September 28, 2007
Protect Milton Update
The BOE held a meeting on Tuesday, September 25th at Summit Hill Elementary School for the Community to learn of the site plan for the Elementary School to be built on Birmingham Highway bordering Wood Road, opening in August 2009.
There are many concerns with this site plan regarding the Septic System. The BOE stated the septic system is not like that of Summit Hill and they do not foresee any issues with the Septic system as experienced with Summit Hill Elementary.
Sincere concern was raised on how much land us used for septic fields, yet the children’s playground area is what seems to suffer in building these schools on septic instead of placing them in areas where they could be on sewer. No credible answer was given on those questions as well. The children need more space to play as exampled in the situation at Summit Hill Elementary.
Questions were raised as to why the capacity for this school would be only 850 and they are claiming it is based on their numbers. And in addition to this only 200 students from White Columns (which borders this school) will attend this school after redistricting and shifting attendance zones. There is suspicion that the real reason they cannot put more children in this school is based on the septic system capacity in reality. The system cannot handle more students. Validation of this will be investigated.
Questions were asked regarding traffic on Birmingham Hwy and the BOE stated that they are not responsible for any road improvements resulting from their school placements, this is left up to the GA DOT and the City to figure it out. On Birmingham Highway there will be 2 entrances into the school, one for buses and one for staff and carpool. Also major concern was the access to Wood Road which the BOE stated it would be a very “rare” situation if they accessed it, however the site plan provided clearly showed trees cleared with access to Wood Road.
The BOE would not guarantee 100% that they would never access Wood Road but never say never in the words of Katie Reeves.
Attempts were made to ask questions about the High School and reluctantly they did answer some questions. There were 5 other sites that were looked at prior to choosing the old Kings Ridge site. Katie Reeves would not divulge the sites at the meeting. When asked what specific reasons the other sites were denied in favor of the old Kings Ridge site, she also skipped over the question and did not answer it. She was asked how Fulton County could deny Kings Ridge a Land Use Permit twice and now the BOE is allowed to come in and use this site for a much larger school, possibly two schools, and she ignored the question.
As a community we have the right to know why the BOE did not chose the other sites and what they were. She had the perfect opportunity to talk to a group of about 200 people and answer a few questions about the High School and she chose to shut it down regarding questions from the group and ended the meeting. After the meeting many were still asking questions one on one to the staff and Katie Reeves as well.
Maybe we could get some of those people that were there to share their questions and answers on Access Milton.
Katie did not deny that a possible Middle school would be going in with the High School. So neighbors, the BOE has managed to put and Elementary School, Middle School, and High School in the middle of our Brand New City without our input or the input of our City Council and in any consideration to our Land Use Plan.
Both Birmingham Highway and Freemanville Road will be backed up with commuters and school traffic. I am asking the community to please get involved. This school placement for Milton is inappropriate and needs to be moved. Please start calling your City Council Members and ask them to get involved!
Our Density does not warrant placing these schools on this location in Milton. She claims that this site was the best site out of all of those considered. Why? Please elaborate BOE!
Please become more involved in your community and ask questions! To sign the petition go to
http://www.gopetition.com/online/12570.html
Contact Lisa Cauley at protectmilton@aol.com for further direct information.
Regards.
Protect Milton
Luckily the City of Milton has no say in the affairs of the Board of Education-
We need a new school- Milton is overcrowded- its a fact of life- wake up and get over it.
So put it anywhere and not be responsible and investigate all the properties thoroughly? I suppose they should have just put on a blind fold and stuck a pin in a map to pick a school site according to you, it doesn’t matter where they put it? We just need one anywhere, no matter what the circumstances?
Protect Milton is for building more schools, but holding the BOE accoutible for placing our schools in Milton responsibly and not treat Milton like they would a commercial area and just plop school campuses down anywhere without taking into consideration how it will affect our entire City as a whole. Milton is zoned AG-1, you wake up. It is a fact of life that Milton doesn’t have sewer and where they place schools is going to greatly affect our environment and the layout of our City. Milton HS is over crowded since they should have built 2 schools instead of one when they built MHS. They condemned the old MHS and only built one, when the need was for two back then. The BOE operates on a budget that they have collected from all of us, the tax payers. We should have a say so, and so should our City Council when it comes to proper placement of schools in Milton. End of Story. L. Cauley