Fulton County School System has announced three rounds of community meetings in October, November, and December to address the redistricting process for a new elementary school and two middle schools under construction in South Fulton County.

Oakley site elementary school in Union City, Jones-Hall site middle school in Fairburn and the replacement Woodland Middle School in East Point are set to open in August 2007. Existing attendance zones at other south Fulton elementary and middle schools will be modified to create the new schools’ attendance zones.

Each time a redistricting effort is under way, the school system holds three rounds of meetings to gather information needed to draft a redistricting proposal that best meets the needs of the community. Each round will be held from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at two locations so that community members can be assured an opportunity for input. As a matter of convenience for residents, the same information will be presented at both meetings.

Residents can attend Round 1 meetings Oct. 30 at Woodland Middle School or Nov. 2 at Liberty Point Elementary School. At the meetings, school system staff will outline the redistricting process and establish ground rules for facilitated small-group input sessions. Participants will move into groups and provide their views related to the redistricting criteria. After the meeting school system staff will review public comments and apply board-approved redistricting criteria to develop alternative attendance zone plans prior to the next community forum.

Community members can attend Round 2 meetings Nov. 28 at Woodland Middle or Nov. 30 at Liberty Point. School system staff will present alternative proposals for the 2007-2008 south Fulton attendance zones obtained from the established criteria and public input. Community members will break into facilitated small groups and be asked to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each plan. After the meeting school system staff will condense the number of attendance zone alternatives based on public input.

Round 3 meetings will be held Dec. 12 at Woodland Middle or Dec. 14 at Liberty Point. At those meetings the public will review and provide input on revised attendance zone alternatives in facilitated small-group discussions. Staff will use those comments to develop final attendance zone options for school board consideration.

During the meetings, community members will review the school board’s primary and secondary redistricting criteria and can comment on residential development, traffic, previous redistricting, special programs, and other issues relevant to the criteria used for redrawing attendance lines.

Primary criteria includes geographic proximity, instructional capacity and projected enrollment. Geographic proximity is the distance traveled using available routes of transportation. Instructional capacity relates to the number of students who can be accommodated at the school, taking into account the number of classrooms and resource rooms needed for art, music, laboratories, foreign language, English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), special education, and Talented and Gifted (TAG) program. Projected enrollment is the number of students assigned to a school taking into account the future projected enrollment.

Secondary criteria includes traffic patterns, previous rezoning, special programs and school feeder alignment. Traffic patterns consider factors impacting accessibility of the school from all portions of the attendance zone, including travel time, traffic flow in the area, safe operation of school buses, and other safety considerations. Previous rezoning issues are those where the school system seeks to avoid rezoning neighborhoods more than once during a three-year period if facility sizes and geographic distribution of student populations allow. Special programs are those in which the school system seeks to avoid placing in each zone disproportionate numbers of programs that serve children with special needs and require use of additional space over and above that of a regular classroom. School feeder alignment, where possible, involves consideration given to the alignment of elementary, middle, and high school attendance boundaries.

The Fulton County Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the new attendance zones in February 2007, with changes going into effect for the 2007-08 school year.

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