During a school board meeting on Tuesday, local and state elected officials stood with Spalding Drive Elementary families in hopes of saving the Sandy Springs school from permanent closure.
Parents, citing their own data, said closing the school would hurt the community. The elementary school has a waitlist of 135 potential students for pre-K compared to zero three years ago, said resident Chris McShane during public comment. But, Dr. Mike Looney, superintendent of the school system, said Fulton County Schools is operating under tight restraints with less funding and higher costs.
The crowded work session was held at the North Learning Center in Sandy Springs, where board members for Fulton County Schools officially heard staff recommendations to close Spalding Drive Elementary and Parklane Elementary in East Point. Both closures would be due to aging buildings and decreased enrollment, staff said. No vote took place on the matter. A similar meeting will be held on Jan. 23 at the South Learning Center in Union City.
Tuesday, parents, along with officials, called on Fulton County Schools to be innovative and competitive with private schools instead of closing Spalding Drive Elementary. Some local families have multiple generations that have attended the school. Other families have said that they moved to the area because of Spalding Drive Elementary.
“High quality, well-performing schools are hard to create,” Fulton County Commissioner Bob Ellis said during public comment. “They don’t just happen by accident.”
In addition to Ellis, State Rep. Deborah Silcox, Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul, five city council members, and Gabriel Sterling, the former councilman who is now chief operating officer for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, were in attendance.
In discussing rising costs, Looney suggested the alternative would be to raise taxes.
The superintendent said that the school system spends $7,000 more per student on instruction at Spalding Drive Elementary and Parklane.
“Data guided this process with transparency,” Looney added in a statement to SaporaReport on Thursday. “Unfortunately, these schools are operationally inefficient and costly to manage, averaging $20,000 per student compared to $13,000 the district average per student cost. This imbalance is unfair to the remaining 87,000 students and our taxpayers.”
Parents on a committee to Save Spalding Drive Elementary prepared a research report on the benefits of the school. Included is a study by Greg George with the Center for Economic Analysis at Middle Georgia State University. According to the report, he found that “Spalding will generate $58.7 million in economic activity over five years, including $50. 7 million in regional earnings, and support 151 jobs.”
During the board meeting, Sterling said that he believes the school system will have increased funding from the state over the next 10 years.
“There are some things that data doesn’t always show,” he said. “And those are the intangible things that make schools great and help children grow.”
Sterling said a closure could impact the soundness of the more than $100 million investment made in North Springs High School, which is in the design phase of new construction.
Parents said they are already being courted through mail and ads to have their children attend other schools.
And if Spalding Drive Elementary were to close, some students would not go with their classes to the traditional feeder middle and high schools. Some would eventually land at Riverwood High School instead of North Springs, and some students who had expected to attend North Springs High School would be transferred to Riverwood following middle school.
The county needs to show why Spalding Drive Elementary cost more per child than the other schools in the surrounding area. I have yet to see any information proving this client. Keep Spalding Drive Elementary open.