The west side: Let us call a spade a spade. Fayette County’s proposed Option A rezoning of elementary schools is discrimination.

Careful study of the Fayette County Board of Education website shows rezoning of western Fayette County in a highly distorted U-shape. It literally wraps around new housing, the middle and upper income communities of Cedarcroft and Centennial, to clump poor students together.

Many of these lower income students live in apartments or subsidized housing, and some of their parents speak limited English. These limited English speakers and low-income parents are far less likely to protest the discriminatory act of lumping their children together, while the vocal parents of Centennial will fight to have their children educated with similar peers.

I can easily predict which option will eventually prevail, but I will not stand by and let a biased decision slide past in silence.

The east side: As a professor of education, I visit schools regularly, including East Fayette Elementary. It is indeed an older building but the administrators and teachers are dedicated and highly qualified. The atmosphere is welcoming, and students are succeeding.

To disband this stellar learning community and replace it with an alternative school for troubled teens, as rumors have it, would be a grave mistake.

The current alternative school site at LaFayette Education Center is novel and also successful. It is better to allow Fayette County’s at-risk youth to interact and eat with central office staff than to isolate them in a building away from many hard-working adult role models.

Option A will sacrifice children on both edges of the county. Think carefully, Fayette County Board of Education, before you act.

Mary Hollowell

Peachtree City, Ga.