Bigger Schools, Fewer Transfers

By Tim Simmons, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Apr. 24–GWINNETT COUNTY, GA. — Second of three parts

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — When voters in the Atlanta suburb of Gwinnett County rejected a school bond issue in the 1990s, school leaders decided to build their schools big. Not just big, but very big.

New high schools are built for 3,000 students, although they’ve been known to top 4,000 — larger than some private colleges. Middle schools often exceed 2,000 kids. Elementary schools vary, but 1,200 students is common.

When the principal at Creekland Middle School greets visitors, there is a note of pride in her voice. "Welcome," she announces, "to the largest middle school in the country!" Creekland Middle enrolls 2,800.

Wake County voters also rejected a school bond issue in the 1990s, and school leaders have been struggling to build enough classrooms ever since. But Wake County’s largest high school enrolls 2,500, and only one nine-month elementary tops 1,000.

Educators faced the same challenges in Gwinnett when they decided bigger would be better. In exchange for large schools, parents in Gwinnett get stability. The district, which adds about 7,000 students a year, no longer reassigns thousands of children every year. Parents typically know two or three years ahead of time whether their children are headed to a new high school. Every school is on the same traditional calendar with a full summer vacation.

"We moved here seven years ago from California," said Holly Collins, whose son attends Osborne Middle School near Interstate 85. "The first time somebody told me they had 1,200 kids in elementary school I thought, ‘This is never going to work.’

"But when you break it down to classes of 20 kids or so, there are just more of them. I guess you get used to it."

It might be helpful to think of Gwinnett County as Wake County’s older sister. The two aren’t identical, but it’s impossible to miss the similarities.

Transformed by two decades of growth, Gwinnett is a collection of huge subdivisions, old towns and retail plazas, with asphalt highways binding them all together. The county operates a school district of nearly 145,000 students. Like Wake, it’s a place where developers build subdivisions faster than the county can put up schools.

Gwinnett didn’t set out to become a district that builds its schools big. But in the 1980s, America’s fascination with malls met the suburban sprawl of Atlanta, and the seeds of growth have been sprouting ever since.

Eventually, this Atlanta bedroom community started attracting its own major employers. As Gwinnett grew, voters approved one request after another to increase property taxes and build more schools.

But in 1990, the voters said no. The rejection surprised educators and prompted school leaders to ask in town meetings what people wanted. At the top of parents’ lists was an end to annual reassignments. As in Wake County, it was common to shift thousands of students each year.

School officials responded with the idea of well-defined "school clusters" — a system that dictates which elementary schools feed into which middle schools, which in turn feed the high schools.

Officials promised that clusters would be changed only when new high schools were built. Reassignments would keep students in their communities.

Since then, school officials haven’t lost a vote when asking for more money to build schools.

Trailers, logistics

It was obvious to school planners that schools must be bigger if students were going to be reassigned less often. Beginning in 1997, they started building at a record pace. By 2002, they had built 947 classrooms spread across 25 additions and seven new schools. If a campus was short on land, the district built up by adding a second floor.

Trailers, a mainstay in Wake County, are even more prevalent in Gwinnett. It’s not uncommon for a school to use several dozen trailers while it waits for additions or a new school nearby. Dacula Middle School holds the dubious honor of most trailers on a school site. The district needed 105 to house an unexpected crush of kids.

"It was a little ridiculous and even sort of scary," said Gina Bragg, whose son attended Dacula at the time. "It was listed at 200 percent of capacity."

Trailers illustrate the downside of tightly defined clusters and large schools. While planners in Gwinnett get high marks for estimating how many new students will arrive each year, they don’t claim to know exactly where they will live. When too many show up within the same cluster, there simply isn’t anywhere to put them.

Often, however, Gwinnett’s schools are a study in logistical efficiency. At Creekland Middle School, buses pick up students in three waves of 23 buses each. Student dismissals are staggered. This is not a place to dally.

"Eighth-graders," Principal Donna Lee sighed as she moved students along. "They move like snails!"

