Parents of students in the North Atlanta cluster of Atlanta Public Schools say their children’s specialized academic program will get off track if the current APS rezoning proposals don’t change.
Students in the North Atlanta cluster, from kindergarten through 12th grade at North Atlanta High School, attend certified International Baccalaureate Schools, known as IB schools. The current rezoning proposals mix those students with students from schools that do not have the IB certification.
If that happens it could disrupt the education of some students following the IB trail to graduation while putting other students from non-IB schools in classrooms where the program is unfamiliar.
“I think trying to switch gears in midstream would be very difficult,” said Cynthia Briscoe Brown, co-president of North Atlanta Parents for Public Schools.
Atlanta School officials say IB is a high-quality education program, but there are others in the system of the same caliber.
Karen Waldon, deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction, tried to allay worries at a Feb. 8 meeting with parents at North Atlanta High School.
She said the shortest amount of time for becoming an IB school would be three years. That means a proposed new Midtown Middle School would not have the certification. The school would enroll students from E. Rivers, an IB school, and Centennial Place Elementary, a non-IB School.
They will still get a quality education, Waldon said.
“Next year we’re moving forward to implement the common core state standards that will be a very rigorous curriculum,” Waldon said. “You can rest assured students will be accessing a very rigorous curriculum aligned with IB.”
Aside from the worries about disrupting the flow of learning, the IB schools are also a source of pride for Buckhead parents.
Brown said parents of children in these schools have invested time and thousands of dollars of their own money for these schools to achieve IB certification, bestowed by the International Baccalaureate Organization. It involves extensive training of teachers and thousands of dollars in fees.
IB schools teach students to think about their subjects in an interrelated way – students learning about the American Revolution in Social Studies would read books by authors from the period in their English classes, for example. Students learn to apply a global perspective to their studies.
When they graduate they will have studied a foreign language from kindergarten through the 12th grade.
IB students stand out as college applicants, Brown said. Brown said putting students who don’t come from an IB background into a school with IB students would put the non-IB students at a disadvantage.
“One of the proposals feeds all of Centennial into North Atlanta High,” she said. “By the time they get to North Atlanta they’ve had nine years of a different way of doing things while the rest of the students have drunk the IB Kool-Aid from the beginning.”
Dan Fishman, father of a student at North Atlanta cluster school Bolton Academy, said he appreciates the program’s world perspective.
He said his daughter’s artwork was shown to students in Korea as an example of what American students are drawing. Parents of students in IB schools, he said, would prefer their children stay on that path.
B.J. Young, co-PTA president for Sarah Smith Elementary, said not having IB certification at the new middle school isn’t as big a concern to some parents as making sure North Atlanta High remains an IB school. She said parents have had time to think about the choices and many think it wouldn’t be as difficult to make a new middle school IB-certified.
“We would rather lose IB curriculum with a new middle school and work toward getting it at the middle school,” she said. “ … We know we’ve got a parent population that would work toward getting that back.”
Atlanta Schools spokesman Keith Bromery said Superintendent Erroll Davis wants to protect IB schools in the district but left open the possibility of moving some students to non-IB schools.
“[He] has said IB is a quality academic program, like others in Atlanta public schools and elsewhere,” Bromery said. “Among the superintendent’s guiding priorities on redistricting are minimizing disruption of established educational programs and not eliminating IB schools within IB clusters.”
