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Dunwoody Preservation Trust to host fall events
For A Better Dunwoody
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DeKalb Schools enters redistricting process DUNWOODY, Ga. — The DeKalb County School District has begun the process of redistricting for its elementary schools. For schools in the Dunwoody cluster — Austin, Chesnut, Dunwoody, Hightower Kingsley and Vanderlyn — three public meetings have been scheduled. The first meeting, Sept. 26, was for an introduction and preliminary feedback. The next meeting will be Wednesday, Oct. 23, for a presentation of alternative options, and the final meeting will be Wednesday, Nov. 20, for a presentation of the staff recommended plan. Both meetings will be at the Dunwoody High School Auditorium at 7 p.m. The redistricting plan is expected to go before the School Board for a first read in January 2020 and for approval in February. Redistricting has come about with
the anticipated opening of the new Austin Elementary School in January 2020. The school will have 950 seats, 450 more than the current school which has 500 seats, but 711 students enrolled. The approved plan would go into effect August 2020. Rising 5th graders would have the option to continue at their school, but no transportation would be provided by the school district. The official criteria for school districts are primarily geographic proximity, instructional capacity and projected enrollment. When the primary criteria indicate more than one option, the secondary criteria are safety and traffic patterns, previous redistricting, intact neighborhoods, special programs, condition of facility, school feeder alignment and efficient and economical operations.
School enrollment School Name Hightower Dunwoody Vanderlyn Chesnut Kingsley New Austin Total
Current Enrollment 748 1,177 689 452 442 711 4,219
School Capacity 513 975 508 392 467 950 3,805
Available Seats -235 -202 -181 -60 +25 +239 -414
Portable Classrooms 11 12 11 5 0 0 39
Data on 2019 enrollment, school capacity without portable classrooms and use of those trailers, as presented by DeKalb Schools, shows most schools are over capacity.
DeKalb citizens group mounts opposition to ethics board change By CARSON COOK carson@appenmediagroup.com DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — When DeKalb voters head to the polls this year, they will see a referendum that states “Shall the Act be approved which revises the Board of Ethics for DeKalb County?” That opaque wording could lead voters to adopt an oversight plan that the DeKalb Citizens Advocacy Council and some county officials say will gut the county’s ethics policy. “This bill is clearly meant to weaken and dilute the excellent policy passed in 2015, without any convincing reasons
to weaken the bill,” stated Paul Root, director of the Emory Center of Ethics. “DeKalb is slipping back to a former posture that got it in trouble in the first place. I would agree that this bill should be strongly opposed.” If passed, the Board of Ethics’ independence would be weakened, critics say, by replacing the ethics officer with an ethics administrator, essentially a clerical position with no required experience in law or ethics work. In 2015, 92 percent of voters established a new ethics board to oversee county operations. Last year, parts of that law were ruled unconstitutional by
the state Supreme Court because some of its members were selected by private organizations, such as the bar association or universities, rather than by elected officials. Since that decision, the board has been unable to operate. Earlier this year, state Sen. Emanuel Jones introduced a bill that established new rules for selecting ethics board members, but rather than simply fixing the problem caused by the court decision, there were additional changes. By changing the ethics officer to an ethics administrator, the position would no longer be able to initiate or bring an
investigation to the Board of Ethics. The law would also make the Board of Ethics less independent from the county CEO and the County Commission, positions it is supposed to oversee. The CEO would be able to make an appointment to the ethics board, and the CEO and commissioners would have to approve the ethics board’s policy. “To us, this is an inherent conflict of interest,” said Mary Hinkel, chair of the DeKalb Citizens Advocacy Council. “These provisions weaken the independence of the board. They create an op-
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