Wednesday, October 9, 2002

McIntosh High School principal Greg Stillions does the entire Peachtree City community a disservice with his narrow-minded and shortsighted approach to high school students and golf carts.

Despite a written school philosophy that explicitly states, "McIntosh High School does not exist in isolation," Principal Stillions has chosen to isolate his school from the vast Peachtree City golf cart path system. Stillions, via executive fiat, forbids students from parking golf carts on school property. Citing potential safety issues with mixing cars and carts on school property (posted speed limit 5 mph), Stillions instead forces student golf cart drivers, many of them ninth and tenth graders, to deal with traffic on Prime Pointe (speed limit 25 mph). We should expect better than this "out of sight, out of mind" mentality.

The recent change in golf cart driving regulations to permit 15-year-olds to drive golf carts in and around Peachtree City should have been a wake-up call to school officials. Students would have more opportunity to engage in extracurricular activities with the new-found freedoms permitted by driving a cart to school. Instead, we get little more than hand-wringing from this school administration. Principal Stillions actually had the temerity to ask the Peachtree City police to ban carts from parking on Prime Pointe! Thankfully, the police declined his request.

McIntosh High School is one of the true gems of the Georgia public school system, with test scores and overall ratings that are heads and shoulders above those of our neighbors. It's a shame the Fayette County Board of Education chose to saddle McIntosh with a timid, by-the-book bureaucrat. A more innovative, proactive, solution-oriented principal would better serve our high school.

Bob Jensen

Peachtree City