Communities Come Out For Coan Middle School

Volunteers spend the day fixing up the former East Lake Elementary School for incoming Coan Middle students.

If there was one positive thing that came of the angst and drama that was the redistricting of the Atlanta Public Schools, it was the how the various communities rallied around the schools threatened with closure. That level of interest and involvement was something that APS Superintendent Erroll B. Davis took note of in a recent meeting with parents in Southeast Atlanta. Indeed, parents, non-parents and retirees in a number of communities including Edgewood, Peoplestown, Kirkwood and East Atlanta, among others, rallied around their neighborhood schools to keep them open. The big question: Post-redistricting, would that momentum last? A lot of parents, parents-to-be and non-parents in East Atlanta Patch communities promised that interest …

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Visions For Vacancies

What Should Go Here?: East Lake Elementary School

Among Atlanta Public Schools' institutions set for closure, how should it be repurposed?

By some accounts, it was a given that East Lake Elementary would close in the massive rezoning of Atlanta Public Schools. What East Lake residents feared most is if their neighborhood school were to close, that it wouldn't become a decaying shell of its former self and magnet for crime. On Tuesday, the APS Board of Education voted on a final plan that closes seven schools, including East Lake Elementary. The plan, which will be implemented at the start of 2012-13 academic year, calls for East Lake students to attend Toomer Elementary in neighboring Kirkwood. The East Lake campus itself will be used in that academic year as the temporary home for Coan Middle School students. Coan is being vacated for students from Jackson High School, which…

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Péralte Paul

8:51 pm on Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Yes, you're right.   more ›

Five Questions With. . .Kat Lindholm On Redistricting And East Lake

A community loses its grammar school, but saves its middle school.

As a community, East Lake is breathing a measured sigh of relief in the wake of the final redistricting plan developed by Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. The plan, released Saturday, closes 10 schools, including East Lake Elementary. Though East Lake wanted the elementary school to remain open and stay in the Grady High School cluster, this plan does neither. It does, however, keep the community's middle school, Coan, open. An earlier plan had Coan closing, something the community opposed, as well as a proposal that children zoned to attend East Lake Elementary would attend Burgess-Peterson Academy in East Atlanta because it meant crossing some high-traffic volume roadways including I-20 and Memorial Drive. This …

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Péralte Paul

9:54 pm on Wednesday, April 4, 2012

I had a sentence alluding to the barriers and distance in the text. I didn't mean to imply that Kat or East Lake thinks BPA is sub-par at all.   more ›

Patch Voices

APS Redistricting: East Lake Advocates To Stay In Grady High School Cluster

To be removed from the Grady cluster makes East Lake's children sacrifice again to benefit others.

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 …

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