The walk to and from school for Mechanicsville resident Shatoya Kent and her 6-year-old daughter, Zyvanna, usually takes about four minutes. Last week, they learned that won’t be the case much longer.
Kent’s daughter is a first-grader at Dunbar Elementary, one of 16 city schools scheduled to permanently close or be repurposed at the start of the 2027-2028 school year in conjunction with Atlanta Public Schools’ facilities consolidation plan, known as APS Forward 2040.
Kent, a home health aide who doesn’t own a vehicle, is one of many Atlanta residents who aren’t sure where their children will be attending school in two years or how they will get there.
“We stay across the street and the school is right here, and most parents with no cars don’t have transportation,” Kent told Capital B Atlanta in the parking lot outside Dunbar Elementary on Monday after picking her daughter up from school. “It’s just gonna be a lot.”
List of schools due to close and be repurposed:
- Cleveland Avenue Elementary
- Continental Colony Elementary
- F.L. Stanton Elementary
- Peyton Forest Elementary
- KIPP Soul Primary
- KIPP Soul Academy
- Jackson Primary Elementary School
- Scott Elementary
- Smith Intermediate
- Sylvan Middle
- The Toomer Elementary School annex
- Usher Collier Elementary
- Douglass High School’s ninth grade building
Finch and Perkerson Elementary School are set to merge into one school. Phase two of the plan will determine how exactly each building will be repurposed, according to APS spokesperson Seth Coleman.
“They could end up being community engagement spaces,” Coleman said. “They could be early childhood education spaces. … Those conversations are ongoing now.”
Most of the schools targeted for closing are in majority Black, southwest Atlanta neighborhoods, where many parents and grandparents worry about longer commutes for them and their children.
Some, like Sylvia Johnson, 51, are mourning the loss of schools they or their kids attended. Johnson’s four grandchildren attend Cleveland Avenue Elementary. She said she was shocked last week when she learned the school, which her daughter, Kenyatta, also attended, won’t be around much longer.
“I’m like, ‘That’s one of the good schools,’ because they look out for the community,” Johnson said Monday afternoon while waiting in the school parking lot to pick up her grandchildren. “This school [has] been here a long time.”
Declining Enrollment
The Atlanta Board of Education approved the closure plan on Dec. 3 after nearly 50 public meetings and additional outreach efforts over the course of a year. The plan is designed to reduce costs and modernize district facilities by closing or repurposing aging schools with low enrollment and moving those students into other schools to more efficiently use their resources.
Declining enrollment was a major reason for the plan, which officials estimate will save the district $20 million to $25 million in operational costs. The problem was amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shrinking birth rates, low-income residents moving out of neighborhoods due to cost of living increases and some parents opting to have their kids attend charter schools have pushed enrollment at some Atlanta schools below 50%.
APS leadership estimates 50,000 students are enrolled in city schools, but the district’s estimated $1.85 billion budget is designed to accommodate 70,000 students.
Atlanta School Board Chair Erika Y. Mitchell stressed in a statement that APS administrators have spent a year seeking public input on their plan, and their decision to repurpose some schools was not made lightly.
“We made it because we believe — firmly and unanimously — that this plan positions APS to deliver stronger, more equitable opportunities for every student we serve,” Mitchell told Capital B Atlanta via email on Tuesday. “We recognize that the decision to repurpose 16 schools is deeply emotional. Schools are not just buildings — they are anchors of identity, history, and community pride. We honor that.”
Some local school advocates who said they prefer keeping the schools open have reluctantly accepted APS’s vision for the facilities plan as long as it keeps its promise to maximize resources for underserved Black students.
Not everyone is on board with the consolidation plan.
One of the opponents is Nathaniel Dyer, 55, founder of Kids First, a mentoring and education advocacy nonprofit. Dyer said he plans to continuing fighting to keep the schools open in the new year. He argues the consolidation plan is a gift to developers who want to close schools in Southwest Atlanta to force more legacy Black residents to leave the community.
He said it doesn’t make sense to close majority Black schools to save money while spending millions to expand schools in majority white neighborhoods, such as the area surrounding Midtown High School, which celebrated a $34.9 million campus expansion and renovation in 2021.
“How are they saving money if you’re going to close or merge to the tune of $25 million on one side of town, but for three to four schools on the white side of town, you’re going to spend $300 million?” Dyer told Capital B Atlanta on Tuesday.
Midtown resident Kimberly Dukes serves as executive director of Atlanta Thrive, a nonprofit that helps APS parents navigate the school system. She said she doesn’t want to see schools closed, but does want to see students attending schools with full-time social workers, counselors, speech therapists, and occupational therapists.
“If and when we consolidate these buildings, I want to ensure that community hubs will happen,” Dukes told Capital B Atlanta. “I want to ensure the resources that are needed for our kids are there.”
Parents and students also said they don’t want to see the schools close, only for their neighborhoods to become gentrified and have new schools opened there later.
KaCey Venning, 45, is the co-founder and executive director of Helping Empower Youth, a nonprofit that works with Black male teens in southwest Atlanta. She said she sees legacy Black Atlanta residents moving out of the neighborhood daily, and not always because they want to.
“You have neighbors who are moving with their children to find places that are more affordable or to move to places where it’s easier for them to get back and forth to their jobs,” Venning told Capital B Atlanta. “And then you have gentrifiers, Black and white … who are moving in, who do not have school-age children. There are going to be some ramifications and some effects of that on our local school district.”
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