Eastvalley Parents Surprised by Consolidation Idea

Parents at Eastvalley Elementary School were taken by surprise when one of their school board members this week proposed consolidating it with another East Cobb school.

And at least one parent of Eastvalley students is launching a campaign to fight the proposal. 

Cobb Board of Education member David Banks wants to merge Eastvalley with Powers Ferry Elementary School and build a new facility with funds from the forthcoming Cobb Education SPLOST IV.

Banks announced his intentions at a school board work session Wednesday, which was news for many in the Eastvalley district. 

"It's clearly an ill-considered proposal," said parent Eric Stein, who has sent letters of protest to Banks and to Scott Sweeney, who also represents the Eastvalley area on the school board. 

"It's been made with no interaction and input between Banks and the parents."

Stein, who has two daughters attending Eastvalley, also has launched a Facebook page, called the Eastvalley Elementary Advocacy Alliance, to be made up of parents "whose goal is to insure resistance to proposals that are at odds with the best interests of the Eastvalley student body and the school's surrounding community."

In his letters, which he shared with East Cobb Patch, Stein said "the extent of [Banks'] involvement with – and connection to - the community is debatable in my opinion."

The proposal would consolidate two aging schools that aren't contiguous -- Sedalia Park Elementary School is located between them -- and that have different sets of student bodies. 

Powers Ferry is a Title I school, meaning it receives additional resources to improve student achievement, to pay for school lunches and other programs that aren't the case at Eastvalley.

"To put these two disparate student bodies together is very likely a disservice to ALL of the students as the demands placed on the faculty and staff are undoubtedly very different from one school to the other," Stein wrote to both board members. 

Banks, re-elected last year to serve Post 5 in East Cobb, inherited a part of the Eastvalley district, as well as the Powers Ferry and Sedalia Park attendance zones previously represented by Sweeney, in redrawn school board posts.

Sweeney's East Cobb-based Post 6 still includes most of the Eastvalley district.

Banks said he wanted to make his proposal public before taking it to the community "because if I didn't make my case, it wasn't going to get made."

Powers Ferry Elementary School was built in the 1950s and currently has a student population of around 400, some of whom are in trailers. 

The enrollment of Eastvalley, which opened in the early 1960s, is around 600. Banks said since replacement elementary schools ideally are being built for around 1,000, merging these two makes sense. 

Parents at nearby Brumby Elementary School have been lobbying the school board for a new school. That school, located on Powers Ferry Road, has more than 1,000 students, is overcrowded and poses safety problems from traffic on a busy corridor.

Banks wouldn't divulge further details of the consolidation proposal, including a possible location for the combined school and what he said was his "solution" for the academic challenge posed by a possible merger.

"I think when they hear the whole story at Eastvalley, they're going to be pleased," he said. 

Late Friday afternoon, Beckie Goodloe and Sarah Kirwan, the co-presidents of the Eastvalley PTA, expressed their disapproval in an e-mail response to a request for comment: 

Most of us learned about David Banks' proposal to merge Powers Ferry Elementary and Eastvalley Elementary from your October 10th article. This proposal comes as a surprise to many of us. Although Eastvalley is one of the oldest schools in the county, we understand that there are at least eight other schools that have greater needs. In addition, with Sedalia Park sitting between the schools, the proposed merger would likely create a rezoning nightmare. Our families love our neighborhood school so we do not envision that Eastvalley parents would support the proposed mega school.

Banks said he talked to Sweeney "months ago" about possible consolidations of East Cobb elementary schools, but didn't give any clear indication if he ran this specific proposal by his colleague. Sweeney has been contacted by East Cobb Patch for comment.

East Cobb Patch also has contacted a representative of the Powers Ferry Elementary PTA seeking comment.