The Atlanta Board of Education on Tuesday, April 10, heard a round of cheers at the end of a chaotic public meeting about its planned redistricting of public schools. The BOE agreed to take three schools off the closure list: F.L. Stanton, D.H. Stanton and Towns elementary schools.
The approval came after an uproar temporarily shut the meeting down. Some members of the audience reacted angrily to Atlanta Police Officers escorting a man out of the auditorium and officers tackled another man who witnesses said went after Superintendent Erroll Davis.
APS spokesman Keith Bromery downplayed the incident. He said there were no arrests.
“It was such a minor disruption,” he told a reporter. “Who cares?”
In this video: an uproar at the April 10, 2012 Atlanta Board of Education meeting nearly delayed a vote to change school attendance maps and close schools to save money and address overcrowding.
The board voted unanimously to close seven schools instead of 10. Some South Atlanta parents blasted North Atlanta parents for getting mostly everything they wanted out of the redistricting process. There were no major changes to the North Atlanta cluster’s boundaries and no recommendations to close schools. Some of parents in the cluster that includes the Buckhead community wanted the school board to delay the vote.
Parents at Sarah Smith Elementary asked for more time to consider a last-minute proposal to move all of the Pine Hills neighborhood from Garden Hills Elementary to their school to ease overcrowding at Garden Hills. The move would add more than 120 students to the school, according to Sarah Smith parents who are worried about overcrowding.
There was also opposition to plans to turn the current Sutton Middle School campus into a sixth grade academy when that school moves to the current North Atlanta High School campus on Northside Drive.
Christina Pirouz, a parent at Sarah Smith, said parents asked for data to support the rezoning recommendation but didn’t receive any until April 10. She said Davis’ explanation was not what demographers told board members when the rezoning input process began last fall.
“The first proposal presented by APS indicated that Sarah Smith was going to be over capacity and the small portion of Pine Hills that attends Sarah Smith should be shifted to Garden Hills,” Pirouz said. “Clearly this option indicated that Garden Hills was not over capacity.”
Kelly Prewitt, a Warren T. Jackson Elementary parent and a member of the Meet in the Middle APS group, said the fight for two smaller middle schools instead of a sixth grade academy is not over.
“Our organization is not going to go away after this vote,” she said. “To be honest, what happened last night is exactly what we expected to happen.”
Reide Onley, president of North Atlanta Parents for Public Schools said today, April 11, that there was no way for the school board to make everyone in the North Atlanta cluster happy.
“The decision has been made it is time to move forward as a cluster and get the community united and moving in the right direction,” he said.
The vote came after a grueling nine-and-a-half-hour meeting that began at 2 p.m. and ended at 11:30 p.m., with few breaks.
From the South Atlanta parents’ point of view, the North Atlanta parents had nothing to complain about. Parents of schools being closed in South Atlanta said they were being treated unfairly compared with wealthier North Atlanta schools. Several North Atlanta parents in the audience squirmed in their seats as mostly black speakers told them they did not want their children to attend school with black children. North Atlanta parents sitting in the audience said that’s not true and said they want the same things South Atlanta parents want: quality schools.
B.J. Young, co-president of the Sarah Smith PTA, said the comments other parents made about North Atlanta schools were “unfortunate.”
“I don’t think there’s a reason to slight another community to make yourself look good or to raise yourself up,” she said.
District 4 School Board Member Nancy Meister did not publicly ask the board during the April 10 meeting to alter its redistricting plan to address the concerns about the Pine Hills neighborhood and the sixth grade academy.
The redistricting proposal was intended to balance out over crowded North Atlanta schools with underutilized South Atlanta schools. The system has 13,000 empty seats. Round after round of public comments about the divisive issue turned the auditorium into a powder keg. Accusations of racism were hurled at the school board and speakers vowed to vote the current board out of office if they closed their schools, holding recall elections for board members if necessary. Most of the speakers were in support of the three schools the board removed from the closure list.
Before public comments were through, shouting erupted as Atlanta Police escorted someone out of the room. Another unknown man rushed up behind the dais and launched himself at Davis before an officer tackled him. The board retreated to a closed room. One of the audience members spit on one of the microphones at the dais before being dragged out of the room by a police officer.
Extra police officers appeared at the school, and when the board resumed the meeting many of the audience members were gone. Atlanta Public Schools officials did not report any arrests.
The Board’s official Talk Up APS blog also glossed over the events that nearly pulled the plug on the meeting, calling it simply a “10 minute recess for security purposes.”
Atlanta BOE members thanked parents for their passionate response.
Davis promised to provide a quality education for all APS students, including the ones in the smaller schools the board spared.
“We will do what we have committed to do,” Davis said.
Dr. Dwanda Farmer, who told North Atlanta parents during comments that they were avoiding sending their children to schools with large numbers of black students, said South Atlanta parents want what North Atlanta parents have. She said North Atlanta parents should not be afraid to send their children to South Atlanta schools.
“We want good schools everywhere,” Farmer said.
