APS Redistricting: Petition Started To Save Coan

The pressure to save Coan Middle School is mounting.

An online petition advocating against the closure of the Edgewood school is now circulating.

The petition, which lists a number of public-private partnerships that have been established to support the school, was created March 14.

It comes just two days after Earl Lewis, Emory University's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs sent Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. the relationship between the two institutions.

It also comes days after of parents and supporters of the school, which is .

"Closing Coan Middle School would not only be devastating to the children, families, and organizations in the greater Edgewood area," the petition reads. "It would represent Atlanta’s turning away from a new direction for improving youth outcomes that the rest of the country is eager to embrace."

Coan, the neighborhood school serving Edgewood, East Lake, Kirkwood and East Atlanta, has 307 students but capacity for 900 pupils.

APS' goal in the redistricting is to reduce the total number of empty seats in the district, which has 47,000 students, but capacity for 60,000. It also seeks to be proactive to have capacity in those neighborhoods expected to see bumps in student population as  families begin to have children or move to those parts of the city.

Davis' recommendation calls for Coan's students to be redistricted to King Middle School in Grant Park.

Coan would then be reconstituted as a sixth grade academy to serve as an annex for Virginia-Highland's Inman Middle School, which is overcrowded.

The superintendent has said even if the board of education ultimately shoots down the Inman annex idea, Coan should close regardless because it is so underutilized.