Schools

Hundreds of Alpharetta-Milton Parents Start School Redistricting Process

Fulton County Schools holds first of three meetings at Alpharetta High for redistricting.

Hundreds of parents filled half the gym at  Wednesday night, all wanting to have a voice in where their children will be going to school in the next few years.

A new high school is scheduled to open on Bethany Bend in Milton in August 2012, so the Fulton County School System has to change its attendance zones. Wednesday night was the first of three meetings in which parents get to have input into the process. (Any parent can add input on the school system's online forum.)

Fulton County School Board District 2 member Katie Reeves said, "Redistricting for a high school is one of the most emotional and tough things that you are going to go through."

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She said it hits the adults harder than the children, who will easily adapt to whatever school they attend.

"Every time we open a high school, I think it's important to remember that our high school reflects our neighborhoods. It's not the other way around. Look around your neighborhoods and look at your neighbors, because that's what your high school will look like," Reeves said.

Find out what's happening in Alpharetta-Miltonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The school system starts with a blank slate and won't even create maps with alternative attendance zones until after staff examines the input provided at the Feb. 23 meeting, said Yngird Huff, who heads the redistricting process for the school system.

After Huff laid down the ground rules and explained the redistricting process, parents went to "class," splitting up into many small groups to supply input on how to draw up attendance zones.

Parents were told they had to stick to specific criteria. Anything else would be left out of the school system's database in planning the new attendance zones

  1. In terms of factors such as natural geographic barriers, homeowners associations, and shared amenities such as common areas, youth teams or events, what neighborhood areas should remain together and why?
  2. What traffic concerns do you have that may impact the safe and timely transportation of students to and from schools?
  3. Are there residential development trends in your area that may impact future school enrollment?
  4. Thinking about the past three years, have there been issues regarding multiple school rezonings in your area?

Staff will take this input to help figure out attendance zones. The first sets of maps showing up to nine alternatives will be created with this parental input and will be presented at the second meeting on March 16 back at Alpharetta High.

"It is very important that you do not check out at any time in the process," Huff said.

Even if a neighborhood is not scheduled to change under any of the alternatives presented at the second meeting, that doesn't mean it won't change, she said. Comments by parents participating in the process could have a ripple effect and cause changes to other neighborhoods. Huff said parents should stay engaged in the entire process, using the online forum if they are not able to attend all the meetings.

Final approval of a new attendance zone is expected from the Fulton County School Board in June. But they won't take effect right away.

"The attendance boundaries will not go into effect until August 2012 for the high schools as well as the elementary and middle schools," Huff said.

A decision in June is too late to fit in the budget and planning schedules for 2011.

"That would not give them ample time to plan," Huff said.

After Huff's presentation, parents headed to classrooms to give input through facilitators from the school system.

In one of the classrooms, Scott Funk kicked things off by saying student coming from Crooked Creek's 600 homes should attend the same school, as the neighborhood shares amenities, which was one of the criteria allowed. The Manor was another neighborhood with shared amenities.

Dawn Johnson a resident of The Manor and a parent with a sixth grader and an eighth grader at Hopewell Middle School, hoped all the students at that school could attend the same high school.

"We want a direct feed into one school. I think being split is what's tough," Johnson said.

Hopewell is the closest middle school to the new school, so it would seem to make more sense for traffic reasons for those students to go to Bethany Bend, Johnson said. Now about a third of them go across GA 400 to Alpharetta High, with the rest attending Milton High.

"From The Manor, it's a mucher safer route for these kids to trael to go to the new high school," Johnson said, making sure the small group's facilitator added "for teen drivers" to the written comments.

Milton City Councilman Alan Tart added a list of neighborhoods to add to the list for the same reasons, includig Avensong, Farimont, Bethany, Bethany Creek North and South, Bellaire and Sun Valley.

"Each one of those, whether one goes to Alpharetta, or one to Bethany, should stay together," Funk agreed.

For traffic reasons, none of the dozen parents wanted to see their children having to drive, be driven or bused across GA 400.


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