Schools

Another APS Year Begins with Continued Overcrowding at Inman

APS Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. recently outlined a preliminary plan to relieve overcrowding at Inman with a proposal to expand Centennial Place Elementary School by adding 6th through 8th grades.

The school bell rings for the 2013-14 Atlanta Public Schools year today and that means another year of overcrowding, and the use of trailers at Inman Middle School.

 

Earlier this year, a study was commissioned by the Virginia-Highland Civic Association as part of the community's effort to take an active part in APS' discussions about how to relieve crowding at Inman Middle.

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Less than two weeks ago, Superintendent Erroll B. Davis Jr. outlined in a letter to stakeholders including the Inman Middle Task Force, a preliminary plan to relieve overcrowding at Inman with a proposal to expand Centennial Place Elementary School by adding 6th through 8th grades.

The proposal, which Davis plans to formally present to the Atlanta Board of Education at its August or September meeting, also includes a physical expansion of Inman by 10,000 to 12,000 square feet.

The plan also calls for demolishing Walden Middle School in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood and convert the site into play fields for Inman Middle and Grady High schools.

As outlined, Davis told the task force the plan eliminates a need for sixth grade academy in the Grady schools cluster.

The full letter can be read in the attached PDF.

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After going over the proposal, one of our Patch readers, Barbara Baggerman, commented at the site:

“Very misguided plan, apparently dictated by special-interest neighborhood groups rather than by common sense and best interest of kids. One of the attractions of intown neighborhoods is that we have nearby managably-sized neighborhood schools, not huge impersonal mega-schools like some in suburbia. Inman and Grady are already plenty big enough in terms of population. Making them bigger will not make them better; likely make them worse. Filling the play fields with more buildings, then having to transport the kids several miles to reach a play field, is stupid and counter-productive on so many levels (economics, time, safety, convenience, health, neighborhood cohesion, etc etc). A sixth-grade academy is a similarly stupid idea. The common-sense solution is a new middle school. Our northeast intown neighborhoods need more than one. What are the south-of-Ponce people so afraid of? Perhaps they have not yet realized the dirty little unspoken secret that, as Morningside and VaHi increasingly become victims of their own success, wherever the Lake Claire/CandlerPark/InmanPark/O4W kids go will become a totally cool school with amazingly bright, creative, talented kids. It's not the school, folks, it the people who make it. And you've got the kind of educated, youthful, diverse, creative, leading-edge, urban-and-social-pioneering people to make the best school, wherever you go (the same kind of people who made Inman and Grady successes, now priced out of north-of-Ponce neighborhoods). As coolness moves south, so will the cool schools. Embrace it. You've got it. You ARE it. Before long, the N-o-P folks will be clamoring to get into your school, just like the Buckhead folks used to camp out to get their kids into Inman.”

 

Another reader immediately commented:

 

“I totally agree with everything in the above post; however, I'm still hoping that a K-8 model could be implemented across the board, with Inman functioning as an additional K-8 school to balance the numbers at SPARK and MES (in a geographically logical manner). Redirect the funds slated for an expansion at Inman” towards a renovation/expansion of Howard, which could then function as an additional smaller High School for the neighborhoods Barbara noted above." 



What do you think of these comments and the proposal itself? Tell us below in the comments section.


Patch Editor Péralte Paul contributed to this story


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