issue, but this video is silly. There is a pedestrian crosswalk over Dekalb Ave. (the Marta station) literally right next to where those guys are standing. And the other dangerous intersection from the video is in the MIDDLE of their neighborhood, which makes it seem like the neighborhood isn't particularly walkable in the first place.

@lpmom, regarding this statement "it is no more dangerous than crossing Moreland or Ponce"

People like to say this, but it is not true. For starters, Moreland has more access points in the quarter mile surrounding L5P than Dekalb has in a four mile stretch.

The stretch of Moreland near Mary Lin, namely L5P, is full of pedestrians. While it's a big road, it is actually fairly walkable due to the retail district there. By comparison, you will almost never see a pedestrian on Dekalb. It's dangerous and very inhospitable to pedestrians.

To say Moreland and Dekalb Ave are the same is just silly. Please, let's stick to the facts.

Hey Peralte- why not take a video at Mary Lin showing how many kids walk there now?

@ Kate
I drive down Dekalb Avenue everyday and see people walking it all the time, so that is NOT a factual statement. And, although the crossing of Moreland at Freedom Parkway is on path and safer, you can't tell me that kids crossing at Euclid and Moreland or Briarcliff and Moreland is any different than crossing at Dekalb and Arizona. Obviously, there would have to be more safety precautions added to make it as safe as possible to cross. But, if f I didn't know any better and was strictly listening to the ML parents, I would be under the impression that the kids would have to cross a highway and then crawl over multiple sets of railroad tracks and MARTA lines on their hands and knees, which is completely overexaggerated and inaccurate. While I don't support the option that merges Lin with Toomer, I am sick of hearing the ML community use this as their main argument against it when everyone knows that they just don't want their kids having to combine with "those kids" south of the tracks. At least ML gets to keep all THREE neighborhoods that feed into it intact and keep their middle and high school in BOTH options, which is a better deal than any other school in SRT-3 and probably most schools in APS. I happened to be in front of Hope-Hill today when school was letting out and they had a crossing guard and families crossing at Boulevard/John Wesley Dobbs which is a 4 lane, very busy intersection and you don't hear them complaining.

@ kristen sullivan
Couldn't agree more. There are people who actually NEED to be able to walk to school and should be a higher priority.

Come on, guys. Nobody has said that Mary Lin kids should have walkable schools, and other kids should not. We can surely all agree that whenever possible, we should aim to create school communities that are more walkable, not less. This hardly seems controversial.

Obviously that won't be feasible in every case, like when there's one school serving a very large geographical area. It does not follow from that that we should make other schools less walkable too.

Of course, I think we can all agree that it would be wonderful for everyone to have walkable schools.
I guess my point is that although it may not be desirable to cross Dekalb Ave, it is possible. Whereas, if Option B was selected it would split my neighborhood in half, move my child from his walkable school to another elem school which would require us to travel across Memorial and i20, which would be impossible to walk and much less safe than crossing Dekalb Avenue. That is not due to size of the geographic area. From where I stand, it seems like my family and countless others are having to give up a whole lot more in redistricting than any famillies that currently attend ML. I'm sure a lot of families would be lining up if the only change they had to endure during redistricting was having to cross Dekalb Ave...

@lpmom Understood. I absolutely agree that there's a lot at stake here, and there are serious issues facing many communities. Please know the Mary Lin folks are in no way trying to trivialize that. And, I think we can all agree that NO community should be split, whether it's Morningside, Kirkwood, or any other 'hood. Hopefully the demographers will fix that once and for all (during Monday's meeting, it sounded like they had realized their mistake).

I do want to say that while walkability is very important to us (and many chose to live here in large part because of that), it's not our only concern. People may or may not be aware that we've been told for years that the Mary Lin renovation (expansion & repairs) was a done deal and going to proceed. Our entire 4th and 5th grades are in trailers, and the first trailer showed up in 1999 -- ML really does need the expansion. It was part of SPLOST 3, then moved to SPLOST 4. So to be told now that it might not be happening, after all the assurances and years of waiting, is very concerning to people.

I don't mean to turn this into a run-down of redistricting concerns, but did want to address the comment that crossing Dekalb is our only worry.

I hope for all of our sakes, our community and yours get the best possible outcome under the circumstances. It's no good for us as a city to have ANY of the intown neighborhoods harmed in this process.

