‘Hard decisions’ have to be made in next 5 years

Redistricting will be just one of the discussion points going forward.

The next five years in the DeKalb County School District will be a “reimagining,” district leaders said Thursday.

The technical term for what’s happening is “student assignment planning.” The more common (and dreaded) word for it is “redistricting.” But the school board is eager — excited even — to get started.

The state’s third-largest district is plagued by declining enrollment, maintenance issues, overcrowding and under-use at schools, and complaints about access to special programs. Student assignment planning aims to fix all of that.

The process will consider whether to redraw attendance boundaries, how students are selected to attend specialty programs, which specialty programs are offered where, whether some schools should close or new ones should open, how students are transported to school and how to manage enrollment. It involves a ton of data, two committees, countless community meetings and surveys, and probably some policy changes.

It’s going to be a huge effort. “They’re really hard decisions,” said board member Allyson Gevertz during a discussion about the planning. “People are going to hate us.”

DeKalb never has comprehensively evaluated its attendance boundaries, Superintendent Devon Horton said in a speech last month. That’s why it’s now a “huge undertaking,” board member Whitney McGinniss said Thursday.

“We kicked the can down the road and we put it off and we’ve made excuses and we’ve done partial fixes here and there,” she said. “The reality is it just becomes a bigger and bigger beast the longer you put it off.”

Enrollment in DeKalb — and many districts around the country — has dropped over the past decade. DeKalb had roughly 101,100 students in 2014; it had about 91,300 students at the beginning of this year.

Nearly half of DeKalb’s 117 schools either will be significantly overcrowded or underused in a few years, predictions in the district’s comprehensive master plan say.

That plan was unveiled in 2022 to serve as a roadmap for the next decade. It recommended redistricting throughout the county by 2030. It also suggested the consolidation of some elementary schools, the creation of K-8 facilities in some areas and the rebuilding of other schools, coupled with redrawing school boundaries as necessary. The plan suggested the use of sales tax funds to cover costs for most recommendations.

District leaders are approaching the student assignment planning process like a clean slate. They don’t know yet what the “reimagined” DeKalb will look like, said Sarita Smith, the recently hired executive director of student assignment. “We really want to make sure no one feels like they’re losing anything in this process,” Smith said. “Nothing has been decided.”

The first step is for Horton and the board to decide their priorities. They could choose to focus on robust programming, or diverse schools, or ensuring students have access to schools close to their homes.

Once they’ve chosen a direction, Smith will begin recruiting community members to serve on a committee that will steer the process. The hope is that applications for that committee will go out in May, with the intent to begin working to figure out what the district needs in the beginning of the next school year.

The community committee will work with district staff for about 18 months. The rest of the five years will be implementing their recommendations.

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