APS’s Well-Meaning Bad Idea

Greetings from Dickens’s Dystopia! I have had my head down for some time due to foolishness compliments of the City of Atlanta, which Eric the Younger will share with you at some future point and the regular rigamarole of foster care life.  I promised you a series of how Atlanta Eats Its Own, focusing solely on APS, and while I have written and rewritten the series, I am taking a break from that endeavor to speak specifically to the APS Long Term Facilities Plan. Like the Superintendent Listening Sessions and Strategic Planning Meetings, I planned to attend all of them. However, as a parent of a teenager who gets roped into being a carpool for other teenagers in every afterschool program FK attends (because MARTA can’t expand because you FINE folks won’t fund it), it is REAL hard to get ALL those kids dropped off from Hollywood Rd. to Morehouse Dr. and then turn around and head to 130 Trinity. As a result, this post will focus mainly on the schools I have a connection to, rather than the entire plan, although I do point to some other areas of improvement. I feel pretty safe in claiming that Midtown and North Atlanta parents have PLENTY to share about their schools. However, please keep in mind I am writing this as a PARENT and COMMUNITY MEMBER, not in any official capacity of any boards or organizations with which I am affiliated. As our fearless Editor-in-Chief references at the beginning of all podcasts, opinions are ALL my own. My request to the Senate and House Budget Chairmen is made humbly and respectfully on my own- not on behalf of anyone else. 

First and foremost: FK is 225 certified. 

I am the PROUD parent of a student at THE Frederick Douglass High School, located at 225 H.E. Holmes Drive in Atlanta. The original and main campus was established in 1968 with classes graduating in the early 1970s. At the time of its creation, it was a nationwide model school as it was ENTIRELY Black-led and Black-run. While the student body remains predominantly African-American, there is a growing population of Latinx, Korean, and basic white kids in the mix. As I’ve stated before in my posts: do not equate Black and people of color to poor. The amount of Beats headphones, iPhones, and gleaming white Nikes on campus will dispel that notion REAL QUICK. Instead, please know like most schools, FDHS is a mix of incomes and backgrounds. 

In an attempt to address a challenge of behaviors, dealing with fights (particularly those within gangs), meeting needs of exceptional education, and emotional maturity head-on, I want to brag on Frederick Douglass High School. They have not one, but two campuses- one a ninth grade STEAM Academy where exclusively ninth graders get the extra attention and guidance they need to understand what the rest of high school will be. The 2024-2025 Douglass graduating class was a class that actually tried to set fire to the school building and at the time, the school was experiencing significant fights. It is my understanding from other parents and particularly those who were involved in the previous facilities master plan that the Atlanta Police Department were invited in to explain the violence, how multiple family members and relatives in other grades were contributing to this pervasive violence at Frederick Douglass. To Atlanta’s (and personally our family’s) benefit, Marietta City Schools’ Board made a very poor decision in reassigning Forrestella Taylor as a principal prior to the pandemic.  Thankfully, she was rewarded for Marietta’s poor decision AND she made the move to the Frederick Douglass High School Cluster, where she went from neighborhood to neighborhood speaking with community members about how to help our children. 

Her leadership, prayers, and the separation of the ninth grade academy from the main campus has brought about a decrease in fights, an increase in graduation rate, and less dropouts.  I cannot sing her praises enough! This lady has a heart for the community and doesn’t flinch from hard conversations. Even while her daughter was trying on wedding gowns, she didn’t miss a BEAT speaking about school safety via Zoom for our school meeting. If we had more of her, the world would be a better place! And frankly, I wish this practice of separating the ninth grade at this pivotal development point was executed across the entire system. Travis Norvell thinks I’m crazy, but I know this would make a huge impact and do more for bringing Atlanta together than any of Dickens’s “drawing circles” nonsense ever will. I’d bet we’d see the same decrease in behaviors and an easier entrance into the main campuses of high school in scale. While many in APS think we need to follow North Atlanta’s example, I’ll kindly offer the results from Douglass. 

My hunch is, you’d also see an emerging change in culture at a scalable rate. 

