Growth At A Price

Growth at a price

Even with SPLOST and bonds we have not kept up. The population boom brings baggage: traffic jams and a school system overwhelmed by new students. The county commission’s review of the Conservation Subdivision Ordinance is a good step in the right direction. But more right steps are needed.

Henry’s schools have exceeded enrollment the state uses to calculate funding for school construction. Average high school enrollment is 1,500 students but Union Grove High has 2,200. That is almost double the number the school was built to handle. After adding Ola High the average high school enrollment will be 1,550, about 400 over capacity. We know the averages are far less than the actual number of students we are forced to cram into the schools and trailers!

Health concerns arise when we must resort to creating trailer parks at our schools. Pleasant Grove Elementary will have about 200 students segregated into the Timber Ridge Trailer Community. There will be bathroom trailers connected to the school’s septic system and no sewer will be available for another year. Communal toilets plus one cafeteria for the school’s total 725 students seems a bit much for an onsite septic tank system.

Safety is a crucial problem. Last July tornadoes ripped through the area. The National Weather Service reported 6 tornadoes in north Georgia. In Henry major damage occurred within one mile of Union Grove, and within two miles of Pleasant Grove. And these certainly are not the only two schools with trailers. In 2006-07 all but four schools will have trailers on their campuses. A huge “what if” looms when we consider hundreds of children caught in a trailer park!

Trailers present physical security challenges. Kids have the right to be safe, and feel safe. Main school buildings have secured doors, monitoring cameras, and staff patrolling the halls. Trailers on the property appear more vulnerable to public access, a situation nobody can control. East Lake Elementary will temporarily house over 400 students in a Timber Ridge Trailer Community to begin next school year. Trailer parks bring huge “what if” safety concerns.

Welfare of our kids is also on the list. The education system must have the capacity to respond to kids with demanding and complex needs. Building resilience in young people to enhance their educational outcomes cannot be accomplished with severe overcrowding. High numbers of students give us “separate but equal” trailer communities, social and ethnic factions and lost sense of personal identity. Even the best intentioned teachers and counselors cannot overcome the overwhelming number of students.

Please do not think this is an indictment against the Board of Education. The BoE has the unenviable and virtually impossible task of trying to keep pace with our unprecedented growth. Even with an aggressive building plan, the BoE simply cannot build schools fast enough to keep up.

We need the county commission to impose impact fees for new school construction. Such fees must be enacted in coordination with new zoning ordinances to limit residential density – even on sewer. That way everybody wins.

Larry Stanley
McDonough, GA
January 23, 2006