Schools

Mountain View Parents Push for New School

The Cobb school board is hearing plenty from parents of students at the Northeast Cobb elementary school.

Add the parents of Mountain View Elementary School to those in Cobb County lobbying for new facilities. 

More than a dozen Mountain View parents turned out at the Cobb Board of Education meeting Thursday night to plead for a replacement to the aging Northeast Cobb school.

Wearing bright yellow shirts and standing when someone in their group spoke during a public comment session, the Mountain View parents rattled off a series of health and safety issues they say make having a new school necessary.

They say the building, which dates from the 1960s, is filled with mold, floors easily settle with water after rain and that students have to be ushered through the main parking lot to reach classrooms.

The school's location, dating back to the late 1920s when the East Cobb area was rural, is now in the midst of a commercial corridor on Sandy Plains Road near Shallowford Road, presenting traffic concerns. 

"We're a great school, we're just not a great school building," said Susan Tucker, chairwoman of the Mountain View school council.

"You have seen the mold literally on the walls," Mountain View PTA president Michelle Franklin said. "I see our children crossing a parking lot to get to classes.

"Are we willing to take risks like this again and again with our children?"

Their newly launched campaign, "Rebuild Mountain View," includes a website and Facebook page and the yellow shirts bear a simple, but emphatic, message: 

Our school is gold
Our building is old
REBUILD
Mountain View Elementary

In March, Cobb voters approved a $717 million extension of the Cobb Education SPLOST, to be collected from 2014-2018. On the "SPLOST IV" project list is the reconstruction of four elementary schools, to be determined by the school board. 

The Mountain View parents were joined on Thursday by parents' groups at two other schools who also have taken to lobbying -- in open meetings and elsewhere -- for several months. 
Most vocal have been parents at Harmony Leland Elementary School in Mableton, which opened 62 years ago and is crumbling. 
More recently, parents at East Cobb's Brumby Elementary Schoolalso began pressing school board members for a new building, preferably in a different location than the heavily commercialized Powers Ferry Road.
The Marietta Daily Journal recently profiled both of those campaigns
At Thursday's school board meeting, Amoni Witcher, the president of the Brumby PTA, reiterated concerns about the school's overcrowding (its enrollment is more than 1,000) and traffic issues.
"We desperately need a new school," she said. 

While applauding the Brumby teachers and staff, she pointed to the school's outdated cafeteria and gymnasium, and told board members that parents line up for carpooling on busy Powers Ferry.
The Brumby PTA will be holding an open house at its Oct. 10 meeting, and has invited board members to take a look for themselves. 

Cobb school board chairman Randy Scamihorn said "discussions haven't begun" about choosing which elementary schools will be rebuilt, and that the process could take as long as two years. 

"Stay involved, stay informed," he told parents. "We want all boats to rise. That's our pledge to you."


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