PATCH VOICES: Children of Old Fourth Ward Need 'Bold,' Innovative Education Approach

by David Patton

OLD FOURTH WARD — Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward is at a crossroads regarding educational offerings for our children as well as community recreation space.

Currently Hope-Hill, our district elementary school, (95-98% Title I) serves the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood as well as Auburn Point and Capitol Gateway communities.  

Although Hope-Hill is within the very economically diverse Grady High School cluster, Hope-Hill students are isolated economically and physically from their peers in the rest of the cluster until they come together at Inman Middle School in the 6th grade.  Inman Middle is currently overcrowded. The entire 7th grade is housed in trailers and we are still years away from a solution to properly accommodate the student population.

Previously Hope-Hill students did not come together with their peers from the rest of the cluster until 9th grade at Grady High School. In years past it led to significant difficulties when the students met each other in the 9th grade, both academically and socially.

The latest school redistricting efforts increased the concentration of Title I students at Hope Hill. The redistricting properly combines Old Fourth Ward middle schoolers with the rest of the cluster, but significant challenges remain.

Hope-Hill elementary has a new principal (K-8 certified) as well as a new Pre-K offering. She's proving to be responsive and full of new ideas.   The facility, while newer, does not have a dedicated playground (although this may soon be rectified) or a cafeteria that is large enough for the population, even though the school is below enrollment capacity.

The Hope-Hill campus is immediately next door to the recently closed Martin Luther King Jr. Natatorium in the heart of the MLK National Historic Site.  Currently, the City of Atlanta is looking for a site to rebuild the pool and recreation facilities.

The neighborhood is also the home of the David T. Howard High School Campus. It's an historic building of substantial size, sitting on 7 acres of land. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maynard Jackson, Vernon Jordan, Herman Russell and many other prominent individuals attended school at this location. This legacy property sits on land given by David T. Howard, a businessman and former slave, for the purpose of educating children.

While the school was closed in 1976, and the building and grounds have been intermittently utilized for various functions,  it still has a substantial and active David T. Howard alumni association.

The children of the Old Fourth Ward need something bold and different that utilizes all available resources possible. Until now, we have not given them all that they need to provide for their long term success. 

Our children deserve a first class education, one that focuses upon individual student needs and curriculum progress.

Our children deserve to not go to school in economic isolation from their cluster peers living in close proximity, yet not part of the Hope-Hill district .

Our children deserve the best recreational facilities and offerings available so that they can grow into physically healthy adults. 

I suggest as a way to meet these goals:

1. Relocating Hope-Hill Elementary from its current location on busy and often congested Boulevard to a newly renovated and expanded David T Howard Campus (The original front portion of the school facing John Wesley Dobbs Ave called for a substantial "pavilion" area which was never built. That and other classroom spaces could easily be added.)
2. Turning Hope-Hill into a PreK-8th grade Montessori school that would function as the district based public school for its current catchment zone, PreK-5th. (Significant cluster wide lottery slots should always be available regardless of subscription within the Hope-Hill catchment.)
3. Retraining Hope-Hill  faculty for Montessori Certification during construction renovation.
4. Allowing the students in the greater Grady cluster to be able to apply for spaces in the new Montessori School (in order to fill the classes and increase economic diversity in the classroom) This magnet style election method gives additional choice to parents inside the cluster, allowing for relief in overcrowding at the clusters other elementary schools and at its only other middle school, Inman Middle School. It allows for students across the cluster to be introduced to each other in the primary grades in a rigorous and highly desirable academic program and reduces economic isolation of Old Fourth Ward, Auburn Point and Capitol Gateway Title I students.
5. Allowing Hope-Hill catchment students and other currently attending students from the cluster the option of either continuing on to complete their 6-7-8 years in the Montessori program or continuing to Inman Middle School. (This further allows for additional choice across the cluster, and it does so without a traditional charter based approach.)
6. Sell the current Hope-Hill campus on Boulevard to the city of Atlanta and invest the funds received into the new Montessori school.  The City of Atlanta would then have a large and contiguous location to rebuild and indoor and outdoor pool facility and recreation/physical fitness/community meeting/programming space in the heart on the MLK Historic District.

The opportunities we would create by making such bold moves would be countless.

Our children would have an academic program that is currently only available in Atlanta if you PAY PRIVATE SCHOOL TUITION.  That's significant. The poorest children of the Grady Cluster would all of a sudden have an educational offering that would never be available to them.  They would also have a significant influx of students from throughout the cluster thereby creating a more economically diverse community and lead to long term stability within the cluster.

The expanded campus would allow the  children to be offered physical education on a daily basis (i.e., currently offered by Fernbank Elementary, rare in American public schools) that would make significant inroads into addressing the obesity epidemic among our students. (Another idea would be to create a farm to school garden on campus for educational purposes.)

Science, art, music and foreign language opportunities could be daily offerings in the primary years. 

Our greatest obstacles of course are finding additional money to support such ideas and convincing our leaders that this is something that is both worth doing, and completely possible to accomplish.

We must come together to find the significant resources that would support such an effort within the Grady Cluster. 

While I don't know what is available out there, I know that we can find support. 

We have a window of opportunity now that we must seize upon.

Can I  count on your support for something new, different and bold?

I invite you to share my thoughts with others that you think may be interested in what I've written. Please feel free to share your thoughts or new (or opposing) ideas with me and others so that we can come together on a solution for our children.

Mr. Patton, a dad, is a resident of Old Fourth Ward.