New Boundaries Proposed in Draft Plan of Birmingham Elementary Redistricting
ALPHARETTA - Two things are abundantly clear: First, one of the chief reasons that North Fulton schools are as good as they are is because of incredibly strong parental involvement.
Last night’s third round Birmingham Elementary redistricting meeting was attended by approximately 750 people - and this was down from the roughly 1,000 that attended each of the first two meetings. One can only assume that turnout would have been as high as earlier meetings, but some parents must have previewed the draft plan earlier in the day online and were satisfied enough to stay home. None the less, measuring by the turnout, parents obviously care, and are involved and organized regarding schools issues that directly affect their families and children.
Speaking to the level of interest and involvement in the process, School Board staff said that more public comments have been received during this redistricting process than any previous redistricting.
Over 1,000 comments were taken during the Round Two break-out sessions and over 3,500 comments were submitted online after Round Two, albeit some of those comments were copy and pasted by organized neighborhoods and suggested by email chains. Still the level of participation is to be commended.
The other thing that was abundantly clear is that not everyone is going to be happy with the final plan. You simply can’t please everyone. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much public comment the board seemed to take into consideration in the draft plan. I expected of one of the three proposed plans to be pushed forward as the draft plan. That wasn’t the case The School Board’s draft is truly a fourth plan that reflects many of the concerns discussed around the three previously proposed plans.
Here are the highlights of the proposed plan:
Birmingham Elementary Redistricting Round Three Draft Plan (1.2 MiB, 386 hits)
Roswell North ’s district will not change. They will combat crowding with planned expansions. Roswell North parents had strenuously resisted adding any of what is currently Esther Jackson or Mimosa districts to Roswell North ’s and they appear to have gotten their way.
Mountain Park will pick up some area along both sides of HWY 92 including Grace Hill, Sterling at Crossville, Glens of Crabapple and Greenway Hills. I never heard much debate about this one way or another. The objective is to relieve crowding at Sweet Apple .
To relieve crowding at Crabapple Crossing , its district is still being reduced per all three preliminary proposals. However, instead of the area that is in the north part of that district (everything north of Dorris Road and Landrum Road including Providence Lake and Atlanta National subdivisions) going to the new Birmingham Elementary , they are proposed to go to Summit Hill . It was explained that this was because there was a lot of feedback about the danger of the intersection of Providence Road and Birmingham Highway - can’t argue with that, its a death trap - and residents of Providence Lake thought it would be safer and easier to go straight through that intersection than take a left onto Birmingham Highway.
That change in Crabapple Crossing ’s district impacted the new Birmingham Elementary ’s district: Triple Crown was included in the Birmingham instead of Summit Hill district, which makes sense in my opinion. As a result, The Manor was then assigned to Summit Hill instead of Birmingham Elementary as had been proposed in Preliminary Plan B.
Harrington Falls neighborhood was taken out of the Summit Hill and returned to Alpharetta Elementary , leaving Alpharetta Elementary ’s district unchanged. I understand that this is a postive for the school because a large proportion of the PTA resides in Harrington Falls and this plan retains the stability the PTA provides.
Most of the debated centered around Cogburn Woods Elementary and Crooked Creek. Crooked Creek residents had openly been lobbying for a plan similar to draft proposal B that kept all the neighborhoods along Cogburn Road at Cogburn Woods and limited the amount of area east of HWY 9. What they got, was what was proposed in draft C. The good thing about the draft Cogburn Woods district is that it does still include the neighborhoods of Gatewood and Coventry, which are practically next door to Cogburn Woods and had been slated to go to Manning Oaks under proposed plan A. Those neighborhoods were very vocal and organized in their opposition to plan A and they appear to have had their voices heard.
As for Manning Oaks , Hembree Springs and Mimosa , Manning Oaks ‘ draft district extends south to encompass some of what is now Hempree Springs to alleviate overcrowding there. In turn, Hembree Springs is gaining everything north of Mansell Road that is currently zoned to Mimosa.
The Winners and the Losers
So who are the unhappy 5%? Crooked Creek without a doubt. One of the most interesting things in the meeting was the analysis of public comments. The School Board staff plotted on a map each comment they received online. Clearly this was a north versus south debate.
Birmingham Elementary Round Two Proposed District Maps (2.8 MiB, 332 hits)
For Plan A, the negative comments were in the north and the positive comments were in the south. Plan B was the inverse: the north (areas in and around Crooked Creek) favored it and the south (areas around Hembree Springs) opposed it because it resulted in huge overcrowding at Hembree Springs. With Plan C, the negatives were north and the positives were south. The proposed plan is more like Plan C than anything else with some tweaks in the south for Roswell North.
In the draft plan, the School Board staff seems to have addressed many of the issues with the proposed plans, but you can’t address the overcrowding of Hembree Springs without upsetting someone else’s apple cart and that someone else is Crooked Creek. My guess is that Crooked Creek is a victim of its size. As a neighborhood of 600+ homes you can’t send them to Summit Hill, as parents were suggesting at the meeting last night. There are just too many students in Crooked Creek to do that.
Has anyone played Blokus ? In Blokus, the best strategy is to play your big, oddly shaped pieces first because you might not be able to play them later as the board fills up. The same goes for school redistricting. Big neighborhoods like Crooked Creek have to be assigned early in the process and then the smaller neighborhoods around then can be used to fine turn the district boundaries.
Let’s face it: Many schools attendance zones are going to look very different next year, including Summit Hill, Hembree Springs, Manning Oaks and Cogburn Woods. Change is always difficult but also a fact of life in a quickly growing area. We must have new schools. I do give the School Board staff high marks so far in listening to the issues and actually making changes to the plans where possible.
And in the midst of this all, Manning Oaks goes out and gets itself named a Georgia School of Excellence .
The game is not over yet. The final proposal will be made to the School Board in January. Some changes can and might still be made. Then the School Board members can make changes on their own. Public comment is still open on the online discussion forum until 5pm tomorrow night. I’m absolutely positive that North Fulton is making its opinions known.
