School Boundary Focus Group To Address Overcrowding at Free Home

The Cherokee County School District on Monday will begin its school boundary review process for the 2015-16 school year with a series of public meetings.

Boundary Focus Group meetings will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 29 at Free Home Elementary to survey the community about possible solutions to overcrowding at its facility and on Thursday, Oct. 2, at Ball Ground Elementary School STEM Academy to address parent inquiries regarding attendance boundaries and grade configurations.

Free Home Elementary is operating at 135 percent capacity. The school already has three mobile classrooms being used for overcrowding relief, with no room on campus for additional units, the school district said in a press release.

Additionally, Ball Ground is the only Grade K-6 elementary school in the Creekview Innovation Zone that offers a Grades 6-8 middle school (Creekland MS).

Along with some attendance boundary inquiries, parents at that location have requested additional consideration of that school’s grade configuration change as part of this year’s annual boundary focus group process.

All meetings are open to the public. A second meeting will be held if the participants at the first meeting are in consensus that another is needed; the dates for the optional second meetings are Oct. 6 for Free Home and Oct. 9 for Ball Ground.

“The meetings are an opportunity for parents and the community at large to learn more about current enrollment, projected growth and the potential impact on their school, and to talk about different options to alleviate overcrowding through solutions such as boundary redrawing and grade reconfiguration,” the district notes.

School district officials attend the meetings to hear parent and community input and use this information to form their recommendations to the Cherokee County School Board.

The option of closing Free Home for the 2015-16 School Year is not being considered by the school district.

The school board will hold a public input session on all proposed changes from 6:30 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 16 with the final recommendations presented for consideration at the Dec. 4 school board meeting at 7 p.m.

Both meetings will be held at the Historic Canton High School/School Board Auditorium.

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