Creekland is organized into five "communities," which are further divided into teaching teams. Each community has its own assistant principal, counselor and clerical support. Open house is held on five different evenings. "We couldn’t handle that many parents on one night," Lee said.

Little is left to chance at any school. When students are dismissed at Collins Hill High, bus riders leave their classrooms at 2:05. The 900 students who drive do not leave the building until 2:12. One minute sooner and traffic will be in gridlock at the nearest intersection.

But it is at lunchtime at elementary and middle schools where student shuffling approaches an art form. At Simonton Elementary School, Principal Dot Schoeller steps inside the cafeteria where kids will soon start streaming in. The kitchen has served 800 free breakfasts. The second act will soon begin.

The first group arrives for lunch at 10:45 a.m., walks through the serving line and sits at a table near the edge of the room. Three minutes later, a second group arrives. They work their way through the serving line and sit on the opposite side of the room. A new group arrives every three minutes, sitting on alternate sides of the cafeteria until the tables are filled.

When the ninth group arrives, the first group stands to leave. They hustle to form a line near the exit marked with tape on the tile floor. They leave the room as they arrive, in alternating fashion. The departure of the second group is greeted by the arrival of the 10th group. The third group is replaced by the 11th group, and so on.

The three-minute rotations continue for more than 2 1/2 hours as 1,200 students plow through lunch.

Diversity varies

Simonton serves 800 free breakfasts because two-thirds of its children qualify for subsidized lunches. Gwinnett offers little in the way of school choice and does not bus for diversity. That wasn’t among the things parents asked for in the early 1990s and it would send some children farther from home.

That helps explain why 22 of the district’s 103 schools have subsidized lunch counts higher than Simonton. At least that many also fall well below the district’s average of 30 percent. When Schoeller speaks of lessons learned from diversity, she offers a view that isn’t likely to be heard from principals in Wake, where the district’s goal is to keep subsidized lunch counts below 40 percent in every school.

"If you don’t give them a choice, they are going to learn to get along," she said.

Gwinnett posts some of the best test scores in Georgia. There is an obvious racial achievement gap, but it’s not significantly different from Wake’s.

"People in my neighborhood knew Simonton was a [poorer] school, so the topic of conversation for a while was whether we would send our kids to a private school or even home school them," said parent Ann Marie Serafin. "In the end this turned out to be an excellent choice, but a large part of this is because Dr. Schoeller is so well organized."

Serafin’s comment was echoed by a number of parents involved in the schools. Across town at Dacula High School, John Upchurch is swamped by kids who want to order varsity jackets and other school paraphernalia from his company. Upchurch moved from Atlanta to Gwinnett in 1993, drawn in large part by the reputation of the schools.

"The schools are big here, but they are well-run," said Upchurch, who has two children in the schools. "That is critical when they get this large. As parents we often wish they were smaller because that’s how it was when we grew up. But these kids don’t know anything different."

Upchurch is clearly proud of the county’s ability to handle its growth, but he feels compelled to single out state lawmakers for allowing counties to levy a sales tax for schools starting in 1997.

"The state saved Gwinnett with SPLOST," he said. "They really did."

His ability to slip the word "SPLOST" into a sentence is testament to how often it’s discussed here. A 1-cent tax with the unwieldy name of Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, it gave the district the ability to start catching up on its building needs. A five-year renewal, which ends in 2007, is allowing the district to add 2,000 more classrooms. Some of that construction uses lease-purchase agreements with a development authority.

This has not made Gwinnett County a cheap place to live. Owners of a $200,000 home pay $1,644 in property taxes to build and operate schools. The comparable figure in Wake is $921.

But the county is on pace to fully meet its building needs by 2012. It has even retired some of its debt early and now owns 19 pieces of land for future schools. Wake County owns little property for future construction but is considering creating a land bank.

"You can’t stop people from coming," Upchurch said. "You can’t close your borders. I’ve heard of your schools, and I know that’s why some people move there. Sounds like you have some choices to make."

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

—–

Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.