Buckhead Reporter
Inside Soul man
Planning commissioner shares vision COMMUNITY 3
Work to do
www.ReporterNewspapers.net
JULY 24 — AUG. 6, 2015 • VOL. 9 — NO. 15
Perimeter Business
Thoughts on the ‘65 Voting Rights Act COMMENTARY 6
Dog days at Blue Heron
PAGES 7-11
Lake Forrest Dam repairs bring fish and recreation concerns BY JOHN RUCH
Alec Williams, 6, left, with his brother Cullen, 4, and their dog Cooper, cool off in Nancy Creek after the “Doggie Daze” event at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve on July 18. Dogs and their owners were treated to breakfast and a guided tour of the preserve.
PHIL MOSIER
The private backyard docks above the Lake Forrest Dam stand high and dry this summer, two months after officials lowered the water level amid fears of a dam collapse. For residents, it’s an example of how public safety concerns are joined by worries about wildlife impacts and property values that may go down as the water does. Next, officials intend to scoop out all the fish with a large boat and transport them alive to a private pond. Then they will lower the water further and figure out what it takes to fix the dam. Options could range from a pipe repair to a redesigned dam and a new 2-acre side pond. “We may be looking at four to five years from now before everything is back to the way it was,” said Hansell Roddenbery, president of Three Lakes Corporation, the homeowners association that owns the ponds above the dam. “All we ask is to remain informed and let us know it’s happening before it happens.” The earthen dam sits beneath part of the 4600 block of Lake Forrest Drive, right on the Sandy Springs-Atlanta border. Blink and SEE LAKE FORREST, PAGE 5
Atlanta Classical Academy: We’re counter-cultural BY JOE EARLE
joeearle@reporternewspapers.net
It’s not like other Atlanta schools. The leaders of Atlanta Classical Academy, Buckhead’s public charter school, take pride in their school’s differences. Those differences set the year-old school apart. “We’re definitely counter-cultural,” board chairman Matthew Kirby said. But not in the ‘60s, tie-dyed kind of way. At this school, students wear uniforms. They study Latin. They learn history, not social studies. They read novels. They memorize and recite poetry. They don’t bring iPads or iPhones to class. They study music and the visual arts. “It’s basically the education my grandparents would have had, and it’s the education we’ve lost over the years,” said Dr. T.O. Moore, principal of the school. “It’s the education the Founding Fathers would have wanted.” ACA’s students are taught to pursue happiness and the core values of “courage, courtesy, honesty, perseverance, self-control and service,” Kirby said. The hallways are decorated with over-
sized portraits of icons of American and Georgia history: Washington, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Andy Young, Ronald Reagan. The academy’s leaders avoid the Common Core, opting instead to build their curriculum the old-school way. “Here’s the problem with today’s education: For the last 100 years, the American public has been sold a falsehood that whatever’s the latest should be taught,” Moore said. “... It’s the same thing as trying to read a newspaper when you don’t know anything about the Constitution and American history. You’re torn whichever way the headline is written.” The academy is a public school financed with public money. But as a charter school, it’s free to go its own way, without the rules that guide most public schools. In return for that freedom, the school promises to produce students who perform better. Parent Cindy Robbins, co-chair of the school’s Parent Teacher Community Association, says she thinks the experiment works SEE STUDENTS, PAGE 19
JOE EARLE
Atlanta Classical Academy Principal Dr. T.O. Moore says his students receive an education the Founding Fathers would have wanted.