The APS Redistricting Debate: Inman Park's Official Position

Editor's note: Many area neighborhood organizations are meeting to decide how they should respond to the Atlanta Public Schools' demographic survey, which is due by Dec. 16. This is the Inman Park Neighborhood Association's official position statement.

by Regina Brewer

We are committed to staying united with the communities with whom we have a history of shared SRT-3 and Grady High School Cluster focus: Inman Park, Candler Park, and Lake Claire. We include all other SRT-3 neighbors in this partnership.

The Neighborhood feels strongly that a slower, more deliberate process is required. Such a process would allow our communities to work together to find a common solution that benefits all children in SRT-3 and the Grady Cluster.

The neighborhoods in SRT-3 and the Grady Cluster have a long history of working in collaboration to solve very difficult problems. The current Dec. 16 feedback survey and tight deadline are both inadequate vehicles to bring community collaborations to bear in a meaningful way.

We propose extending the community input phase of the process at this point by adding the following action through our SRT-3 Local School Councils:

• Combine our SRT’s Local School Councils with the initial SRT-3 Focus Group to create a single task force charged with ensuring all community and stakeholder proposals are heard and included in the rezoning process.
• Dispatch this task force, under Local School Council bylaws, to engage appropriately with APS, demographers, and the ABOE …. to arrive at one to two new SRT-3 rezoning proposals to submit to demographers, APS, and the ABOE for actual rezoning consideration.
• Use this task force, under Local School Council bylaws, to build community trust through constructive parent and community stakeholder engagement across neighborhoods. Ensure that all voices and options relevant to this SRT and high school cluster are shared and clearly communicated from demographic process, to Superintendent recommendations, to final ABOE decisions.

We are open to the concept of alternative grade configurations, particularly the concept of a 6th grade academy (or 5th and 6th) within our geographic cluster.
These alternative grade configurations are currently used in other SRTs in Atlanta, in Decatur and in highly urban districts such as Chicago. Marietta currently has a 6th grade academy and a 5/6 Intermediate School model was implemented in Athens, Ala. several years ago.

Important criteria Inman Park feels would lead to the potential development of productive alternative scenarios:

• Accessibility and Transportation Issues: We are a walkable, bikable community. The Freedom Park PATH now physically unites many of us. Soon the trail and transit will complete our ability to move freely between our neighborhoods and schools without getting in a car. Commuter and traffic pattern impact, as well as dollar cost incurred by feeder pattern changes, need to be factored in rezoning plans.
• Need to communicate additional assets not yet considered: Taxpayer investment in Georgia PATH and the Beltline: These two assets plan for easy access to Grady and Inman from the three neighborhoods currently at Lin and the Old Fourth Ward. We would like our community school feeder pattern to sensibly fuse with current and future green investments planned to benefit student access to these schools with far less vehicular transportation. Vacant APS properties/assets need to be utilized rather than purchasing new lands. The David Howard High School building and the Walden Middle School building are available and easily accessed by the Georgia PATH.

We require greater confidence in the data being used to arrive at initial decisions. More information is needed both in Inman Park and in our SRT as a whole:

• Questionable data and erroneous assumptions used to make decisions about capital expenditures over the past two decades have contributed to the current problem.
• Without an audit and full understanding of out-of-zone attendance issues in our overcrowded schools, speculation on their impact will not be settled. This will make it difficult to build consensus in these communities.
• More understanding of the impact of charter school factors and how they are calculated is needed. It is important for this SRT to understand their current and future impact on under-utilization of some facilities.

Ms. Brewer is president of the Inman Park Neighborhood Association.