Schools

Inman Local School Council Rejects APS Redistricting Proposals

Group asks district to "stop borrowing middle school space from other clusters"

The following letter was sent to Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Erroll B. Davis, Jr. on behalf of the Inman Middle School local school council.

Mr. Davis,

The Local School Council at Inman Middle School would like to take this opportunity to address the current proposals for redistricting in SRT-3. Inman’s population currently stands at 889 students. This is 130 students over capacity of 770. Under Option A, 150 students that are currently from the Centennial Place feeder would be removed from the population. However, this does not happen until 2017. Under Option B you immediately add the students from Kirkwood and offer no relief until 2015. As you know there is a large bubble that is currently flowing through the feeder schools that will make their way to Inman over the next five years. We feel the neither Proposal A nor Proposal B address the imminent overcrowding issues at Inman.

Find out what's happening in Virginia Highland-Druid Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In addressing overcrowding at Inman, we would like Atlanta Public Schools to focus on three main concerns of the Inman community.

1st – The middle school solution at Inman should focus on including the five Grady feeder schools Hope-Hill, Morningside, Centennial Place, Springdale Park, and Mary Lin. We feel that these students who are ultimately slated to attend Grady should be included in a middle school solution for the cluster. 

Find out what's happening in Virginia Highland-Druid Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

2nd – APS should stop borrowing middle school space from other clusters in order to accommodate students who will eventually go to Grady, as doing so weakens the cluster.

3rd – The $30,000,000 in SPLOST-IV budgeted for a “New Midtown Middle School” should be slated for increasing the number of middle school seats in the Grady cluster, which serves Midtown.

While the Inman community is supportive of Centennial’s desire to expand to a K-8 program, under no circumstances do we advocate or endorse any plan to exclude any of the current schools from the current feeder pattern. Alternatively, the Inman community feels that these issues can be addressed through one of the following solutions.

  • Expand the current seating capacity on the current site of Inman. This could be done through an expansion or through the building of a self-contained 6th grade academy on the current site.
  • Look at alternative grade level configurations that would relieve overcrowding at Inman. This might be done through a 5th and 6th grade school or 6th grade academy located at a new site in the current Inman area.
  • Open a new middle school in the current Inman area.

We request that APS strive to maintain racial diversity at any of the middle school solutions above. In addition, we want to make sure students with special needs are served within our community.

While we understand that any of these solutions may take a few years to implement, we want to make sure that Inman has the support it needs during that period to ensure the academic success of its students. In addition, as we know that these are very complicated issues and that the community needs to be involved in the plans, we advocate for the establishment of a community forum for the Inman area. This forum would foster communication.

Respectfully,

Mike Szalkowski

Chair Inman Middle School LSC


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Virginia Highland-Druid Hills