APS Redistricting Notes for the Capitol View Community

Summary of how Atlanta Public School Redistricting affects Capitol View:

Both Options A & B will close Capitol View Elementary (CVE) and zone all kids to Perkerson Elementary. Capitol View Elementary only has a capacity of 374 and Perkerson has a capacity of 616. Moving the kids to Perkerson Elementary will put this school at about 95% capacity. Before redistricting, each school was only running at about 60% capacity. Enrollment has been and is predicted to down in Capitol View neighborhood and they expect this trend to continue.

Both Plans A & B have Sylvan Middle School zoned back into our neighborhood. Our neighborhood has been asking for this for years. It only makes common sense.

Both plans have us zoned for Carver. The tricky question is what other middle schools feed into Carver as well. Option B is clear: Sylvan and part of Price will be zoned for Carver. Price would then be a split feeder with some students going to Carver and some to South Atlanta. There are a lot of arguments against split feeders. Option A is more tricky. Sylvan, King, some of Long, and some of Price will feed into Carver. This is complicated and there are a lot of people in Southeast Atlanta that will fight this because (1) the split feeder argument, and (2) they have better high schools developing up there and probably want to be part of those (I am sure there are other arguments too). Link to the feeder chart: http://www.croppermap.com/documents/APSGAOptionsAandBFeederPatternMatrix_2_7_2012.pdf

Some Observations (again, my interpretations are mixed in with the facts):

• We need more options for education in the Capitol View neighborhood, if the neighborhood is going to grow with the Beltline. The public schools in our neighborhood can improve, but they will not improve by themselves. I think there we can look at the history and see this.
• The CV neighborhood is losing over 28% of its children to schools outside of Capitol View. There are lots of reasons, quality of schools, social environment, curriculum, staffing of schools, etc. Note that this does not account for families that have just moved out of the neighborhood to get in better school districts. See the statistics on the APS demographic study at this link: http://www.atlantapublicschools.us/cms/lib/GA01000924/Centricity/Domain/45/Student%20by%20School%20Attendance%20and%20Residence.pdf
• Our area is losing enrollment: our neighborhood needs to dig deep and ask why? Parents sending kids to other schools, parents moving, housing projects being shut down.
• The new zone brings together the historically bound and physically connected communities of Capitol View, Capitol View Manor, and Sylvan Hills. Bringing these neighborhoods and the schools together under one zone makes commonsense and will help with our efforts to build a thriving community
• Having schools that are within walking distance of the majority of our children is crucial to a thriving community. Bringing Sylvan Hills Middle School back to our zone is a good thing. We were zoned to Parks before. Sylvan is next to Perkerson Park which serves as resource to many of our children.
• Our schools are not improving at an acceptable pace. CVE and Perkerson are really close when it comes to performance ratings. CVE may be having a little more success with keeping the 3-5 grades CRCT scores higher. No matter what, however, both schools will/would need tons of improvement and neighborhood involvement.
• CVE is in a walkable location for many of our neighborhood children, similar and parallel to Sylvan Hills Middle School.
  • It is walking distance to many of our neighborhood resources: the Sullivan Center, the future Beltline, the proposed regional library, and both Emma Millican and Perkerson Park.
  • Leaving Capitol View Elementary as a vacant building should be big concern of the neighborhood. This is not, however, saying this is a justification for leaving it open.
  • Perkerson is on the outskirts of the zone and is not walkable for the majority of our zone.
  • Perkerson does have direct bus routes to it and is easily accessible. Busing kids is cheaper than keeping two schools open. The fact is that APS is and will be experiencing reduced funding in the next 10 years.
  • Whether it is personnel, financial, curriculum, or space, we want a commitment from APS to allocate the necessary and appropriate resources to improve the public schools in Capitol View. Southwest Atlanta schools have been neglected far too long. We also want more education options, better Pre-K, etc.
  • We need high-caliber, affordable Pre-K programs in our neighborhood.
  • APS needs to find better ways to engage parents of all social classes, neighborhood associations, non-profits, and businesses in the process of reforming the schools in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is much different than the Grady Cluster and Southeast Atlanta.

Important Links

Option A & B:

http://www.croppermap.com/documents/APSGAUtilizationOptionsSummary120207.pdf

Feeder Plan:

http://www.croppermap.com/documents/APSGAOptionsAandBFeederPatternMatrix_2_7_2012.pdf

Enrollment of our Neighborhood:

http://www.atlantapublicschools.us/cms/lib/GA01000924/Centricity/Domain/45/Student%20by%20School%20Attendance%20and%20Residence.pdf