"Leave our school alone" / "I wish I could"

APS Redistricting: Superintendent Gives His Take On The Debate - East Atlanta, GA Patch
"I'm not sure what purpose is served by sending me 100 copies of a standardized position paper, without adding anything to it," [Superintendent Errol B.] Davis said in the meeting at APS' central offices Downtown. "I just want to hear the argument."
..."I'm not in any way bound by what the demographers have put out there."
...Davis said he understands parents' concern regarding how the redistricting may affect educational quality.
It's the underlying theme behind what Davis said has been a common refrain from parents, namely, to leave their school alone.
"My answer to that is I wish I could," Davis said.

It's not a job I envy. There's no way to make everyone happy: It may not even be possible to make anyone happy.

The facts are these:

• Some schools are overcrowded: Others are "under-crowded". Atlanta is badly in need of redistricting.
• The current preference is for larger elementary schools: The economics of building maintenance encourages it. However, many existing school buildings are very small by 21st-century standards. Most simply cannot be renovated or expanded. For some the issue is financial due to age, or state of repair (especially currently idle buildings, which have been vandalized and/or plundered); Others are limited by the size of the land parcel on which they sit.
• The school district can't force children to live where the empty classrooms are. But transporting children to more distant schools creates transportation problems, as well as neighborhood cohesion issues.
• The capacity of the building determines the size of the zone it serves. The areas that need the most expansion are those that have the least room for it.
• Every parent recognizes that redistricting is a difficult proposition, and generally understands the reasons why. Yet they are all saying "Make up the difference somewhere else: Leave my child's school alone."

There's one more elephant in the room I haven't mentioned: Some schools suck. It's no secret that this is true, and it's no secret which ones. Addressing that issue means identifying, and actually openly stating, why they suck. For some it's simple understaffing. For others it's incompetent teachers (not necessarily all, but it doesn't take many to drag the whole school down). For some it's incompetent administration.

And for some, and here's the one nobody wants to say, it's the nature of the neighborhood from which the students come. I do not accept that these students are not teachable. I do suggest that they require a different approach. The nature of the system is that the teachers with seniority and experience, the teachers best able to cope with difficult students, can use their seniority to escape from the environments in which they are most needed.

I'd like to say that this has nothing to do with redistricting... But no attempt at redistricting will be successful if the problem isn't addressed.