Should Decatur change elementary configuration?

Last week Decatur’s school board approved dividing its elementary grades into five K-2 buildings and two 3-5. One couldn’t help noticing a seismic difference between this week’s announcement and a similar one in 2004, when the board broke up the longstanding K-5 structure into the current K-3 and 4-5 model.

This week’s decision, made two hours deep into the meeting before an audience of 14, brought mostly yawns. Over a decade ago, however, a hue and cry thundered throughout the city and a typical declaration was: “I’m oughtta here.”

Though some left and others sent their children to private schools, a whole lot more flooded the city’s classrooms, and the K-12 enrollment has more than doubled since 2004. Given the ultimate success of the K-3/4-5 model some may ask why reconfigure now during a period of complex enrollment growth (7 to 12 percent per year since 2009) and construction (at the high school, the middle school and later this year on Talley Street). Reconfiguration brings along its evil twin, rezoning, or in this case zoning for the two 3-5 schools. Both of those buildings will be located south of the railroad tracks, which could prove unwieldy in Decatur’s ever-dieting road network.

Folks have moved to Decatur for the neighborhood-centric schools since at least the 1920s. Last week’s vote lops off yet another grade from those buildings at Clairemont, Glennwood, Oakhurst, Winnona Park and Westchester (a half century ago they were all K-7).

In December the original facilities committee gave several reasons favoring reconfiguration: more collaboration between schools, an expansion of the International Baccalaureate program and more community involvement because of the extra year at 3-5.

Superintendent David Dude has said several times that he believes this “a more natural split. You have a balance where students spend three years at each elementary school. And there are natural curriculum changes where, for instance, in K-2 you learn to read, and starting in the third you read to learn.”

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