Cogburn Woods Overcapacity: School Superintendent Loe Outlines Plan
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Local Information, Milton Real Estate, Schools
Tuesday night at the Milton High School auditorium Fulton County School Board Representative Katie Reeves and Superintendent Cindy Loe, PhD met with a group of concerned parents about the overcrowding at Cogburn Woods Elementary.
In light of the issue, it seemed to be a pretty small group of people who showed up but some of those that did show up expressed their frustration with the mistake. The issue centers on the fact that Cogburn Woods is over enrollment by 10.9%, all on the heels of a wide redistricting last year that should have prevented this. As you can see in the chart below, Manning Oaks Elementary is also over planned enrollment by 4.4%:
| Comparison of Enrollment - May 2009 to September 2009 and FY10 Projections | ||||
| School | FY09 End of Year | FY10 Month 1** | Forecast | Over/Under |
| Alpharetta | 760 | 711 | 717 | -0.8% |
| Birmingham Falls | N/A | 765 | 752 | 1.7% |
| Cogburn Woods | 952 | 1007 | 908 | 10.9% |
| Manning Oaks | 973 | 756 | 724 | 4.4% |
| Summit Hill | 1058 | 794 | 780 | 1.8% |
| **Official First Month Enrollment; 9/4/2009 | ||||
The issue occurred when school board planners under-estimated the number of students coming from apartments and new townhome communities close by; and in turn didn’t move enough students from Cogburn Woods to Summit Hill or Birmingham Falls - or moved too many students from Manning Oaks to Cogburn Woods. However, I have to take my hat off to Superintendent Loe for stepping up and stating, “the planning department is right on target with projections 99.9% of the time but in this case…we just plain blew it”. Anytime anyone in a position of responsibility takes ownership for a mistake I’m more inclined to trust a plan from them to correct the issue.
So, what is their plan? First I’ll tell you what it isn’t. There were a few calls for some students to be moved immediately so the total enrollment would be in line with original projections. Kudos to Katie Reeves for shutting down this suggestion right away. I think it’s safe to say it would solve the immediate problem but not one parent would want it to be their kids and we should never consider moving students in the middle of the year, disrupting their education.
The plan is two-fold; first parents in Cogburn Woods would be offered an opportunity to apply for hardship transfers if they feel the overcrowding is effecting their child. Hardship applicants would be given a first-come first-served option at moving their child to Summit Hill or Birmingham Falls ONLY if slots exist as no additional teachers would be staffed to accommodate this. Those parents would also be responsible for getting their children to and from school.
Secondly, the school board planners would re-evaluate student population and projections in December / January and a meeting would be scheduled after that so the community could hear the proposal for some small adjustment / redistricting for Cogburn Woods and Manning Oaks. However, this is problematic as both schools are over enrolled and are in a high growth area. Some parents attending made suggestions that student enrollment at Summit Hill and Birmingham Falls would need to be included in that evaluation as well. I agree with this as the over enrollment issue for Cogburn shouldn’t simply be pushed back on Manning Oaks.
This is a sensitive issue for all parents involved but a question comes to mind and I wonder what others think about this. There are some classes at Summit Hill that have more than 25 kids becasue they didn’t have quite enough kids in a particulare grade to warrant an additional class. Cogburn Woods as a whole is over enrolled but their class sizes are 25 or less. Which situation is worse? An over crowded school with appropriate class sizes or an under enrolled school with some larger class sizes?
Thanks for posting this. My son in Birmingham Falls has 29 kids in his 4th grade class. So the overcrowding seems to be universal and is probably more a fact of budget cuts than bad redistricting!
My son is in 4th grade at Cogburn and has 28 in his class. While my other son only has 20 in his 2nd grade class. I’,m anxious to hear what they intend to do for the next school year. Thank you for running this article. It was nice to see the numbers instead of listening to the parents who complain but don’t have their facts straight.