Schools

Wesley International Academy to Move to Former Cook Elementary School Space

Agreement is for one year as school — which wants to stay in the Jackson cluster — seeks a permanent solution.

Atlanta Public Schools and Wesley International Academy have reached a preliminary agreement that will allow the charter school to move into the now-closed Cook Elementary School for the 2013-14 academic year.

Both sides expect the deal to be finalized and signed in the next few days.

It is only for one year, but it will save Wesley, a K-8 school, roughly $700,000 in rent it pays to Imagine Schools Inc. for its current space in Custer/McDonough/Guice.

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That money will instead go toward teacher training, supplies and student materials, and other education-related investments at the school, which serves baout 700 kids.

“This is a big deal for us. This negotiation was hard fought,” Kamau Bobb, Wesley’s board chairman, told East Atlanta Patch. “I’m excited.”

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Even so, the school, which had outgrown its current home, will have to find a long-term solution.

"We're still not entirely out of the woods, but the APS board chair, Reuben McDaniel was really instrumental in helping us with the negotiations," Bobb said. "We still have to have a long-term, viable plan."

That plan could include making Cook the permanent home though it's too early say at this point.

But it does mean that Cook, one of seven schools to close last year as part of APS’ redistricting, will not be repurposed as a teacher training lab as Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. originally proposed.

A review of the facilities showed the Cook campus, located on Memorial Drive in the Capitol Gateway neighborhood, wasn’t suitable for that plan, Reuben R. McDaniel III, APS board chairman, told Patch.

Once the superintendent nixed that plan for Cook, the district looked at repurposing it for Wesley, McDaniel, who was involved in the negotiations said.

"It then gives us a year for them to look at all their options," McDaniel said. "Before we made a permanent  decision, we wanted them to have the chance to evaluate all their options."

Wesley parents, for their part, had lobbied for the Cook facility, which underwent an $8 million renovation, before it was closed in the redistricting.

They pushed for it not only because a third of Wesley students come from what was Cook's attendance zone, but because they wanted to remain in or near the Jackson cluster.

(Technically, Cook, which is at the corner of Memorial Drive and Kelly Street, is in the Grady attendance zone, though it straddles Jackson's zone.)

The superintendent has said Jackson — which is undergoing a $40 million facelift of its campus — is a priority for the district in terms of raising its academic standing.

To that end, Wesley parents stressed keeping the school in the cluster would help with that mission.

Wesley offers Chinese language classes as part of its curriculum and is an International Baccalaureate school, an academically rigorous and challenging program

Jackson also has Chinese language classes and the school is in the final stages of getting an IB program, too.

Wesley's status as an existing IB institution would help strengthen not only Jackson's efforts, but the entire cluster, Richard Quartarone, president of Southeast Atlanta Communities for Schools.

"Wesley is a citywide charter school, which is fantastic but at the same time, 50 to 60 percent of the Wesley student body live in the Jackson cluster," Quartarone said. "As a K-8 IB school, you have a built-in IB culture that would be going to Jackson High School."

That's a point many parents sought to impress on the superintendent when they lobbied originally for Cook.

"The Jackson cluster is  complex fabric of different types of education," Quartarone, a Grant Park parent who has children at Wesley and Parkside Elementary School, said.

"The more resources they can devote to the teachers and the education of the students at Wesley is a win for Wesley and it's a win for the the Jackson cluster."


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