Editor's note: The East Lake Neighbors Community Association issued its response to the demographers' redistricting options to Atlanta Public Schools officials last week. Kat Lindholm, ELNCA's president, shared with East Atlanta Patch the letter and position statement submitted to APS superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Dear Superintendent Davis,
As the president of the East Lake Neighbors Community Association and proud East Lake resident for the past 7 years I write to you in hopes that you will hear the concerns of my community. I am deeply concerned of the appearance of a systematic disregard of our community by the Atlanta Public School System. Both current redistricting plans recently presented will do irrevocable damage to our children and our community’s future. In every plan it appears that the guiding principles you put forth to facilitate this process have been pushed aside when it has come to the children of East Lake. With these concerns comes a call to action. We as concerned neighbors have come together with a position statement and plan to address the glaring inequities to our children's' education and Atlanta Public Schools obligation to provide them something better.
I have attached our position statement and I believe that you will find that while we are expressing our concerns and demands that we come to you with solutions. The top demand is that East Lake must remain in the Grady cluster. Taking our children out of Grady would be an additional blow to a community that continues to ask the children to sacrifice our schools so that others may prosper. It is not acceptable any longer to treat the children of less affluent areas with such disregard. The second demand is that we need APS commitment to help East Lake, Kirkwood, Edgewood and all other neighboring communities reconstitute Sammy E. Coan Middle School. The commitment is here on our side, we need APS to do their part with funding, proper staff, and a strong, respected leader at the helm. Finally, with the proposed closure of East Lake Elementary, it only makes common sense that all of our children would attend school with the one neighborhood that we share a border, Kirkwood. It is unconscionable that we would ask our small, elementary school children to cross over major state highways and Interstate 20 to go to school. That is neither walkable nor workable. We know you want better for our children and we have a plan and a position to help you get there.
I implore you to review our plan and ask that you give us the opportunity to discuss with you further.
Regards,
Kat Lindholm
President, East Lake Neighbors Community Association
http://eastatlanta.patch.com/articles/the-aps-redistricting-debate-east-lakes-official-position
That is why we have almost 1000 signatures in the following petition. http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/renewedgradycluster SPARK, Morningside, Lin and Hope-Hill, ONLY!
Both are wrong-headed.
As Good for the Goose points out, your theory provides significant rationale for the Lin to Coan idea.
Of course, it doesn't matter because many of those neighborhood kids currently consider private schools. So this is an argument about the recession: Too expensive to drop $35K for two kids in private school if you can redistrict poor kids (which all happen to be Black) out of a small high school. Gosh, I wonder if there are any laws against that. Don't worry Atlanta's the City that's too busy to hate. I am sure no one on a majority Black BOE will notice...
I also don't follow the claim by EL, and even Kirkwood informally, that if they get zoned to Maynard Jackson, it will be their third move. Can you explain that hyperbole statment? In all seriousness, what would be your solution? Do you support using the 30 million SPLOST for a midtown school? Or, will boundary changes be inevitable?
First from Crim, then to Grady, then to Crim. That's three. Given the growth in North Atlanta (including Midtown and Buckhead), I think a separate school would have to be built for Buckhead. As for Inman, keep its current levels. Big concern, don't send any kids to any lower performing schools. Build a newer school for overcrowding. And work to improve Jackson, Coan, King/Kennedy, etc.
Now all of a sudden it's "glaring inequities" and their top priority is going to Grady. O4W has a legitimate claim to Inman Middle School, but to so obviously crib from their arguments in order to advance a position that is at odds with East Lake's own prior position makes me wonder who actually advanced this idea and lobbied for it. I think I may know.
I will do you one better 1.) Crim - closed our neighborhood HS and became APS alternative campus. 2.) Grady- zoned to Grady as the compromise for losing our local HS 3.) Jackson- proposed in this rezoning process just 5 yrs after being rezoned to Grady 4.) Temporary Alternative Campus- while renovations are made to Jackson HS So that is actually 4 seperate HS campus for our students and community in less than 6 years! No other APS community has been asked to make such sacrifices in the past 6 years and further more in the history of APS. Please someone provide evidence to prorve me wrong?!!!! IM Confused East Lake came together as a community and decided that enough was enough and it is time for APS to spread the pain elsewhere in the system rather than going to the traditional go to pawn to make yet another sacrifice hence the change of position!
The redistricting is being done because there are schools over capacity in some areas, and some under capacity in others. The ones over capacity will get changed at their periphery- that's just common sense. EL & Kirkwood are at Grady's eastern edge, so I can definitely see why they would be zoned for Jackson (Lake Claire & Candler Park would be next in line). This process takes citizens' and parents' eyes off the prize: a fully functioning district, system-wide. If APS hadn't dropped the ball so often at so many locations, this process would not be as controversial nor emotional. We should be having these meetings to push APS to get qualified, competent leadership at the schools, and effective teachers in every classroom. The rezoning is a sideshow.