Thanks, Kate - we can definitely agree on that. I really hope that APS can minimize the impact to all of our neighborhoods. And, for what its worth, I don't have a problem with the splost money going to ML. Besides, I was at a meeting where Cecily Harsche-Kinnane said it was a done deal, so I don't really think ML has anything to worry about as far as the expansion is concerned. Just my opinion only, but making a case for the splost-funded expansion within the context of what has occurred at ML with the trailers, etc. is a much better tactic than trying to make dekalb avenue seem like the most dangerous street in the city where children would be risking their lives everyday to cross.

As a current Lin-zoned parent in Candler Park, I can only really talk about my neighborhood. I will not speak for others, who no doubt are getting screwed in this rezoning business. There are good ideas posted on this paper's site that should be presented to the board - and it's early enough still, I think, to make a difference.

That said, Lin is the cornerstone of the greater Candler Park, et. al. community it serves. At 2:30 PM every day, there are scores of kids being escorted by their parents and caregivers to their homes nearby, in all directions. If you look at a map, you'll actually see that Candler Park proper is tiny. But it's filled with young families. Why?

Lin is one of the highest performing elementary schools in the APS. And they have had nothing, nothing handed to them. For nearly twenty years, it's been the work of some amazing administrators, educators, Lin parents and kids that have made the school what it is today. It's overcrowded, but we were promised expansion for years.

The community has voted pro-SPLOST (3 and 4) twice, and architectural plans were drawn. There's been no charter school talk. And like most parents looking at the current maps -- see an unappealing option that breaks a promise made, rips apart the very fabric of our community and disrupts an amazing elementary school.

Is walk-ability important? Sure, but not nearly as important as the above. I make no apologies for this - everybody here wants what's best for our kids.

lpmom's statement: "everyone knows that they (Mary Lin parents) just don't want their kids having to combine with "those kids" south of the tracks." This is a gross generalization, and a sad but common accusation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Ipmom is inferring that most if not all Mary Lin parents don’t want our children associating with kids that are geographically/socioeconomically different. 1) That would break my heart if it were true, and 2) I wouldn’t choose to live in the most myopic school community in the country. I am the father of a preschool age boy, and a resident of Candler Park. I would love nothing more than my son to be educated in a diverse environment, but I will not sacrifice performance for diversity or any other characteristic of the educational system. School performance is the unequivocal top of my priority list, everything else is secondary. I ask you all to do your own research, rather than misconstruing opinion as fact. According to WWW.SCHOOLDIGGER.COM school rankings, which combines CRCT English Language Arts & CRCT Math scores for 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grades (2010-2011 school year), Mary Lin is ranked 6th among all APS elementary schools (112th in Georgia), Toomer is ranked 20th among all APS elementary schools (807th in Georgia). Source: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Dept of Education, and Georgia Department of Education.

Each neighborhood throughout APS has their own set of prioriities and as Eric stated, everyone wants what's best for their children. For some, being on the Marta line is important, for others it may be IB curriculum. For ML it is walkability. As a resident of Inman Park (zoned for ML), I have not heard one of my neighbors say that they simply do not want to go to school with Toomer kids and as a matter of fact, many have been open to the idea. But it still doesn't change the fact that DeKalb Ave is dangerous (whether walking or driving). I see head-on collisions regularly due to the reversible lane- imagine the increase in volume that will be added to the morning and afternoon commutes. I do not have an elementary age student but my objection to option B pertains to the impact on middle and high. Inman and Grady are over capacity and the attendence zones need to be reduced. kirkwood is not zoned for Inman currently and we simply do not have space.

I know that everyone who has posted on here wants what is best for their children and their neighborhoods. I respect all of you (even those i disagree with) for being dedicated to your children and being part of the honest dialogue about this process and it's effect on our families.

Wouldn't a crossguard be assigned to those areas to ensure safe passage? I wonder how many Mary Lin students actually walk to school.... by themselves. Just a thought.

Fair enough but again walk-ability is secondary to breaking up Lin for an overcrowding concern. It's an absurd idea. Expand Lin as has been promised, don't break it up. Reporter wanted to cover the traffic angle so I was happy to talk about that, too. For the sake of argument, let's say Dekalb Avenue is the safest road on the world. Doesn't change my opposition, personally, to option B.

