In September
of 2001, the Fulton County Board of Education approved a new school
attendance zone redistricting procedure. The new procedure includes
both clearly defined primary and secondary criteria to be considered
when developing new attendance zones and a community process used
to gather public input regarding these criteria.
Redistricting
Criteria
Primary
Criteria:
Geographic proximity - Distance traveled using available
routes of transportation.
Capacity
- Number of students who can be accommodated at the school,
taking into account the number of classrooms and resource rooms
needed for art, music, laboratories, foreign language, English to
Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), special education, and Talented
and Gifted (TAG) programs.
Projected
enrollment - Number of students assigned to a school
taking into account the future projected enrollment.
Secondary
Criteria:
When primary criteria provide for more than one option, the options
should be evaluated on the basis of:
Traffic
patterns - Factors impacting accessibility of the school
from all portions of the attendance zone, including travel time,
traffic flow in the area, safe operation of school buses, and other
safety considerations.
Previous
rezoning - School system seeks to avoid rezoning neighborhoods
more than once during a three-year period if facility sizes
and geographic distribution of student populations allow.
Special
programs - Special Programs are those serving children with
special needs that require use of additional space over and above
a regular classroom. Where possible, the school system avoids setting
attendance zones that would place a disproportionate number of special
programs at a school.
School
feeder alignment - Where possible, consideration should
be given to the alignment of elementary, middle, and high school
attendance boundaries.
Neighborhoods
and collections of neighborhoods are the geographical units
used to define school attendance zones. Neighborhoods will be
defined based upon factors including natural geographic barriers
such as rivers and major roads, identifiable residential subdivisions
or apartment complexes, established homeowners' associations
and shared amenities such as swimming pools.
School
Attendance Zone Redistricting Process
At the start
of any attendance zone redistricting process, the school system
administration will hold a community forum(s) open to any person
residing in the geographic area of the schools being considered
for rezoning. Trained facilitators will be used to moderate
group discussions and record input from the community.
The purposes
of the forum include:
