New Birmingham Elementary School Plan Unveiled and New High School Questioning Begins
categories: Milton Real Estate, Schools
School was in session Tuesday night in the Summit Hill Elementary cafeteria as parents and local residents where instructed on the details of the new elementary school to be built on Birmingham Highway and Wood Road.
About a hundred or so people gathered to learn and ask questions about the new school and while a good bit of the information was mundane, there were a few interesting tidbits. First, the mundane:
- The school will open in August 2009.
- Construction will begin Jan-Feb 2008.
- The design is the standard Fulton County “prototype elementary”. It will be one story with 109,000 sq. ft.
- The school is designed for 850 students in the classrooms. The “core facilities” like the cafeteria and media center are designed for 1000 students in case (for when?) portable classrooms are needed.
- Redistricting will not begin until October 2008 and there will be a series of meetings on the topic at that time.
We already knew most of that stuff. Here is the new stuff what I learned:
- Only 24 of the total 40 acres are going to be developed. A 50 ft buffer will be maintained on the northern side of the site adjacent to White Columns.
- Approximately 200 elementary age children live in White Columns. There is no “connection” currently planned between the school site and the neighborhood. I think it would be great if the neighborhood association and the school board could collaborate to create a gate and pathway of some sort to allow kids to walk/bike to school. It would be good for the kids and good for the roads. This arrangement exists in other parts of North Fulton, for instance between Findley Oaks Elementary School and the Wellington neighborhood.
- Two entrances off Birmingham Highway approximately 650 feet apart are proposed: one for car pool and the other for teachers/staff and buses. No traffic signals are currently planned and the School Board representatives said they defer to the State Department of Transportation on this because Birmingham Highway is a state highway. There was a lot of questioning and concern from the audience about the two proposed entrances, the amount of traffic and the safety of not having traffic lights. [I will note that upon thinking about it, Crabapple Crossing has two entrances probably closer than this with no traffic signals. The traffic does not move as fast on that part of B’ham Highway and they have a traffic officer on site.]
- No access to the school is planned from Wood Road. The only way to get into the school will be from Birmingham Highway. With 200 kids living in White Columns, getting them to the school will be interesting. The only portion of White Columns with access to B’ham Hwy is gated and both Wood Road and Nix Road are dirt. Residents of those dirt roads aren’t going to want White Columns traffic cutting through from Freemanville to B’ham Hwy. White Columns kids living in the original development are going to have to go north to Birmingham Road and over to Birmingham Hwy traveling three or four times as far as the bird would fly.
- The proposed playground space is only 2 acres not including a pad for future portable class rooms if ever needed. Some attendees questioned whether this was enough playground space. At Summit Hill, the lack of playground space is one of the constraints of the facility. It is crazy that on 40 acre sites the kids only get 2 acres of playground space. Let’s take advantage of the space.
- The septic system for the new school is planned for 100,000 gallons and is different from the one at Summit Hill in that it is some sort of anaerobic spray process that also includes a subsurface drain field. Apparently this is more state of the art. The drain field is going to take up a bunch of acres, however, we were told that additional play fields could not be built on top of the drain field because it would cause a change in the soil composition. I find it hard to believe that a bunch of 50 pound bipeds scurrying around kicking a ball is going to affect the dirt that much - and I’m not an engineer either.
New High School Discussed
The more interesting discussion revolved around the new high school proposed to be just east of the elementary school at Wood Road and Freemanville Road.
I thought that School Board member, Katie Reeves, did a great job stating the obvious - and I don’t say that sarcastically. I think that people forget that if public decisions were easily made we’d never have any controversy and we’d have a smoothly running society. We wouldn’t be fighting a war in Iraq; there would be no homeless people and everyone would have access to adequate health care in this country.
In fact, public decisions invariably require tradeoffs and we elect people to use their judgment to make these decisions. We provide them with staff who do countless hours of research and analysis to inform their judgment. As everyday citizens, we see our particular slice of reality. As elected officials, they see more slices of reality. Reeves, I think, emphasized this well.
She said that five sites were evaluated with multiple criteria that included topography, geographic area, land price, how many property sellers were involved and their willingness to sell. According to Reeves, the Freemanville / Wood Road site was the best of the five and approved by a vote of 7–0 by the Board.
I’m not saying that the site is a good site, even though it might be better than the other four. Personally, I’m opposed to the site just because I think it will be detrimental to the character of Milton. Milton High School was a pretty big pill to swallow for the Crabapple area and while it is choking it down, a Freemanville High School would be an even bigger pill for the area.
However, I don’t have an alternative – or course, I don’t have access to the Board’s data analysis either ;->. Prior to last night my alternative was to reuse the old Milton High School site. However, Reeves explained that that site is only 42 acres some of which is wetlands. That site is not big enough to build the “high school of today” with all the amenities that the modern school has. The School Board has a policy that it will offer the same amenities to every student in the system and that the students who are currently going to school in the old Milton High School (Connected Academy and Independence High School) are doing so voluntarily, which apparently makes it OK to provide “sub standard” amenities.
I’m a problem solver by personality and I find it frustrating to not be able to figure out a better solution to the location of the new high school problem. Our kids must have a high school somewhere, but where? After attending the meeting last night, I do know that the School Board’s heels are dug in and they are moving ahead to start addressing some of the watershed issues with the proposed site.
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With the trend of development and community growth going towards New Urbanism, I have always been curious why School Systems are the last to catch on? Everybody wants interconnectivity and walkable communities, yet schools are always set way off the road. They usually have a huge parking lot in front of the school (which discourages walking up to the front door) and rarely do these sites incorporate “green trails” or highlight a natural setting (creek, pond, oak tree grove, etc…). Isn’t it time we demanded school boards and local governments do their job in community planning when it comes to schools?
I am concerned on what neighborhoods will be pulled out of Summit hill. We moved to this area b/c of the great schools and now I want to know by elimitating certain subdivisions, how will Summit hill measure up. We live off of Bethany. FYI
Fran, My family had the same concern when we first moved to what is now Milton in 1999. My son went to Crabapple Crossing as a kindergartener before Summit Hill was open. Then we were redistricted to Summit Hill the next year. As it turns out Summit Hill is just a good a school as Crabapple Crossing, and we loved Crabapple Crossing.
I think the same will happen when they open the new school. Don’t look at the physical building look at the population of families that will be the enrollment of the school. You can’t go wrong in Milton, is my opinion.
Having said that, I don’t know where on Bethany Road you live, but I think you stand a fair chance of staying at Summit Hill. My OPINION is that the new school will be home to the kids of White Columns and the neighborhoods along Birmingham Highway north of Providence Road and the neighborhoods along Birmingham Road. But it is too early to tell. The school board will have redistricting discussion starting mid year.