Atlanta schools adjust to delayed relocation of Forest Cove residents

Not in a unit with a broken window. Not in a crumbling apartment where a dangling board hangs just above the threshold. Not skipping through overgrown yards where gunfire frequently erupts.

“I don’t want to keep raising my little boy out here,” said Ayana Meriweather, as she walked with her son from the bus stop.

For months, the city and community groups have been trying to relocate the condemned complex’s low-income residents. They wanted to find new homes for families with children before the school year started, but it hasn’t gone swiftly.

Residents remain, and it’s not clear how much longer they’ll have to wait. Delays blamed on housing shortages have resulted in unexpected higher enrollments at nearby schools. There were still 157 students with Forest Cove addresses enrolled at the local elementary, middle and high schools during the third week of classes.

It’s led to larger class sizes, new bus routes and a last-minute push to hire staff. It also spells more instability for children who now face transitioning to new schools twice in one year.

The Atlanta Board of Education voted to close, at least temporarily, Thomasville Heights Elementary School over the summer, saying the campus across the street from Forest Cove couldn’t be sustained with the neighborhood emptying out. Reassigned students started the year at Slater Elementary School, 3 ½ miles away. Forest Cove children are expected to transfer again as they leave the area.

“While they’re here, we try to provide them as normal an experience as possible because we know that at some point for many of them, their lives are going to be disrupted pretty significantly by the move,” said Jovan Miles, Slater’s principal.

The school’s enrollment grew from a projected 460-490 students to over 560 as Forest Cove children showed up.

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

When at-risk families move and switch schools, it can exacerbate an already stressful situation, said Stefanie DeLuca, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

“It’s a lot more work that’s put on poor parents who are already struggling,” she said.

Changing schools midyear makes it more difficult for parents to develop relationships with teachers, she said.

Meriweather, whose son attended prekindergarten last year at Thomasville Heights, considered keeping him out of school until they move since he’s likely to switch schools again. In Georgia, kindergarten is not mandatory.

She ended up enrolling him at Slater after he’d gotten a haircut and a new uniform.

“I’ve got to put him in school,” Meriweather said, “so he can know how to go to a different school and be around different people.”

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

‘Cannot happen fast enough’

Living conditions at Forest Cove deteriorated for years.

Residents have dealt with fire damage, rodent infestations and violent crime.

After Atlanta government officials filed a nuisance complaint, a judge ordered the demolition of buildings by Sept. 12. That timeline paused when property owner Millennia Companies, which wants to rehabilitate the site, appealed. A hearing is scheduled for late January.

In the meantime, the city provided $9.1 million to find new homes for roughly 200 families. The city reported 128 families had moved out by mid-August.

“Progress has been slower than any of us would have liked. Simply put, the relocation cannot happen fast enough,” a spokesman for Mayor Andre Dickens acknowledged in an email.

A lack of housing, particularly three- and four-bedroom places, has hindered the effort. One advocate said some potential sites failed inspections, forcing reassignments to different units.

Residents and others familiar with the effort said some families are moving outside the city.

Millennia spokeswoman Valerie Jerome said work is ongoing to find housing options. Some Forest Cove families have left for short-term housing, such as short-term transitional housing, while they wait for a suitable place.

Credit: Johnny Crawford

Credit: Johnny Crawford

Making the adjustment

Millennia planned to relocate tenants off-site temporarily while the complex underwent a year-plus renovation. During that period, Thomasville Heights intended to bus students back. About three-quarters of the school’s children lived at Forest Cove.

The demolition order prompted Thomasville Heights’ closure. Now, Miles, who previously served as Thomasville Heights’ principal, is trying to smooth students’ transition to Slater, as are some teachers who also had worked at their former school.

“The whole goal is just to mitigate as much of the potential disruption, potential trauma as possible by creating some continuity with school,” he said.

In 2016, APS embarked on a bold bid to turn around some of its lowest-performing and highest-poverty schools, which included Slater and Thomasville Heights.

The district hired Purpose Built Schools Atlanta to manage the two elementary schools plus the two campuses they feed into, Price Middle School and Carver STEAM Academy. Leaders hoped that the nonprofit would boost student achievement through extended school days and project-based learning.

APS agreed to a contract through 2030, paying Purpose Built just over $28 million last year to run the four schools.

Purpose Built officials believe they were making strides at Thomasville Heights, though state-test scores showed much work remained. On the 2022 Georgia Milestones, after two years of pandemic-disrupted learning, only 7% of the school’s third graders scored at proficient or above levels in English language arts. At Slater, it was 4.4%. Statewide, it’s about 36%.

Starting last year, the two elementary schools reorganized their schedules to fit in longer intervention periods to catch up students who fell behind during the pandemic. The extra help continues this year at Slater, where on a recent afternoon, kindergartners used laptops to tackle lessons tailored to their needs as their teacher supervised.

About 1,300 students were enrolled across Purpose Built’s three sites as of mid-August. Five weeks before, the projection was 1,190, according to emails obtained through an open records request.

Slater has seen the biggest impact from the Forest Cove delays since the school absorbed Thomasville Heights students. Price Middle School enrolled 43 students with Forest Cove addresses while Carver STEAM, the neighborhood high school, had 38.

Some Slater classrooms have four to five more children this year, with some as large as 26 students, Miles said. The school is adjusting by shifting teachers and adding a teacher and two paraprofessionals. Miles said the larger class sizes aren’t unmanageable.

He stopped by a third grade class where the teacher complimented children as they maneuvered around their desks and made room for each other to sit on a carpet for math drills.

Slater feels like a different school, said PTA President Bernard Arnold. He’s concerned that larger classes could hamper learning and contribute to the spread of COVID-19.

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

More students in a classroom “can’t be good for the kids,” he said, adding that he’d like Slater to bring in portable trailers to reduce class sizes.

He opposed the closure of Thomasville Heights and said officials should have realized that families would still be stuck at Forest Cove: “Everybody knows that when you are dealing with the government, that stuff is slow.”

But, Arnold said his fifth grader continues to do well, and the principal has been welcoming.

Purpose Built expanded services to support students living at Forest Cove. It added five tutors at a cost of $85,000 and plans to spend more money on mental health counseling. It also budgeted about $167,000 more for bus routes, since Forest Cove students can no longer walk to Thomasville Heights and to serve children now living in short-term housing.

Supporting students

As the schools adjust, problems persist back at Forest Cove.

”We need urgent action,” said Monique Nunnally, who chairs the education committee for a southeast Atlanta neighborhood planning unit.

She worries the upheaval will deepen knowledge gaps that children experienced during the pandemic. She wishes APS had kept Thomasville Heights open this school year to provide more continuity.

APS and Purpose Built plan to reopen the school if and when Forest Cove is rebuilt.

“The assumption is families will come back and a school will be needed,” said Greg Giornelli, president of Purpose Built Schools.

Miles, the Slater principal, said he’s trying to make the most of the additional time with his former Thomasville Heights students.

“Everyone was actually happy to hear that we’d be able to see so many of these kids and families again this year to just give us more time with them and to really say goodbye appropriately,” he said. “But also to be a support for them while they are still going through what I’m sure is a very traumatic experience.”

A Forest Cove Apartments timeline