Now don’t get me wrong- this idea isn’t easy and it would require a lot of resources of time and talent. But I sincerely believe that if we grouped kids together with some policy and behavioral standardizations starting at developmental points in life, we’d see a significant change across APS and (over time) the City of Atlanta. Unfortunately, for Atlantans, in EVERY iteration of APS’s current Facilities Plan is that APS will be consolidating the 9th grade campus into the rest of the larger high school building. This is an instance in which building and financial efficiencies and state propensity for eliminating the small school supplement to school budgets will have a very real detrimental effect for our kids safety, growth, and education. You see, APS is having to bend to the failings of you fine folks in the Gold Dome who have not meaningfully reformed QBE in my lifetime and because Chairmen Hatchett nor Tillery no one on either Appropriations Committees would like to write a line in the budget to keep this program that has proven results of decreasing violence and crime in schools.

“Back the Blue” bumper stickers are easy, real policy is hard, amirite or amirite?

So I will humbly ask, not for the whole of APS to be changed, but Chairman Tillery and Chairman Hatchett, would you gentlemen kindly consider a line item appropriation for APS schools enough to enable APS to maintain the two campuses of Frederick Douglass High School and F.L. Stanton Elementary? Chairmen, I have asked your colleagues for years to meaningfully reform QBE, but Mike Dudgeon told me that it would take too much political capital. He tried- as did Governors Deal through Joe Frank Harris! But everyone reading this post knows all this would take is a little line and a few dollars, and *poof* this challenge goes away! The consultants keep telling us parents that it’s because scaling up to a bigger school gets us “more access” to state funding. I get it. Efficiency. Scalability. Yada, yada, yada. I have an M.P.A. from Georgia State that makes me aware of how budgeting in Georgia is SUPPOSED to work, but everyone reading this piece knows that budgets in Georgia are made by “writing in” here and there for many little favors. I’m not asking for much, gentlemen, and I PROMISE, the APS Superintendent is a VERY fiscally responsible man. If you haven’t met him, may I encourage that?

I would love to take the credit for this idea of expanding the ninth grade academy, but it’s not mine- it’s FK’s. The adjustment period FK had coming from their experience before our home to Frederick Douglass’s main campus was something FK personally recognized and wished for every kid. I’d love to take credit for FK’s magnanimity as well, but I can’t. That’s entirely FK’s own personality. 

Scalability has been a buzz word in the strategic planning sessions. And every public meeting I go to two points are emphasized: APS isn’t closing Booker T. Washington High School and wouldn’t it be great if we had a performing arts school? The Superintendent has repeatedly said that “Atlanta likes to run small schools”. With the state pulling the small school supplemental budget allocation, AND APS running a $103M-$105M deficit that the Superintendent has now closed, (mainly by eliminating higher paid jobs in the central office) it has become VERY clear that consolidation and redistricting are the decisions before the Board of Education. Errrrrbody wants to close failing charter schools, consolidate others,  and “scale” APS because North Atlanta High has a big ‘ol campus and great test scores. Look, I’m SUPER happy for North Atlanta High parents, but the other parents in their cluster don’t actually want bigger schools. One of the reasons one North Atlanta cluster mom told me she moved into APS from Cobb and her husband from Gwinnett county schools (where they respectively grew up) was because of the smaller school environment. While y’all OTP folks think of Atlanta as the “big city” I’m here to tell you that the schools are very small, and folks tend to like them that way. 

So where does that leave us? 

We’ve got lots of small schools where some parents want to be really involved and others can’t be bothered to get their kids to school. That leaves a lot of opportunity to grow teenagers into vastly different futures, right? Add in that state small school supplemental funding is disappearing, and now we parents are having to choose between if we want a media specialist or a literacy coach in a school system that hasn’t seen literacy rates climb in the last 30 years. The perennial question the Superintendent and other parents are asking is, ‘what are you willing to give up to maintain these smaller schools? I’ll ask further: what do you rural legislators do in counties like Taliaferro and Echols? Do you just not provide any CTAE, STEAM, or IB programs for kids? And if so, how much does that put smaller rural areas at a disadvantage for attracting business and new families? Maybe we should change that 1600 student requirement for funding for these things, yes? Just a thought.

The other implicit question is: why haven’t the smaller schools improved test scores for children?

