By AMY RILEY
One Citizen's Perspective

On Feb. 8 of this year, the Coweta County Board of Education adopted new boundary lines for seven of their 15 elementary schools, effective this fall.

The plan was hotly contested by many parents in the high growth area of East Coweta who allege that the plan represents little more than the special interests of the buyers and sellers in SummerGrove, the latest mega-development of Pathway Communities.

Most of the controversy centers around the redistribution of Newnan Crossing Elementary's current 81 percent minority and 74 percent lower income population via a 25-classroom addition, moving 90 students out of the district, and bringing 360 students in from the White Oak and Poplar Road districts, which are predominantly white and middle to higher income.

Other observers, some at the national level, have hailed the plan as cutting edge integration by social class.

For many parents in Fayette County, the story is a painful reminder of bitter boundary wars in the past, and a not-so-welcome harbinger of what the Fayette school system may face in coming years, though Fayette's percentages of free and reduced price lunches compete with Columbia County for the lowest in the state.

The Coweta plan represents a new twist on an old theme. In the past, to insure equal access to education, busing was an accepted method of integrating racial minorities into predominantly white schools.

Since a 1995 Supreme Court case, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, established that “all racial classifications...must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny..., must serve a compelling governmental interest, and must be narrowly tailored to further that interest,” most instances of busing along racial lines have been abandoned as unconstitutional.

The Coweta plan uses economic status as the criteria for integration, based on the belief that lower income children will perform better educationally when mixed with higher income children. Opponents argue that low test performance is simply being diluted by higher performing schools.

One parent whose children attend East Fayette Elementary is sympathetic to this theme and asserts that parent involvement, not necessarily student performance, is the key factor missing in schools with a high concentration of lower income students. He believes that the school system will have to address this issue in isolated pockets of Fayette County where there are higher concentrations of single-parent families, dual-income households, and multifamily housing. He states that the lack of parental involvement is by economic necessity, not a lack of desire to support a child's education.

The Fayette County Superintendent of schools, Dr. John DeCotis, stated recently in a community round-table meeting that the Fayette philosophy continues to be one of “community schools,” with students generally attending the school closest to their homes. However, as density increases, a school's capacity is maxed in ever shrinking boundaries.

Dr. DeCotis, when asked if the completion of a 13 classroom addition at North Fayette Elementary will necessitate new districting, indicated that the majority of those classrooms are already spoken for as replacements for the trailers outside. DeCotis said, “It will probably be the 2001-2002 school year before we look at some changes,” after the state Department of Education and the Facilities Study Commission recommendations are completed. He recognizes that citizens often buy homes in certain areas to go to certain schools, and “when you try to move people, they get upset.”

Coweta County's plan may be innovative, but it stops short of being wholly altruistic. Jefferson Parkway Elementary will lose 200 middle to higher income students, leaving a population of 411 students after redistricting, 300 of whom are currently receiving free or reduced price lunches, the standard indicator of economic need in public schools.

The real untold story, though, is at Coweta's Ruth Hill Elementary. As one of the seven schools targeted for redistricting, this school's new lines are virtually identical to the old boundaries.

The school is currently 77 percent minority and 75 percent low income which will change little, if any, under the new plan. Their test scores are just as compromised as those at Newnan Crossing.

When I asked Spencer Luckie in the Coweta County superintendent's office why no remedy was offered at Ruth Hill, she said, “I guess no one over there complained.”

That's a cutting edge plan all right.

[You may contact Amy Riley via her e-mail address: ARiley3003@aol.com.]

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