School Capacity: A Letter from the CPNO Education Committee

February 15, 2023

The Candler Park Neighborhood Organization (CPNO) Education Committee reviewed the APS Enrollment and School Facility Utilization Report presented at the Atlanta Board of Education meeting on February 6^th, 2023 [1]. After participating in multiple “listening sessions” over the years and reviewing historical projections related to the APS Facilities Master Planning process, we are writing to express our position on recommendations to address facility utilizations in the Midtown Cluster.

The current capacity and enrollment projections do not support extreme structural changes such as rezoning neighborhoods or redistricting schools. CPNO calls for APS to adopt an in-cluster/in-school problem solving approach to remedy near term capacity stresses and a multi-year assessment with regard to rezoning or redistricting given the following facts:

Elementary school enrollment in the Midtown Cluster has trended down after the pandemic. The total enrollment in the Midtown Cluster elementary schools in the current school year, 2022-2023 (2,512), is 9.2% lower than the pre-pandemic year 2019-2020 (2,768).[1]
Enrollment projections are changing on a yearly basis. The pandemic has impacted enrollments in significant and unpredictable ways across all schools. The Midtown High School (HS) projected enrollment for the year 2026-2027 has gone down from 1,820 (in the August 2022 projection [2]) to 1,705 (in the February 2023 projection [1]).

APS retained consultants, at considerable cost, specifically to assess the district’s facilities needs. When APS was asked whether we would be back in the same place 5 years from now, they responded, “The consultants have suggested that since we are still in the tail-end of the latest COVID wave, we do not know the new norms for student enrollment post-COVID. The future population of Atlanta, driven by affordability of housing, post-COVID patterns, and new housing growth, will determine our need to revisit the idea of making shifts in facility usage.”[3] The inability of even their paid experts to predict future enrollment post-COVID is demonstrated by the wide disparities in the long term projections. On February 25, 2020, the ten year projected enrollment for Midtown HS was 1,737[4]. In January 2022, the 10-year projected enrollment for Midtown HS leapt to 2,122[5]. However, in the February 2023 report, the Midtown HS projected enrollment is now expected to peak at 1720 in 2025-2026 with a downward trajectory thereafter [1]. In three years long term projections went from slow rise to explosive growth to steady decline.

Given this volatility, APS should not be making extreme changes to school zones or districts until the enrollment projections reflect higher accuracy and smaller error margins. We ask that enrollment projections be reported as a range with confidence level to reflect the uncertainty in these forecasts.
Capacity estimates, particularly for Midtown HS, are frequently revised. We demand that high school capacity numbers get reported as a range to reflect the flexibility in non-core classroom uses and the reality that high school classes and experiences vary in pedagogy and enrollment caps.

Report Month	Reported Midtown HS Capacity
November 2019 [6]	1,397
January 2020 [7]	1,275
February 2020 [8]	1,750
February 2020 [4]	1,700
March 2021 [9]	1,700
January 2022 [5]	1,700
August 2022 [2]	1,700
October 2022 [10]	1,650
January 2023 [1]	1,525

4. How APS calculates high school capacity is flawed. The 2023 enrollment and utilization report [1] shows the revised core classroom count for Midtown HS to be 61 core classrooms and 33 non-core classrooms, comprising 35% of the available space, while every other APS high school has a lower proportion of its space categorized as non-core. Notably, Maynard Jackson HS proportion of non-core space is 26%, and that proportion in North Atlanta HS is 22.3%. This incongruity raises the question of whether classroom spaces at Midtown HS are being categorized in the same way as at other schools. It is a weakness in APS’s formula for calculating capacity that whether or not Midtown HS is, or is not, projected to be “over capacity” depends entirely on how these classrooms are categorized. We ask that APS re-examine its application of the – overly simplistic – formula of multiplying the number of core classrooms by 25 students to calculate high school capacity [11]. A formula that might make sense in an elementary school context where the children have one classroom and one teacher for the vast majority of their time in the building is not equally applicable to the use of space in high school where the class offerings and facilities requirements vary wildly.

APS desperately needs to rebuild its reputation and regain the trust of our community. The decision to rezone Inman Park out of Mary Lin ES was unsupported by facts and went against the majority preference in our community. That decision will now result in Springdale Park being deeply underutilized according to APS’s most recent projections (53% in 2026-2027). With that decision, APS wasted an opportunity to utilize the Inman building as a potential solution for innovative grade reconfiguration to create a long-term solution to overcrowding in the Midtown Cluster that would have addressed both elementary and high school overcrowding.

The CPNO Education Committee is concerned that APS will continue to make major decisions that are not based on rigorously investigated numbers, problems, and opportunities. This type of decision-making divides communities and negatively impacts our children’s educational and social-emotional health outcomes. Until APS can predict future capacity and enrollment with a higher degree of confidence, it should take rezoning or redistricting off the table and, in the meantime, focus on less disruptive strategies that will serve all students.[12]

Sincerely,

Candler Park Neighborhood Organization Education Committee

Dima Nazzal (Co-Chair)

Yukiko Takeuchi (Co-Chair)

Stacee Burton White

Dana Fowle

Shari Golla

Melanie Levs

Sources

[1] APS Enrollment and School Facility Utilization Report https://drive.google.com/file/d/1spbXfK3xQ-TxTh3RTseO59h7WrA5k49J/view?fbclid=IwAR1VO0p_ktM-6SFBwMy_XsVnZ_cBcoqullyfQ96xS3uZb2lCDNdgH06i_VY

[2] August 2022 High School Capacity Kickoff Source: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MH-VI1Pi4v3I-wu7Z_wbrbrwK3WoIjTQ/edit#slide=id.g1472a62f2ed_0_36

[3] March 29, 2022 FMP Community Meeting