From Starbucks at The Avenue to the Fayette Pavilion, the buzz in Fayette County this week has been the proposed new attendance boundaries for high schools and middle schools rolled out last Monday by the Fayette County Board of Education.

Last night after press deadline, the board was scheduled to conduct a public hearing to listen to the residents, but one of the issues that has emerged during the week has been the makeup of the committee that drew the maps.

The committee had seven members, all of them employed by the school system: Sam Sweat, chairman and assistant superintendent of operations; C.W. Campbell, vice chair and coordinator of safety, discipline and athletics; Fred Oliver, deputy superintendent; Lyn Wenzel, assistant superintendent of instruction, Michael Jennings, director of transportation; Roxanne Blessitt, transportation supervisor; and Jerry Whitaker, land acquisition/facilities planning.

No parents or other non-school-system employees were involved in planning the boundary changes, and many residents have wondered why no parents were included on the committee.

School spokesperson Melinda Berry-Dreisbach has been with the school system since 2001 and has gone through two boundary hearings during her tenure. Parents were not included on the committees since 2001, but did have a voice on previous committees until problems occurred, she said.

“Dr. DeCotis told me that some of the parents who served were receiving threats from other parents because they said they were only concerned about their children. That’s why we changed the format and hold a public hearing so the parents can be heard,” she said.

The biggest group of upset parents is in north Peachtree City, where students will attend the new Bennett’s Mill Middle School, instead of Booth Middle School. Residents have slammed the new maps on the Citizen’s Web site.

From mjfromga: “My neighborhood is one of the north Peachtree City neighborhoods that is being moved. My concerns are not that the children will attend a new school which is further away than Booth — the kids can take the bus, and it is just for a few years. But we all know that a few years down the road there will be a new high school at that location and these neighborhoods will then be yanked out of McIntosh and sent to that school. Something is wrong when the close neighborhoods to McIntosh (such as Parkway Estates and Stoneybrook) will have to drive by that school in order to attend their high school. I also have problems with the superintendent allowing the school board to ‘tweak’ the boundaries which the relocation staff spent so many hours working on. For instance, Lexington had originally been included along with the northern neighborhoods to relocate, but a board member decided it should stay at Booth for personal reasons. Lexington is directly east of the neighborhoods which are being moved and must be driven through to get to the new middle school. What sense does that make? This should be an equitable system; not one which allows school board members special perks.”

Ardenlee upgrade wrote, “When has planning ever been a priority of the school board. Peachtree City has no representation on the board and it shows.

“Now is the time to rally and make sure that in future we are represented before this small group of PTC children are moved out of their community for their high school years. Building schools in areas where there is no population is a joke. As if their self-admitted mistake of Sandy Creek wasn’t enough for them.”

Several parents and one Booth student implored the Peachtree City Council to do something about the matter at Thursday night’s council meeting.

Logan Austin, a sixth grader at Booth who lives in the Smokerise subdivision, said he is one of the students there who would be transferred to the new middle school, but he wants to stay. He cited the success of the Booth marching band and the Science Olympiad team which has become a national powerhouse in competitions.

“It is very hard to make new friends when you move to a new school,” Logan said.

Angela Newton, who has a child in Booth’s eighth grade and another in third grade at Crabapple Elementary, said she wants to make sure her children go to school in Peachtree City.

“We’re in a crisis,” Newton said, nothing that calling it a ‘crisis’ is a strong language. “... We just want to keep our kids here.”

Some parents said they wanted to make sure their kids could go to school on the cart path system, which would not be available if the kids had to go to the new Bennett’s Mill Middle School which is located on the western edge of Fayetteville.

Rick Morris said as a parent of a Booth seventh grader he was upset about the redistricting plan, too.

“Children in Peachtree City deserve nothing less than to attend Peachtree City schools,” Morris said.

Another area that has come under fire is expanding the boundary lines for Fayette County High School.

Lakey wrote, “This plan places all the burden on two communities. It does nothing to address the historic under-utilization of Sandy Creek H.S. Four years ago you moved Lakemont from FCHS to WHS and had families with children in two different high schools. Now you propose to send them in reverse with sophomores through senior at WHS and freshmen at FCHS. Why should these communities always bear the burden of change? The process should have started with filling Sandy Creek H.S. and gone from there. Any plan that doesn’t fill Sandy Creek to capacity is bogus.”

Berry-Dreisbach said the school system will evaluate the comments from last night’s meeting and then stage a vote on the new lines probably by the end of the year.

“In January, we have to start allocating personnel and resources to the school, so we hope to have the lines approved then,’ she said.

— Staff writer John Munford contributed to this article.