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We are trying to determine which area to live in. Schools are priority #1, but focus is on middle and high. The school culture, safety, gifted services, and bullying prevention are the drivers. We also want to live in an area where there are lots of other kids (ours are 6 and 10) so the culture is to go outside and play, while the parents hang out and drink beer or wine. A welcoming neighborhood where people are happy to see others, and perhaps where we can walk to the local stores. Not interested in Alpharetta, East Cobb, or Peachtree City. We want a place where the people are people oriented, and not where we have only see neighbors when the garage door opens. A nice place....ideas?
Well, here in Decatur we have a lot of that. We can walk to the Oakhurst commercial area or to the square in the center of Decatur. There are always fun events going on such as jazz nights at the old Scottish Rite (in Oakhurst) or concerts on the square in downtown Decatur. Everyone comes with a little dinner, a blanket.. maybe a little wine and all the kids. Among my friends there are a lot of last minute get togethers (particularly on Fridays) where we will all decide to cook out at someone's house and let the kids run wild like the little primates that they are. In our area there is also a lot of neighborhood play - my kids are always running off somewhere or showing up unannounced with a bunch of hungry little humans.
My school aged kids walk to school as do many others in Decatur. I would guess that about half of the kids walk or bike to school. In my area, the moms/dads who are available in the afternoons also hang out on playground at Oakhurst after school and let the kids play for an hour or so... this often bleeds into the cookouts referenced above.
The Schools - Decatur has its own school system separate from DeKalb County's system. ALL of the Decatur City Schools are excellent IMO - so you can live anywhere in the city limits and be fine. The elementaries are Oakhurst, Clairemont and Winnona Park (K-3) and Glennwood (4-5). Renfroe is the middle school and Decatur High is the high school.
The K-3 schools are Expeditionary Learning Schools (google ELOB). Glennwood is an International Baccalaureate School and Renfroe is in the process of becoming an IB school. They will be implementing IB pedagogy next year as a candidate school and will probably be a full fledged IB certified school in about two years. Decatur High is also working on IB but isn't a candidate school yet.
As for school culture, a huge part of ELOB revolves around creating a positive school culture where everyone accepts and celebrates each others differences. There is a lot of work on conflict resolution and the kids do a lot of group projects so they get used to working together and relying on each other. I have heard of no significant teasing or bullying at the elementary level. There is the occasional minor playground squabble or drama between a couple of girl friends, but I haven't seen the hurtful teasing and bullying stuff that I saw when I was a kid. Even kids with disabilities are fully accepted by their peers and get invited to parties, sleepovers etc. Being different just isn't a problem.
IB is similar in its approach to school culture and by the time the kids get to Renfroe, they really do get it because they've known nothing else since they started school. Granted, whenever you put a few hundred pre-adolescents in a building together there will be some drama. However, I have never heard of anything serious- particularly in recent years. There also is not a "name brand" culture at Renfroe. My oldest (age 11) and her friends aren't even aware of that stuff - they think Target is cool. I know some high schoolers who get together and go "thrifting" - they head to the consignment and thrift stores together looking for cool stuff to wear.
Renfroe had its problems for several years - primarily because they couldn't keep a principal for more than a year. However, they have had Bruce Roaden in charge for a couple of years now, and I think he is doing a really good job. He has worked in middle schools for his entire career and is dedicated to that age group so he's not using middle school as a career step to get somewhere else. He's strict but he also has a very dry sense of humor and is kind of a joker which definitely helps him relate to that age group.
Gifted services.... As of last year, about a third of kids at Glennwood Academy were gifted identified and about 30% of those at Renfroe were. We have a lot of brainiac (and demanding!) parents around b/c of the nearby colleges and the CDC so if you have gifted kids they will not feel like geeks at all. Gifted services is accomplished with a pull out model and in class differentiation in K-5. At Renfroe, next year a kid can get one or two honors classes (Math and/or Language Arts) and there will be cluster grouping of gifted students (8-10 in a class) with in class differentiation for the cluster.
Honestly, sometimes I wish that they had more honors classes at Renfroe, but IB is very rigorous and amenable to differentiation because it is project based. Also, with so many gifted kids (30%) a teacher can't get away with ignoring them without having chaos in her class.... so I think that it will work out fine (I have a rising 6th grader).
Well, that's everything I know - whew - my fingers are about to cramp! Candler Park and Dunwoody are also very nice neighborhoods with excellent schools. Dunwoody has a suburban feel and Candler Park is more urban and hip. Schools in Dunwoody (particularly Vanderlyn and Austin) are much more standardized test oriented than are the schools in Candler Park and Decatur. If I moved to Dunwoody I would probably send my kids to Chesnut. We used to live near Candler Park and it definitely has a fun group of parents. I don't believe that Dunwoody is very walkable, but Candler Park has a groovy commercial node and a couple of lovely parks.
Dunwoody cluster schools are Vanderlyn, Austin, Kingsley and Chesnut Elementaries, Peachtree Middle and Dunwoody High. Candler Park has Mary Lin Elementary, Inman Middle and Grady High. All are great schools.
As for garage doors... what's a garage? We've never had one. I hear they are nice!
Dunwoody isn't as walkable as either Candler and Decatur. You may run into your neighbors out and about, but most likely you would have driven there. There is really only one big park in Dunwoody and most people have to drive to it. (It is a great park)
Some of the neighborhoods in Dunwoody have lots of little kids, but some don't as the families are slightly older. Most do, but be sure and ask around.
