‘The ghetto’: Atlanta sent only black students to behavioral program
After an Atlanta teen completed in-patient psychiatric treatment, his school required him to "transition" through a psychoeducational program, part of the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS.
The South Metro GNETS program, in Forest Park, was a place of continual screaming in the halls and an almost total lack of academic instruction, the teen’s mother said. Her son – like all his classmates at South Metro – is black. In fact, although 20 percent of Atlanta Public Schools students are white or Hispanic, every Atlanta student assigned to GNETS is black.
Click here to see a breakdown, by school, of the Atlanta students enrolled in GNETS.
“It’s like the ghetto,” the mother said.
Schools across the state send a disproportionate number of black students to GNETS programs, segregating them by disability and race, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.
About the Author
Alan Judd is a former investigative reporter for the AJC. He has written about persistently dangerous apartment complexes in metro Atlanta, juvenile justice, child welfare, sexual abuse by physicians, patient deaths in state psychiatric hospitals, and other topics.
