Officials with the Hall County School District have know for a few years that they would have to address growth on the south end of the county, and the topic of redistricting is nothing new, but now, there's a timeline in place for making the plan a reality.
School System Superintendent Will Schofield presented the timeline to school board members at a Monday evening work session.
"As you know, we will be opening middle school/high school district number seven in the 2018-19 school year," Schofield said. "Transportation has met with me and with technology and we've looked at some potential [attendance] lines. This month and next month we will be emailing you back and forth on some of the potential lines we might envision."
Schofield said once board members have seen the proposed attendance lines, then the public will get a look at the proposal, but the format of the information release will be different than in the past.
"Normally, we have big meetings and big maps and everybody comes and it's a big surprise and people are trying to digest the information," Schofield said.
This time, the school system would release the information in a video format, so that parents, teachers and other concerned parties can see the information all at once. That is planned for some time in March.
"Everybody gets it at the same time, everybody can view it in the comfort of their own home and they can make recommendations, criticisms...state their concerns [electronically] and then we begin to have a series of public meetings after we've looked at those concerns," Schofield said.
The public meetings, according to the timeline, would occur in April through early summer and then the school board would vote on attendance lines in July 2017.
From September 2017 until May 2018, the board would hire a principal, finalize grandfathering rules and complete any facility renovations needed before an August 2018 school opening.
Schofield also asked the board members to start thinking about names, mascots and colors for the new schools.
Under the plan being considered by the Board, the seventh middle/high school would be housed at the current Flowery Branch High School campus on Spout Springs Road. Flowery Branch High would return to its original campus and Davis Middle School would return to its original campus. South Hall Middle School would once again return to the campus it occupied before Davis Middle School moved to that building.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2017/1/488989/hall-county-school-district-officials-begin-work-on-south-hall-area-redistricting