With all the great redevelopment going on, we have to ask - what will happen to our schools? This MDJ article addresses some of the issues… what are your thoughts?
MARIETTA - City school officials say that next month they plan to seriously examine how Marietta’s redevelopment projects may affect the 7,500-student system in the future.
Marietta City Schools’ Director of Maintenance and Support Danny Smith said the system does not own any undeveloped land. Smith said buildings occupy much of the system’s 242 acres of land, now worth about $24.2 million.
About $918,400 from a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax that ends Dec. 31, 2008, is set aside for land buys, Smith said.
“We have properties that can be converted into schools,” board vice chairwoman Jill C. Mutimer said.
She cited an 18,000-square-foot building at 350 Lemon St. that school officials use for storage that could be converted back to its original use as an elementary school.
Ward 7 board member Irene Berens said the Lemon Street building would need significant renovations to meet state standards for use as an elementary school. But the option to convert that building, she said, provides the system only one good way to react the city’s redevelopment.
“I think we’re in a good position as far as being able to handle what might occur. I don’t foresee us building a new school in the next five years,” Ms. Berens said.
Smith said school officials have not discussed the possibility of building a middle school on Marietta High’s campus off Whitlock Avenue. With 60 acres, the high school sits on the largest plot of land in the system.
Ward 3 board member Randy Weiner said since many of the city’s projects call for two-bedroom properties, “we could lose as many (students) as we gain.”
He pointed to Emerson Overlook off Roswell Street and the Marietta Mill Lofts at the corner of South Marietta Parkway and Atlanta Street as examples of redevelopment that might not add many school-aged children to the city district.
Weiner added, “None of are schools are overcrowded. We’re not bursting at the seams.”
Requests for the maximum number of students that each school can accommodate were not answered by press time Tuesday.
The system made its last major land buys in 2001 when it bought 20 acres of land in northeast Marietta for Sawyer Road Elementary. The 700-student school opened in fall 2005.
In September, the board approved spending $2.8 million in SPLOST money to building 12 additional classrooms at West Side Elementary.
Almost four years ago, consultants with Atlanta-based design firm Urban Collage had suggested the system consider expanding West Side and Hickory Hills elementary schools. The $50,000 study was the system’s last in-depth master plan to outline new construction through 2008.
School board chairman Tom Smith said the board has “always wanted a school site on Franklin Road.” With land so expensive in that area, the only way the system could accomplish that feat is through a partnership with the city, Smith said.
He said future expansion comes down to student numbers.
“We respond to students who show up in our system and also to state law that requires us to find more classroom space as was required in (Gov. Sonny Perdue’s) change in class-size requirements,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, Cobb Schools also does not own any undeveloped land.
Cobb Schools spokesman Jay Dillon said the district owns 3,031 acres that is home to 122 schools and buildings. The district’s last major land buy in July 2005 was for Pickett’s Mill Elementary and Allatoona High schools, each slated to open in Kennesaw in 2008.
