Fayette County Board of Education, we need you to be the voice of reason. As you are well aware, our county is experiencing significant growth. To accommodate this, a new middle school will open in fall 2007 off Huiet Road in Fayetteville.

The Fayette County Board of Education organized a committee to review all middle and high school boundaries in the interest of best placing students. This committee, led by Sam Sweat (former Starr’s Mill principal) laid out guidelines to help organize and contain public input regarding boundary decisions.

We were told to present facts using five criteria: 1. The educational opportunity afforded to all students in all schools. 2. The efficient and effective use of school capacities. 3. The geographic location in relationship to the surrounding student population. 4. School transportation patterns. 5. Preservation of neighborhood identities within a school.

We played by the rules. We did our research, hundreds of hours — no exaggeration. We diligently gathered facts. We presented our concerns using the criteria we were told would be used to make boundary decisions. We submitted options. Then, we were presented with a boundary map that defies logic.

It’s a disgrace to our county. They are filling a school. That’s all. In an effort to be “minimally” disruptive, they are yanking handfuls of children out of their communities.

For example, the north Peachtree City children will fill two buses. Is that worth stripping them out of their community? They are heartbroken. We are heartbroken and feel unrepresented.

At a work session of the Board of Education on [Nov. 6], we sat and listened to the committee condense and present our research and facts into “public input considerations,” since no two-way public dialog has been permitted.

It was condescending. It was cavalier. And, it was nothing more than a well-choreographed dog and pony show to spin data to defend their map.

Sam Sweat and C.W. Campbell, we pay your salaries. Shouldn’t you treat taxpayers with dignity and respect? This performance was one of the best spins I’ve seen and I’ve witnessed some of the best good ol’ boy routines in the oil-fields when petroleum landmen swindled landowners for mineral rights.

That’s exactly how I felt after listening to these two – I was being swindled and my children are the victims.

Never mind the fact that NOT another single school system in Georgia supports a similar feeder pattern. Never mind the fact that students who transfer to schools more than twice in their academic careers perform substantially lower than those who do not. (Our students have been moved once already).

Never mind the fact that the committee has not considered that they will transfer our students through some of the most dangerous roads in Fayette County. Never mind the fact that the Journal of Pediatrics released new findings this week showing school bus accidents are three times more than previously reported, over 17,000 accidents each year.

Never-mind the fact that the route to Bennett’s Mill is more than twice the distance our North Peachtree City students travel currently to J.C. Booth (More transportation expense, Fayette County taxpayers).

Never mind the fact that Huiet Road and Ga. Highway 54 intersection is considered by the Fayette County’s Sheriff’s Department as the second most dangerous intersection in the county where a bus to our neighborhoods must take an unprotected left turn onto a four-lane highway.

We are vested in and proud of our schools. We appreciate and support our faculty and staff. We get it: we work together to make our schools great. I urge the Board to vote NO Monday night on the proposed boundary lines and consider re-forming the committee with qualified and unbiased members. Take the time to examine the elementary school patterns too, so we don’t do this again in the next 18 months.

Vanessa Birrell
Peachtree City, Ga.

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