Well my spouse visited, Renfroe and was impressed. It seemed like a very open school with the administration being very comfortable with the students. Notes were posted on the counselor's doors from students and their were boxes located throughout the school to send messages to the school about problems you may be having with or without using your name. This scored huge points with us. The administration spent over an hour with my spouse and wouldn't let him leave. LOL They were extremely friendly. My only concern is the differientation. Having lived in another college town with some of the best schools in the nation, I didn't think the clustering of gifted children always served them well. Dunwoody Middle School (Peachtree Charter) on the otherhand has an entire track for the gifted child. However, Peachtree Middle School is a much larger school. Still trying to decide which is best for our child who scores across the board at the vey top.
Well my spouse visited, Renfroe and was impressed. It seemed like a very open school with the administration being very comfortable with the students. Notes were posted on the counselor's doors from students and their were boxes located throughout the school to send messages to the school about problems you may be having with or without using your name. This scored huge points with us. The administration spent over an hour with my spouse and wouldn't let him leave. LOL They were extremely friendly. My only concern is the differientation. Having lived in another college town with some of the best schools in the nation, I didn't think the clustering of gifted children always served them well. Dunwoody Middle School (Peachtree Charter) on the otherhand has an entire track for the gifted child. However, Peachtree Middle School is a much larger school. Still trying to decide which is best for our child who scores across the board at the vey top.
The clustering of gifted children away from the "gen-pop" should be a concern when evaluating a middle school (by clustering....meaning that gifted kids are largely in separate classes most of the day...tracking in other words). A good middle school that is actually being a middle school does not do this...yes, there will be a class for the gifted (or inclusion), but gifted should not be a separate track. Clustering/Tracking by ability/giftedness is nothing but a junior high...a younger high school not meeting the unique needs of young adolescents.
Schools that do this are really bowing down to parental pressure for exclusion (We use to joke...yes, the parents of gifted children want "Dunwoody Academy at Peachtree Middle"; "Decatur Academy at Renfroe"; "Buckhead Academy at Sutton"; etc. ).
Sadly, more schools and school systems are falling away from the true middle school model and middle schools and the students are suffering. Cobb County started the whole AC (Advanced Content) model a few years ago...after being nationally-known for cutting-edge middle schools since the late 1970s.
208happystreet, if interested, there are a couple of threads on this Atlanta forum that further discuss the middle school concept and tracking. You can do a search ("middle schools"). I think there is also discussion of this on the school sticky post at the top of the Atlanta forum.
I don't doubt that Aries' comments on tracking are based on current educational theory and research. However, as a parent, I suppose I'd be one of the bad parents who likes exclusion. My child is just finishing 8th grade at a Cobb County middle school (Mabry) where she's spent 3 years in AC classes for all her core academic subjects, not by my request but by the school's placement.
In my childhood I was skipped 3 grades, and although I excelled academically among the much older kids, I had a pretty miserable and lonely adolescence. My daughter started school in Canada, where progressive educational thinking is firmly entrenched, and as a consequence there is no standardized testing, no tracking, lots of doubtless valuable attention to special needs and no attention at all to the gifted. In first and second grade I think my daughter spent most of her school time coloring, since kids who finished their work quickly were supposed to do coloring until everyone got done. And this despite my deliberate effort to avoid teaching her to read before first grade, in hope of averting her being too bored at school.
AC classes have kept my daughter with her age group (much better socially) while providing her with a reasonable degree of intellectual challenge. She has commented that 8th grade French class is rather tedious, despite an excellent teacher, because it moves through the material slowly compared to her AC classes.
AC kids are not very segregated. The majority take just one or two AC classes, not a full slate. Classes like physical education, art, music and foreign language have no AC offering.
I guess the proper theory is that pullout programs, like the Target program in elementary school, are better for gifted middle-schoolers. But honestly, as a parent, much as I want to be right-thinking, I didn't find Target all that much more valuable than coloring.
A welcoming neighborhood where people are happy to see others, and perhaps where we can walk to the local stores. Not interested in Alpharetta, East Cobb, or Peachtree City. We want a place where the people are people oriented, and not where we have only see neighbors when the garage door opens.
To each his own and I hope you find what you want, but...
You are making some really big false assumptions and generalizations here. I know this is off topic and not related to schools, but I sense some class envy here and the implicit comment being made is that an area that is more affluent (or maybe majority white) isn't "welcoming" or "people oriented" and everyone is a Stepford wife or something of the kind.
To me, any area with good schools, low crime, and well educated people (of any race) would be a good place to foster those qualities. All of the ones you dismissed fit into those buckets.
If neil is implying class envy to me, you are way off. We want a place where it is really community oriented like long ago. Many newer areas are subdivisions that do not connect and it is difficult to feel as though you are part of a community. I grew up in a place where when you call the utility companies they don't ask you what subdivision you live in but rather what street. That is because was built when each house was individually designed and built before there was such a thing as subdivisons. There are places in Alpharetta, East Cobb and Peachtree City which are very nice, but they are all subdivisions built for the most part by large builders. And just to let you know we live in one of them. So I'm not envious at all. I'm envious at the people who have sidewalks, can walk to the stores, see your neighbors from your front door, because that is what I miss. Since when did Candler Park, Decatur City or Dunwoody become inferior to the outer burbs? You may not realize this but you get a smaller house for the money generally. We enjoy the city and prefer not to spend time looking at the windshield. Also, by the way just because a school has top scores does not mean it will work for your child. There is alot more to schools than test scores. Any area with good schools, low crime, and well educated people does not always foster a welcoming place by the way. Furthermore, the only way into the city from Cobb is by freeway except for one back way that is gridlock. Furthermore, much of Cobb county's subdivision's exit onto major roads. That is why we do not wish to live there. In terms of Alpharetta and Peachtree City, they are far out and quite a commute into the city. How does that relate to envy?
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decatur schools
