Wednesday, September 6, 2000

By PAT NEWMAN
pnewman@TheCitizenNews.com

Once upon a time, there was only one public high school in Fayette County. Boys would drive their trucks to school with shotguns stashed in the back and cut class to go deer hunting. Some elementary schools housed only two or three classrooms.
For most of Fayette County's 96,000 current population, the rural lifestyle of the mid 1960s and 1970s experienced by longtime residents like Greg Powers, a 1978 graduate of Fayette County High School and elected school board member, is ancient history. But for Powers, those days are fodder for colorful stories and recollections of lifelong friendships.
"It was a different way of life... that small community feel is gone. We've changed from a rural setting to an urban setting," Powers said recently in response to some questions posed to him and his fellow board members by Alan Richard, a writer for Education Week.
Richard was in town to profile Fayette and DeKalb county schools for an upcoming article on schools in the 21st century. He asked the board what changes they have experienced and what they expect will happen in the coming years.
Board member Connie Hale said "growth" is the most pressing change facing the educational system of the county. Recent and anticipated annexations partnered with large-scale development plans, obviously change the "whole scene of the county," Hale said.
Fayette County's superlative educational system has attracted more and more families with school age children to move into the county, the board members said. "We have the strongest special education program in the state, two schools of national excellence, and first place national Science Olympiad winners," reported board member-elect Janet Smola.
Hale added that more than 10 high school graduates from Fayette County schools this year have received appointments to the nation's military academies.
Powers remembers when none of the public schools in the county were accredited. That was in 1968, the year after his father became principal of Fayette County High School. Four years later, his father would become superintendent and begin the work of upgrading the county's growing school system.
The biggest change, according to board members Hale, Powers, and Mickey Littlefield, was the construction of Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, an event which set the wheels in motion for Fayette County to evolve from a poor agricultural county to a prosperous suburb of highly educated residents.
Littlefield, who moved to Fayetteville from College Park, called the airport a "blessing and a curse... it created jobs but ruined the town."
The board praised parents for the support they offer the schools, noting also that these same parents, "demand excellence in education." The next hurdle, they told Richard, is to pass the proposed $65 million bond issue Nov. 7 for new school construction and to meet the standards in Gov. Roy Barnes' education reform plan.
Hale has often referred to the Fayette County School System as a "work in progress." She explained that what's happening in the system today has evolved over the years. The workings of previous boards and former superintendents have led the system step by step to its respectable position statewide.
Powers compared the future of the school system to a train ride. "We have little control over the direction the train is taking," he said. "But the children are on the train and with that in mind, we can control the decisions."

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