Friday, June 22,
2001
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New school district: East Point & Sandy Springs? By JOHN
THOMPSON
A plan under consideration by the Fulton County Board of Education could end up creating a school board district with both Sandy Springs and East Point residents. The far-flung district would be Gail Dean's 3rd District and school officials want public input on the proposal before it is submitted to the General Assembly next year. Fulton County school spokesperson Mitzi Edge said the board has narrowed down the redistricting efforts to one of three choices, including the geographically diverse proposal. The ideal district size for a seven-member board is 61,330. Each district must be within plus or minus 5 percent of the ideal size. Because of the distribution of the population, officials said, it is not possible to achieve this without sharing a district between the north and south part of the school system. While the law states that non-contiguous districts are not allowable, Linda Meggers of the Reapportionment Office said Fulton's case would be considered an exception, because the school system boundaries are not contiguous and therefore a shared district does not violate the intent of the law. The other proposals would keep the board at seven members and elect six by district lines and one at-large. The final proposal would increase the board to a nine-member panel. The board decided Tuesday night to conduct public hearings on the proposals in August and September before voting on the issue. Board member Zenda Bowie already has come out against splitting Dean's district, but agreed to let the proposal be examined by the voters. Edge said the school system is working on getting all three proposals on the system's Web site, but said interested residents should go ahead and contact their board members for information.
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