As for the redistricting, it's the main show. APS has not shown any ability to improve schools -- hence a district wide cheating scandal whose epicenter was East Lake. To use distance as a reason to redistrict schools, means necessarily sending kids from a performing school to an underperforming school with the argument that APS should fix those underperforming schools. When in fact, APS has shown no ability to do so. Who suffers: The kids. And the most heated debates in every redistricting conversation, not in Buckhead, involve explaining why is it OK to take an overwhelming Black population of students, which East Lake and Toomer high school students are, and send them from an integrated school, to an overwhelmingly segregated and underperforming school. Because if distance is the metric, then ML should be required to leave Inman. So what's good for the goose.... But both are wrong. If kids -- remember these are kids -- are at a performing school, we should not sentence them to a lower performing school, under the hope that APS will one day get its act together. Those kids bear the burden of that and should not.
1.) Crim - closed our neighborhood HS and became APS alternative campus. (AND KIRKWOOD AND EAST LAKE WERE RE ZONED TO GRADY. 2.) Grady- zoned to Grady as the compromise for losing our local HS (FALSE!!!! HOW CAN GRADY BE ZONED TO GRADY? THIS IS THE FILLER FALSE ONE!) 3.) Jackson- proposed in this rezoning process just 5 yrs after being rezoned to Grady (FALSE! IT IS 7 YEARS LATER) 4.) Temporary Alternative Campus- while renovations are made to Jackson HS (NO SITE HAS BEEN DETERMINED. IT MAY BE AT COAN FOR A YEAR, SO EVEN CLOSER TO EAST LAKE AND LESS OF A "BURDEN" OF GOING TO JACKSON OR GRADY FOR THAT MATTER) THE TOTAL NUMBER OF YEAR IS 8, NOT 6. PLEASE DON'T STRETCH THE TRUTH IN YOUR ARGUMENTS TO SWAY THE SYSTEM.
Luckily, Superintendent Davis has stated that he will not be swayed by "noise"and that no one should consider themselves "safe"... I'm going back to eating my popcorn and listening. :P
Following your logic about not harming students, then APS should turn a blind eye to addresses and let all the kids into Inman and Grady and add more portables or use an annex site, just as Druid Hills does. That might satisfy KW and El. Put an Inman annex at Coan. Take half of their teachers and administration to start and build it up from there. Fair is fair. The goose, gander and goslings should be happy. These flocks can do extras together and play sports, etc. Inman would finally have access to a full football and soccer fields. Yes, keep them both at Grady.
I know some neighborhoods have mentioned using King as a relocation cite, but I have not heard anyone suggest Coan. So, if you know something official from APS that really makes it "likely that the relocation site would be Coan or King" please share. Otherwise, it just seems like you're trying to sell us a load of, well, you know, and trying to make it sound like our fears are totally baseless.
However, using your logic, let's then make the proposed -- and wrong in my mind -- Lin to Coan transfer not apply to rising middle school students. The issue is the parents who have planned for Grady. As for Coan, Coan has always been the middle school for EL and Toomer. It is a remarkably poor performing school. It may get even worse when you add lots of other students and no resources. But that has always been the deal, just as Grady has been the deal for seven years. As for addresses, Grady currently has, although phasing out, magnet program kids from out of the the Grady zone. What makes those kids more special than those APS promised could go to the District, whose parents had to deal with Crim which is a hotbed of local crime. Although located in East Lake, Drew is a popular school throught the City and draws kids from almost every elementary school zone. But it only goes to 8th grade. Although a high school has been discussed, I don't see that coming to fruition any time soon. But your idea about an Inman Annex at Coan does solve both problems.
You truly seem to care about the education of the non-active families zoned to Grady from KW and EL, but it's obvious most are using the arguement for the perceived advantages and self interest of those upcoming active familes. And, that's okay. Yes, you know the code words here. One significant issue that has not been addressed is if all of East Lake is being included in the proposal to attend Grady. Yes, I am talking about The Villages of East Lake, how were they left out to bein with and not included in the "deal". No one seems to be crying foul about that and those families from the mixed income development. Why was it acceptable to exclude The Villages of EL from Grady? This is a serious question.
- Change Crim back to a "conventional" 8/9-12 High School (it's location best serves both sides of I-20) - Use the SPLOST money to buy the Pullman Yard facility off Rogers Street and turn that into a High School
Per the 2010 census - Kirkwood: tract 207 is 54% black; tract 208.01 is 46% black. Kirkwood currently has 139 students (total of all races) enrolled in APS high schools. East Lake: tract 208.02 is 64.5% black; East Lake has 99 students (total of all races) enrolled in APS high schools. Granted, the students *currently* in high school might more closely reflect the demographic balance for those neighborhoods in the 2000 census, but either way it's not a *large* percentage of the Black students at Grady (which currently has 1,468 students enrolled), as you seem to be arguing.
The question is how big can the territory be and still fit into the high school. Eliminate administrative transfers and Grady might be ok for a couple of years, but the coming population surge makes it impossible for ALL of the currently zoned territory to remain for the next 10 years. This is why all the plans have shown feeder schools or neighborhoods removed from the territory. With a few vocal exceptions, I don't think anyone at Grady "wants" to see any neighborhood go. You can't take the pulse of Grady by online blogs. In citing the statistics above, I was only countering the assertion by a previous poster that if East Lake and Kirkwood were to be zoned to a different high school that it somehow amounts to segregation. Racism and segregation are serious charges, and though they are both unfortunately still present in our society, those arguments should not be thrown around so loosely lest it undermine the accusation in the cases where it is warranted. To be clear, the East Lake position statement does NOT make that charge. I was responding to someone who posted earlier in these comments.