That is my point exactly, Eric. Be honest about what you want. Make your argument for the splost expansion. I think it is a good one. Stop with the dekalb ave safety issues. I think everyone is well aware of the challenges something like this poses to both our communities.
For what it's worth, I think the real issue is not Toomer/Lin, but Coan/inman.

To be clear: The DeKalb/CSX/Marta corridor is probably the third-biggest reason that Mary Lin parents oppose splitting up Mary Lin. The top two objections are:

1) Students at Mary have been in trailers for 12 years; we voted twice for successful SPLOST referendums, both of which included a Mary Lin renovation/expansion; APS has continually promised that renovation/expansion, even as they kicked it down the road; and now Option B would suddently eliminate the long-promised renovation/expansion.

2) It just would be boneheaded for a school district with as many problems as APS to undermine parental involvement and neighborhood support at one its best performing schools.

Still, I'm puzzled by the criticism in these comments directed at Mary Lin parents for wanting to preserve one of the things that's good about Mary Lin (walkability) -- without any indication that preserving walkability for Mary Lin somehow harms another school. Geez. How about some positive, plausible solutions rather than tearing other people down just for wanting to protect their kids from getting run over?

I find it strange the amount of anger directed toword Mary Lin. The truth is APS asked for feedback from ALL communities and all have voiced their opinions. We have a preference between the two options, just as every other neighborhood in the district. Our reasons for Option A are just as valid to us as the other neighborhoods that prefer Option B. the truth is that Mary Lin is simply trying to stay in the schools that we have ALWAYS been in- I can't see any other rational person finding conflict with that.

As a parent who lives on Dekalb Avenue, I'm just glad to hear people talking about how scary that road can be. My condos front one of the lane switch spots (Inman Station Condos), and there are wrecks at the split regularly. We are rebuilding our front brick wall curb AGAIN from a wreck - which involved a car carrying a small child - luckily no one was hurt this time.

Seriously, zoning aside, some traffic work should be done on Dekalb now that it's high density residential. I believe it was designed with the switching lanes back when it was largely abandoned industrial.

As a ML parent, now on my seventh year with 10 more to go, and having gone to Toomer for Pre-K. I do not have a problem with Toomer, I have many close friends at Toomer. The problem for many of us, INCLUDING people that live in Kirkwood is Coan. While Option B states we would all go to Inman/Grady the fact of the matter is, once we say we will cross then we will be zoned to Coan. I can not send my current 6th grader to a failing school and why should anyone try to force me to do so to better their neighborhood? CP is MY neighborhood with history and time well spent making ML/Inman/Grady what they are today. Why should we step aside to let others come in and/or stay so we can go to a failing school to make it better? Fix your own schools!

Thanks for the offer to escort, Intown.

Let's be honest. What percentage of ML students actually walk to to school each morning? Considering all of the cars parked up & down Candler Park Drive and Benning Place each morning, not to mention all of the buses and other cars/SUVs/vans dropping off kids in front of the school, I'd say it's pretty low. Most of the students coming from Lake Claire & IP either take the bus or are being driven to school by their parents.

Lin is a wonderful walkable school. Candler Park is a neighborhood where you can walk places. I walk my child to Lin at least three times per week. I talk to neighbors teachers. This is part of what I like about where I live and I want to keep it that way. Its high time to get rid of the trailers and to finally fix Lin! "Next year, next year, next year" excuse is getting old. My neighborhood has been part of Inman/Grady for over 30 years. Lin parents ahead of me contributed to making Inman/Grady great schools they are today. Heck ya I want to benefit from their hard work!

@MLParent you must not be a ML Parent...we walk every day unless we just can't get out the door in time. There are 590 students at Lin, there are approximately 36 kids on two busses. You certainly don't see that many cars! And btw, we need a third bus, but APS contracts those out and can't get it done! We have a bus that delivers kids and returns to pick up more!

I could care less about walkability. My priorities are achievement and safety – as in violent crime, not pedestrianism. I am also a commuter to Downtown and feel that having 100s of families criss-cross Dekalb Avenue to get to school - on foot or by car -- is as smart as putting a Wal-Mart and big-box shopping center at Howell Mill.