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Community Corner

School Board Redistricting Meeting Draws 150

Cherokee County Board of Education posts have to be redrawn to equalize the number of residents in each district.

How would you take Cherokee County and carve it up into seven pieces?

That’s the question Russ Sims asked of the approximately 150 citizens gathered tonight at at the fourth – and final – public input meeting about school board redistricting in the county.

Sims, assistant superintendent of support services, facilities and construction management, represented the Cherokee County Board of Education in a presentation outlining the challenges faced by the board in the wake of the massive population burst of the last decade.

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According to data from the U.S. Census, more than 70,000 residents moved into Cherokee County in the last 10 years, making some school board post districts grow at a faster rate than others.

The result: nearly a 15,000-person spread between the most populated school board post district and the least populated district.

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Sims, along with planning and forecasting coordinator Mitch Hamilton, are charged with the responsibility of redrawing the school board posts to equalize the number of residents in each district to roughly 30,620 residents.

The redrawn posts will not change which schools residents send their children to, but does affect which school board member represents them. The seven school board members are elected for 4-year terms in two staggered, two-year elections.

Sims said the Cherokee Charter Academy, the proposed charter school whose existence is still up in the air, would not affect the redrawing because it draws children from throughout the county.

“It’s more akin to a private school setup,” he said.

The planning and forecasting department will now collect citizen input in order to redraw the school board post districts.

Cherokee schools spokeswoman Barbara Jacoby said Superintendent Dr. Frank Petruzielo has indicated he is in favor of distributing a survey to parents and employees of the to garner additional input. She said the survey would likely be distributed via email.

Janet Zust said she attended the meeting for one reason: her daughter, an 8-year-old Bascomb Elementary School third grader.

She said she was concerned that the population data uses the number of residents, not the number of students. Residents moving into Cherokee County without children could skew the data. She said she had questions about how all of this would impact the classroom, specifically if it would require a redistribution of teachers. 

Zust, a six-year resident of Towne Lake Hills, said she likes the schools in the county and plans on taking Sims up on his invitation to contact his office with concerns to help make sure they remain of a high quality.

“We’ve got really good schools right here,” she said. “That’s why we moved here.”

HAVE YOUR SAY

To offer additional input, contact planning and forecasting coordinator Mitch Daniels at 770-721-8429 or mitch.hamilton@cherokee.k12.ga.us.

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