Lizbeth Arreguin, right, and others hold signs in front of Dalton City Hall to protest plans to turn Park Creek Elementary School into a sixth-grade academy in this file photo.DALTON, Ga. - Dalton school board members heard from committee members looking at three ways to address overcrowding at Dalton Middle School but did not make any decisions on which option to pursue during their regular meeting Tuesday evening.
Earlier this summer, board members had said they favored changing Park Creek School, an elementary school with about 700 students, into a sixth-grade academy. Park Creek students would be moved to the remaining five elementary schools.
Park Creek students, parents and teachers vigorously protested that option. After hearing from parents and students at their June meeting, school administrators took more time to look at additional options.
Proposals at Tuesday's meeting including the Park Creek option, converting City Park School into a prekindergarten through eighth-grade school and moving all sixth-graders from the middle school back into elementary schools.
Three committees are studying the three options, and presented some of their findings and questions to the school board.
"There is not a perfect solution," Superintendent Jim Hawkins told the board members during the presentations. "There are minuses to everyone one of them. It is a matter of weighing the pluses and minuses and deciding on one."
Hawkins said he was not ready to make a recommendation on the options yet.
Changing Park Creek to a sixth-grade academy would be the most expensive option, costing about $8.9 million for additions to existing elementary schools and changes to the Park Creek and Dalton Middle School. It also would move the most students, shifting the 700 students to the five elementary schools, rezoning the other five schools and moving the sixth-graders.
Moving the sixth-graders back to elementary schools is expected to cost about $6.5 million for additions to elementary schools. It likely would not call for any major rezoning.
Creating a prekindergarten through eighth-grade school at City Park would cost the least, at about $5.3 million. Most of that money would be spent on building additions to other elementary schools. About 400 elementary school students would be moved out of City Park into other elementary schools, while about 300 to 360 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders would be moved into City Park School.
Each of the costs are for construction and do not include staffing needs that may change with a different structure of classes and grades or additional transportation costs.
The moves would bring changes to staffing, teachers and athletic programs that would need to be worked out, committee leaders told the school board.
Some of the options also would create concerns about the number of times students would need to be moved from one school to the next during their first years in school.
"You have the concern of transitions and how that will affect students," Hawkins said. "But we also have to be sure we are not relieving overcrowding at the middle school only to have overcrowding in elementary schools.
Board member Danny Crutchfield voiced concern that board members take time to make the right decision to meet the needs of the school children.
"This is not just about space and classrooms," he said. "This is a great opportunity for us to improve the education we are going to be providing."
Costs for the project likely would be covered by a special-purpose local-option sales tax, if passed by voters in November.
Dalton and Whitfield County board members plan to have a meeting Thursday to decide if they want to ask for the SPLOST to be placed on the ballot this fall.