The old school

AJC | Atlanta considers closing pair of schools with falling enrollment
Two Atlanta elementary schools with dwindling enrollments may close next spring, canceling the planned construction of a new building to replace one of them.

...McGill, in the Summerhill neighborhood near Turner Field, had seen its enrollment cut in half over the last three years, to 130. It is now the district's smallest school.

That's come as a surprise to school officials, who expected McGill to both serve growing Summerhill and relieve crowding at nearby Parkside Elementary in Grant Park.

The old McGill building was demolished this summer to make way for construction of a new $12.9 million building with room for 612 students. The old school was deemed expendable because it was too small and was saddled with an out-of-date "open classroom" design.

However, the projected school-age population boom has not taken place in Summerhill, and Parkside has seen its enrollment drop.

School officials stopped construction at the McGill site two months ago, when the district began to seriously evaluate the school's future.

The AJC mentions that McGill's building is gone, but doesn't explain how the school can still be open. McGill is currently occupying a facility recently vacated by Anne E. West Elementary, one of three schools closed two years ago when the new Parkside Elementary opened. They had been anticipating moving back into the newly renovated (rebuilt, actually) McGill next school year. (Ask the Fuller kids about Anne E. West, whose name Thomas used for the pageant in "An Atlanta Christmas".)

The second of the three, Slaton Elementary (my children's old school), was rented by a start-up charter school. A recent fire shut them down. The shell of the building still stands, vacant and unusable. The third, Guice, remains empty.

My son's middle school, King, is down at 75% of capacity. Parkside (my zone's elementary school) is also significantly below its expected enrollment.

There is a lot of new housing going up in the area, but it's all townhomes. It's hard to tell from the outside if the floor plans are kid friendly, but there's no denying the public housing being torn down was packed with kids. We're seeing a lot of new residents, but not so many with school-age kids.

What the AJC doesn't say is that when Atlanta Public Schools starts holding hearings to close a school, it means they've already decided to do it, and it'll take a monumental groundswell of opposition to change their minds. And with 130 kids in a building designed for 300, and McGill not being the only school in that situation, it only makes sense to look at consolidating, if only to save money on facilities upkeep.

And let's not forget those state and federal grants that only kick in if enrollment is above 450, encouraging larger elementary schools. In theory, school systems are locally controlled--but they will do anything, jump through any hoop, to get that matching federal money, so in practice you tell me who actually sets policy.

But I guess this is good news for the charter school people, who are about to see a couple more decent facilities hit the market.