APS BUS BARN PLANS CONCERN COMMUNITY

By Collin Kelley

The transfer of the old Bankhead Court housing project property from the City of Atlanta to Atlanta Public Schools as part of a deal on repayment of deferred taxes from the Atlanta BeltLine left many scratching their heads. Now it has been revealed that APS wants to build a “bus barn” on the site, and community response has been swift.

A petition to block the building of the school bus storage and maintenance facility on the property along Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway has already been created, and Atlanta City Councilmembers Mary Norwood and Felicia Moore are actively working to have the facility moved elsewhere. The facility would house nearly 200 buses and other school vehicles, and residents are concerned about traffic.

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» were demolished in 2011 to make way for a mixed-use development that never materialized. Norwood said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) still has to approve the transfer of land from the city to APS.

Norwood told the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods at its Feb. 11 meeting that she had met with APS Superintendent Meria Carstarphen about building a bus barn on another piece of property. “Dr. Carstarphen is willing to move the bus barn,” Norwood reported, “but there has to be a suitable property that is more efficient about getting the buses into the neighborhoods.”

Norwood said she didn’t believe that buses using I-285 and I-20 to get from the Bankhead property into the city would be any more efficient than the current bus barn facility on Metropolitan Parkway in southwest Atlanta.

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Jessica Guilfoil Killeen, WHNP-BC

The Bankhead Court apartments

Education Briefs

Clark Atlanta University has announced the launch of the Coca-Cola Alumni Matching Challenge, made possible by a $1 million alumni matching grant from The Coca-Cola Foundation. The -Foundation will match, dollar for dollar, any alumni contribution above and beyond a donor’s level of giving for fiscal year 2015 (July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015). The match translates into $2 million in critical resources for the institution as it mobilizes for the future. Alumni around the globe can give online at invest.cau.edu/give-now.

Lindsey A. Nichols, NP-C

Main O ce: Piedmont Hospital Campus 105 Collier Rd NW, Suite 1080 Atlanta, GA 30309 404-352-2850

Satellite O ce: Northside Hospital Campus 960 Johnson Ferry Road, Suite 336 Atlanta, GA 30342 404-352-2850 www.mcdanielanddurre .com

Google Expeditions launched its virtual field trip program at Hope Hill Elementary School in the Old Fourth Ward last month. Students can learn about biological species in the Amazon, examine marine life in the Great Barrier Reef, explore the American Revolution in Great Britain, navigate the branches of government in Washington D.C. and peer into the dawn of modern Europe from Athens.

The Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School Golden Bears came up golden in the 2016 Regional Georgia Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, winning 30 honors—the most in school history for this prestigious competition. Gold Key winners advance to the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards national competition. Libby Bulley received two golds and one silver; Sarah Catherine Conklin took a gold and two silvers; Spicer Lear was awarded three silvers; and Emily Ann Betts won a gold, a silver and an honorable mention. Other winners were: Caroline Barber, Katie Brown, Emilee Hagerman, Cameron Jackson, Sydney Kaufmann, Ellie King, Sarah Langford, Reilly McClain, Sarah Porter, Grace Sanders, Annie Strickland and Kate Wray.

Students from Greater Atlanta Christian School were chosen for the All State Chorus in Athens last month. Selected were freshmen Gavin McDonnell and Ethan McDonnell, sophomore Lacey Shaffer and eighth-grader Madelyn Shaffer.

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