As parents’ shoulders slumped and heads bowed, the Fayette County Board of Education voted 4-1 Monday night to approve the new middle school boundaries with a few minor changes.

Board member Marion Key was the lone dissenter.

With the vote, more than 500 students will head to Bennett’s Mill Middle School in the fall and some Peachtree City parents will face the prospect of their children attending school outside the city limits.

The new school is located near the county’s geographic center off Ga. Highway 54 on Huiet Road.

As a packed board meeting room looked on, several parents spoke, hoping to sway the board at the last minute.

“I don’t tell people I live in Fayette County, I tell them I live in Peachtree City,” said parent Lisa Benson.

Benson said she had read about Peachtree City in the Orlando Sentinel and decided that’s where her family needed to move. She’s loved the sense of community and being able to live, work, shop and have her children attend school in the community.

She also was perturbed about an e-mail response that she received from board member Greg Powers. Powers told her that he had lived in the community for more than 40 years and his family’s taxes had helped pay for the schools in Peachtree City.

“I think you need to recuse yourself because of some agenda you have,” Benson said.

Jessica Morris, who leads the student council at J.C. Booth Middle School, asked the board to reconsider the proposed lines.

“We oppose the changes. They should provide a benefit. Peachtree City is a community that has no equal. What is best for the kids?” she asked the board.

Cele Eifert, who served in military intelligence for 22 years, said there is just not one solution to a problem.

“We are all part of the team. Our voices are being ignored,” she said.

One of the most impassioned speakers was Angela Newton, who said the issue was very simple.

“It’s not about the map, it’s about our children. We moved here to be part of a planned community, and we’ve been insulted, ignored and vilified,” she said.

But when it came time for a vote, Assistant Superintendent Sam Sweat provided the board only minor changes to the original proposal. The changes allow the Burch Road area to attend Bennett’s Mill and leaves the Robinson Road area with just over 20 students at Booth.

Other changes include leaving the high school attendance lines the same, which is what Lakeside and Lakemont residents in Fayetteville wanted. Sweat also recommended that new special permissions, except for employees that work at the complex, will no longer be allowed at schools that are full.

His final recommendation was to reject a magnet school proposal for Bennett’s Mill.

“This is not feasible since the school is not designed and not constructed to be a magnet school,” he said.

Board member Marion Key was not impressed with the solution.

“Nobody wants to hear my recommendation, which is to scrap it and start over,” she said and received thunderous applause from the parents. “We need a long-range comprehensive K-12 redistricting plan.”

But other board members did not agree.

“What you’re recommending would cause tremendous upheaval and cause thousands of students to be moved. The problem is the density is concentrated in two areas of the county. We’ve been looking at this proposal for months,” said board member Janet Smola.

Board member Greg Powers said he was somewhat disappointed with the proposal, because it did not zone all of the students at Crabapple Elementary to Bennett’s Mill.

“We need true feeder pattern and a 10-year plan,” he said.

The most positive feedback came from board member Lee Wright.

“I’m happy that we’re able to open a new school and not facing declining enrollment,” he said

The board did leave a small crack open, though, for concerned Peachtree City parents by asking the staff to look at the feasibility of leaving rising eighth-graders at their current school next year.

The problem could be that if some eighth-graders opted to go to Bennett’s Mill, there could not be enough students for the teachers to teach on a full-time basis.

But on a night when many parents were fighting back tears, that was small solace for many who believed the board had just destroyed the fabric of Peachtree City.

“We’re angry, tired and scared. This can’t be done again,” said parent Angela Newton.

“Our children are being bused out of their community to ‘fill a school’ with round-trip commutes of 17 miles instead of 5.8 [miles],” Newton said in a press packet distributed before the meeting. “We believe the school board is being given poor information which will contribute to poor decisions.”

“Clearly the agenda is to fill that new school regardless of the impact on students,” said Eifert, who is also president of the McIntosh High School PTSA.

“One of the responses to the Open Records requests stated that there were no committee minutes or presentations made prior to the recommendations being made to the board,” wrote publisher Tami Morris of Peachtree City. “I find this shocking. How can such a decision be made without following standard business procedures?”

Morris concluded, “It is inexcusable for the board to be asked to make decisions based on the poor and inaccurate information and poor procedures that are in evidence.”