InTucker Magazine

Student Assignment Project

DeKalb County School District has launched an innovative new committee made up of parents, administrators, teachers and local stakeholders to address difficulties the district is facing to continue to serve all students to the best of their ability. The Student Assignment Project is the brainchild of DCSD’s latest Superintendent, Dr. Horton. Dr. Horton took up leadership in the summer of 2023 and has been working diligently together with the schools to seek ways to shift and better the learning environment in DeKalb County.

Applications to participate were accepted across the entire county. Over 150 stakeholders were chosen to participate and split into four geographic groups, North, Central, Southeast and Southwest for the project. Each SAP committee member committed to monthly meetings over the course of 18 months to dig into years of data, ask questions and ultimately agree on several recommendations to the DeKalb Board of Education to realign how DCSD serves our children.

The committee is charged with reviewing and reimagining “DCSD as it relates to programs, boundaries and buildings using more complete data analysis,” the District website states. SAP endeavors to assess current efforts and data for effectiveness and best usage.

In an effort to receive as much feedback as possible and keep all stakeholders advised of the process, DCSD has built a comprehensive webpage on their website tracking all of the shared data, videos of the monthly meetings and most importantly, the reminder that the SAP committee is only an advisory body and will not be the ones making final decisions. How the district operates, what programs are offered and how facilities are utilized is still under the purview of the DeKalb County School Board.

Once the committee has waded through all the data and information provided, there will be a series of community meetings to share the preliminary recommendations and receive feedback from the public before presenting the final findings to the School Board. All feedback will be received and weighed as all stakeholders have a voice in the process.

Going forward, DCSD will re-evaluate attendance boundaries every five years and undergo the SAP process every ten years as a best practice and to align with ESPOST projects. This is a much-needed adjustment to ensure the District does not once again find itself in its current state of underutilization of facilities, overcrowding and a School Choice program that cannot meet the current demand.

The SAP committee was created to ensure that extreme due diligence is performed by local stakeholders and several recommendations presented to the DCSD Board. Stay tuned and stay informed!