I would respectfully assert that a lot of kids across Georgia aren’t showing up to class equally, right? And just to be clear: this isn’t a rural versus urban or Black vs. white thing. This is a class difference where the caregiver in the home is working or sleeping from their late night shift and can’t get their child who’s dragging their feet to school on time. Conversely, we have no answer for parents who need to drop their kids off at 6 or 7am in the morning. I was castigated online for even posing this question on my Facebook page some years ago, with others asserting I was asking  too much of teachers. The fact of the matter is, we have after school programs to serve this purpose for the middle class, but we have no before school program for the working class who works the third shift to put food on the table. I’m not suggesting we need teachers with Masters degrees in Early Childhood Education to babysit kids while their parents are off at work, but a part-time worker who can ensure Junior doesn’t put his fork in a socket during the hours of 6-8am seems like a manageable task, and one we seem to continually overlook as we’re trying to develop workforces in communities both rural and urban.

F.L. Stanton is a small, community-oriented elementary school, within walking distance from my house. It rests on the side of my neighborhood’s namesake park. Ms. Tanner, the pretty young lady at the front desk, greets me by name when I drop children that miss the bus off in the morning. For the events that are open to the community, I have attended talent expositions, contributed to book fair fundraisers, and the caseworker knows if he needs a free uber to get any kids to school who had missed the bus- he has my cell number. 

It isn’t clear what the suggested “repurposing” of F.L. Stanton will be. That isn’t the fault of the consultants or their many well prepared and presented plans. That’s me being a mom pulled in way too many directions and not having enough time to watch the hours of meeting videos I missed while I was trying to haul kiddos to and fro. However, I will tell you that by the location of  all meetings being held either virtually or at 130 Trinity, instead of at the schools, means less participation and involvement. I am not sure if this is purposeful or not, but anyone who’s ever been even REMOTELY affiliated with a campaign knows you go TO the voter, you do not expect the voter to COME to YOU.

What I also know is that this year F.L. Stanton JUST FINISHED a big renovation of this historic building. It was much needed, and I can’t imagine that it would be a fiscally wise decision to repurpose this for anything other than its current purpose. If APS wants to cluster it with Washington vs. Douglass, ok? I think it’s weird I’m districted for Frederick Douglass when FK could walk to Washington, but then again, my husband had to drive past Pope High School to get to Lassiter every morning in Cobb. School districts don’t make much sense in Georgia, but that’s another post for another day. 

Another historic note about F.L. Stanton: in my neighborhood (Mozley Park). F.L. Stanton was built in 1927, and named after Georgia’s First Poet Laureate. It is my understanding this was an all-white school originally, and another school that served the Black population was closed and “consolidated” into F.L. Stanton during desegregation, according to long-time residents here. I’m not sure the name or location of this previous school. I wish I knew. APS has threatened to close down F.L. Stanton before, and were unsuccessful due to the protests of some of the same parents I currently serve with within the Frederick Douglass High School Parent Teacher Student Association. 

Charter Schools have been a hot topic for a minute in Georgia. Proponents say it’s because they have “flexibility”. Ok. So I’d like to ask for some breathing room for the rest of APS. This Superintendent has closed a $103M, maybe $105M gap.

Gold Dome, let him keep doing his job, because he’s doing a helluva good one, why stop now? Aren’t we all fans of fiscal responsibility? And he’s also doing a helluva lot more to impact positive outcomes for youth in Atlanta than Dickens is.  

Despite what those Ohio River South commercials may tell you, if Atlanta is a good place to raise kids, it’s largely due to the HARD work, long days, and deep prayers of folks like Superintendent Johnson, Cluster Superintendent Taylor, and Principal Jennings. Mayor Dickens didn’t have a flip to do with any of that. 

I’ve sat through 6 hours of “community task force meeting” exercises that effectively handed the groups a narrative and in which I technically wasn’t supposed to speak. The only comments I made were in regards to the positive effect the 9th grade academy had on my kid and that the most compelling argument I heard in that 6 hours was that if we don’t consolidate schools we will be costing our kids opportunities. 

I know that OTP legislators LOVE to use Atlanta as their foil. Ok. So if Atlanta youth are the “problem”, then how is stripping our schools of funding that has effectively addressed correcting of behaviors, fights, and violence getting us to more “safety”? 

Explain it to me like I’m five.

Consolidation of Douglass and repurposing of F.L. Stanton doesn’t have to be the choice made. I’d appreciate it if those of you in the Gold Dome would give us public school parents the same flexibility in program funding you love to talk about with charter schools.