Video Update: Meister Answers Residents' Redistricting Concerns

Buckhead School Board representative Nancy Meister Thursday night criticized the APS redistricting process as being out of touch with neighborhood concerns.

"I wish the process had been done a little bit differently," the District 4 school board member told the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods. She said it was "very heartbreaking" to receive anguished e-mails and phone calls from parents and students who saw their neighborhoods moved to different schools under four proposals presented by APS demographers.

Meister said the demographers did their research and compiled their data with insufficient concern for neighborhood feelings.

After receiving input from neighborhoods, the demographers are compiling new proposals, which will be posted on the APS web site Jan. 23,  Meister said. Then a new round of public meetings will be held, at

Meister, who said the demographers received "8,000 sheets of paper" from residents about the four plans presented at the end of 2011, praised the neighborhoods for the thoroughness of their responses.

At the new public meetings, the demographers will present "two or three" new plans, guided by Superintendent Erroll Davis, who has received 20 criteria from the board, based on neighborhood considerations as well as input from his education team.

Of the two or three new plans, she said, "they will be different, very different from what you've seen, with a lot more thought."

After new responses are received from the public on the new recommendations from the demographers, Davis will make a final recommendation to the board in March, she said.

Meister promised that the final proposal will be more considerate of residents' feelings. "We've been at 30,000 feet, and once we get back to 10,000, we can dig a little deeper," she said.

District 8 city council member Yolanda Adrean, seated next to Meister, also asked several questions, inluding how the present city council redistricting will affect school board representation. The answers were unclear, and Adrean said she would get more information.

The demographers' work brought criticism from a few BCN members, who wondered if they had even visited the neighborhoods subject to redistricting. Only one of the demographic firms is local, based in Sandy Springs.

Some of the apparently arbitrary decisions made by demographers in developing the four proposals drew criticism from Meister and BCN members.

BCN Chairman Jim King wondered if the demographers had tried to achieve a balance of school populatons in each area of the city, when the different neighbhorhoods have a variety of characteristics. "Our neighborhoods are not cookie-cutter, are all different, and our schools shouldn't be cookie-cutter either," King said.

In response to a question from a BCN representative, Meister said that she'd "never heard" of a plan to place a new elementary school on 17 acres at Peachtree Hills Place until she saw the demographers' map. Apparently, she said, the demogaphers dedided a new elementary would be needed and just placed it at a place with available land.

The demographers' proposal for a ninth grade academy at the current building also drew criticism. "That was news to all of us," Meister said. The demographers based the ninth-grade academy plan on projections that North Atlanta High's enrollment would eventually reach 2,400 students, rather than the 1,800 to be accommodated at the new high school site on Northsde Parkway. Meister said she believes the new site can be developed to include all four grades there, although demographers at a public meeting at North Atlanta said the site is not suitable for the higher number of students.

North Atlanta PTSA co-president Amy Shea said that NAPPS and the PTSA support placing the ninth grade academy on the Northside Parkway site.