The new Sandtown Middle School looks great.
Parents are working hard planning for programming needs. Our children are
excited about school opening in the fall, and we are all quite proud of the
addition to our community.
However that the middle school was not placed
in our community because the Fulton Board of Education felt it was our turn to
get a much-needed new school. The placement involved a lobbying effort by
South Fulton residents that lasted more than two years - supported by data
coming out of Blueprint Sandtown effort.
We are again facing some of the same
challenges.
We need:
a new South Fulton County High School,
a new Westlake High School facility and
better high school facilities throughoutSouth Fulton.
There is no need for a chronology of the
school board’s failure to serve South Fulton County:
they have built 17 North County schools
versus 2 in South Fulton County or
the insensitive remarks some board members
have made about South Fulton County’s needs or
the board borrowing from its reserves to
build a new high school.
A new Westlake will require us to continue
our community efforts. The fight is not over.
We need to remember:
The Westlake facility is 40 years old,
among the oldest in Fulton. In the past 40 years, Westlake has been
“patched up” five times. This mentality of fixing up Westlake, as new
state-of-the-art high schools appear in North Fulton causes one to question
what the veiled motivation for prolonging the inequity.
In the 1990’s, North Springs and Riverwood
received extensive renovations, approximately 20 million dollars worth, to
update their facilities while Westlake received only 5 million.
The 10 million dollars currently allocated
for fixing up at Westlake again will still leave the core facility grossly
inadequate and unable to meet basis instructional objectives.
The Superintendent developed a “Staff
Initiative” that would provide a new South Fulton County High School, a new
Westlake High facility, and a new model for smaller high school facilities
throughout South Fulton. The school board budget is structured so that
North County schools are not impacted by the initiative. In spite of this
forward thinking strategy, there is a faction of Board members who continue
to stall these efforts.
Why you ask? Tragically, this is an
intentional strategy to sabotage this initiative to address the High School
facilities gap between North and South Fulton. The longer the money can be
kept from being allocated to the “Staff Initiative”, the greater the
likelihood the funding can be used for a project in one of these member’s
districts. Last spring, about 15 million dollars was over budgeted. Within
weeks of this discovery, the 15 million was quickly spent.
As part of the court settlement between the
county and black parents, the district will slowly phase out a
minority-to-majority busing program that transported black students in south
Fulton to higher-performing, predominantly white schools in north Fulton.
Fulton was the last metro system under a
race-based desegregation order, and its release ends all federal supervision
of school integration efforts in the area. With the games some of our
school board members are playing with facilities, it seems perhaps the
settlement was premature.
Let’s not let Board members “stall” with
our tax dollars,
as they ask us to double their pay and deprive our children of quality
and equitable facilities.
Email all Fulton County Board Membersand let them know that you support a new
Westlake facility and adequate facilities for South Fulton County schools.
Our Schools
Reflect Our Community. Come Out and Support Our Children
Board Meeting Location
Administrative Center 786
Cleveland Avenue, Atlanta 404-763-6830
January 15, 2004
Administrative
Center
Directions from South: Take
I-85 to Cleveland Avenue, Exit #76 (north of the airport). Go west (left) on
Cleveland Avenue. Administrative Center is about one block on the left.
Directions from North: Take
I-85 to the Cleveland Avenue, Exit #76 (north of the airport). Go west
(right) on Cleveland Avenue. The entrance to the Administrative Center is
immediately to your left.