In a communication to parents and staff on Wednesday, Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring shelved the potential rezoning plans for the Midtown and Maynard Jackson cluster. This comes after 200 students at Midtown High School staged a peaceful protest last Friday after accusing the district of unfairly targeting 200 black students and sending them to Washington High School.
“We heard one major theme across all clusters: Our communities do not want us to rezone, especially if we have not exhausted all other options. Therefore, APS plans to develop and implement the non-rezoning scenario (scenario #1) to address overcrowding at Jackson HS, Midtown HS, and Woodson Park Academy, Herring said in the memo.”
Students from Midtown High School cited many reasons for not wanting to go to with many mentioning the diminishing lack of diversity at Midtown High School and the low graduation rate at Washington High School.
“Midtown High School’s graduation rate currently stands at 91% over the graduation rate for Georgians & 21% over the graduation rate at the school they’re relocating us to) therefore ultimately planning our demise when sending us to a school that they themselves have deemed incompetent to receive the same resources we do,” according to the Midtown__Protest2023 Instagram page. “There is no way the children at Washington are getting the same opportunities as the kids at Midtown. If that was the case there wouldn’t be such a drastic change in success rates.”
In addition to not rezoning, the district is exploring a timeline to come up with potential solutions from stakeholders that starts in May and lasts until October. In addition, Atlanta Public Schools will review residency to confirm in-zone students for Midtown High School, started on March 20 and will last until June.