Coweta County School Board announced Feb. 10 that Elm Street Elementary School Principal Dr. Julie Raschen has been selected to head the new Brooks Elementary School on Jim Starr Road in north Coweta when it opens for the 2009-10 school year.

“I am very excited about Brooks Elementary,” said Raschen Feb. 11. “It’s a great opportunity for the teachers and the parents who will be there next year, because what we do in those first couple of years will set traditions for the school.”

Raschen said that it will be hard to leave behind the students and staff at Elm Street. 

“We’ve come together as a true community at this school, so leaving it is bittersweet,” she said while also turning her attention to the new Brooks Elementary. “I am looking forward to meeting and getting to know the parents and their children, and I am looking forward to all of us creating the best school in the district.”

Raschen began teaching in the Coweta County School System during the 1993-94 school year as a 1st grade teacher at White Oak Elementary School. She taught for 10 years at White Oak as a 1st and 4th grade teacher. She was named the Assistant Principal of Elm Street in 2003, and then became principal of the school in 2005, according to school system spokesperson Dean Jackson.

Raschen earned her Bachelors degree in education from Georgia Southern University in 1992, her Masters in Leadership at the University of West in 2002, her Specialists degree from Sanford University in 2004 and her Doctorate in Education Leadership from Sanford University 2007, Jackson said.

The school board in January approved new elementary school lines for Brooks and surrounding elementary schools. Those districts were recommended by a parent redistricting committee composed of parents from Arnco-Sargent, Northside, Arbor Springs and Canongate Elementary Schools, Jackson said. The new district lines of those four elementary schools and for Brooks will go into affect in the new school year beginning in July.

Jackson said the board on Feb. 10 also voted to approve the optional ‘grandfathering’ of next year’s 5th grade students, this year’s 4th graders, who will be affected by redistricting next year.

“That means that parents who wish to leave those students at their current school can do so if they provide transportation to and from school,” he said. ”The board’s grandfathering action applies only to next year’s fifth graders, and not to their siblings.”

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