This was sent to us by a "friend of the blog".
Bob Moseley handled the overview and closing. Dan Drake, the new director of planning, discussed the high level specifics. The detailed recommendation was not discussed though some board members asked pointed questions.
DeKalb is 3rd largest school district in GA and 27th largest in the country. The current FTE is 99,905. This number is expected to remain flat until 2016. DeKalb has more school facilities than any other district in the state.
When you look at the ratio of schools to students, Gwinnett and Cobb have over 1000 students per school. DeKalb has fewer than 700.
Elementary school population expected to go down by 3000 by 2016
Middle school expected to go up by 500 by 2016
High school expected to go up by 2500 by 2016
Operational costs are higher at under populated schools. The impact of the recommendation would be a cost savings at the administrative layer and general operational savings. Most classroom teachers would remain. Overall staff reductions would be handled through normal attrition.
There will be objective criteria to guide how decisions are made.
Elementary schools have more than 6000 empty seats. Expect to have 9000 empty seats by 2016 (this factors in scheduled additions at several high schools via SPLOST III).
Enrollment expected to be 96,366 in 2010-2011.
10 of 22 middle schools with have over 200 empty seats next year
2,952 open seats in 8 middle schools currently
924 seats over capacity in 4 high schools
3,574 open seats in 7 high schools
1,492 seats over capacity in 6 high schools
Timeline
November 2-6 – small group meeting with members of the board
December 1 – publish plan on website
December 1,2,3 – public hearings to receive feedback from community
January 4- formally present recommendation to the board
January 11 – ask for up/down vote from the board. It was clearly stated that the board would need to approve the plan in January if they wished to begin implementation in August 2010.
There were several questions from board members. The specifics of the plan were not discussed and would be reserved until the small group meetings. The objective of these meetings would be to present the recommendations to the board and solicit their feedback prior to informing the public.
Interesting discussion about Wadsworth. There are less than 200 students at this school and the rumor was that there was consideration of moving this program to another school. It seems that due to an outstanding lawsuit against Kittredge at Nancy Creek, this school will remain open for the current time. This needs to be confirmed but it seems the lawsuit was filed by parents suggesting they were ‘harmed’ with the relocation to the Nancy Creek site with respect to access.
