DeKalb County - Why Bother? Why Care?

Well, here we are again. Back to square one. After fighting and campaigning against the cell tower that our DeKalb County School Board wanted to place at our child’s elementary school, my husband and I learned that our public school system is a lot different than what we expected it would be. After speaking up in an attempt to alert the other communities that were not as fortunate as we were to get our school removed from the list, we learned a lot more about school politics. The more we learn, the more we are forced to see the difference between our hopes and the reality that is DeKalb.

It isn’t really the fault of the community. They are doing the best they can to support our schools, but without children in attendance, how are they supposed to know what type of help the schools might need? In the past, children went door to door selling candy or magazines, with or without parents in tow. It gave neighbors a chance to contribute to a worthy cause, support the children and the neighborhood school and also learn about what was going on inside the school.

Neighbors felt more connected to each other back then. And, children learned some basic lessons about America - offer a good product at a reasonable price to people you know can afford it. Build trust with your customers and your efforts can do amazing things, especially when combined with similar hard work from the others on your team. And, by working extra hard, you might be rewarded personally with prizes and recognition from your peers.

These days, our schools are filled with children that come from all over the county and are more likely to transfer or drop out than they are to graduate. Neighbors who live near our schools may still believe their tax dollars are being directed toward helping the kids from the block, which would in turn help maintain or boost everyone’s property values nearby, including their own. That’s the way things used to work, right? That’s the way it is supposed to work.

I’m sure the Realtors are likely still using their same, worn-out sales pitches to tell potential homebuyers about the test scores and demographics that make up the nearby school as a way to justify the price or quality of “desirable” neighborhoods. I’m less sure they are including the page of information that includes recent trends because there probably are a bunch of arrows going in the wrong direction. The number of students considered at or below poverty level is growing and might soon be the picture we paint when talking about all of our schools if current trends continue.

We all make assumptions about how we think things are working because it might be too heavy of a dose of guilt if we allowed ourselves to see how things are really working. But, that isn’t really our fault, either. You can’t blame people for wanting to think positive, believe in the good nature of others or pray for a miracle. But, then again, when you have a system that is failing children, it is essentially failing all of us, past, present and future.

Failure to meet educational goals is a failure to respect our own history. As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are also disgracing his name. The high school in our own county that is named for the iconic civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. High School, was selected by some unknown criteria to receive a cell tower on school property and the public was not properly notified.

Once we were able to finally get in touch with some people in the community in Lithonia to tell them about what was going on, they were ready to take action. They quickly organized an informational meeting and prepared to invite the community leaders to explain their actions. There was even talk of a peaceful protest, homemade signs, media coverage… but then they decided to cancel the meeting until further notice.

It seems that these days, even peaceful protesting will not get you very far. Just look at the Occupy Atlanta Group. They started out getting a lot of attenton, but when everyone realized that they would not really be making any demands and had no real exit strategy, the group sort of lost its appeal. It's hard to support a team you don't expect to win. It's even harder to protest something when it feels like you have already lost. But, we have been down this road before. And, we have learned that we are not alone. There are a lot of people who feel the same way we do, and our petition has never lost its forward momentum so we know that the more people we tell about what has happened, the more people will be prepared when it happens to them.

“They said it is a done deal,” said on GTCO-ATL member who had hoped to get some answers from the local board. “We are going to keep trying to figure out how this could have happened, but it sounds like it is already a done deal.”

So that leads us to question the future of our county, our schools, our collective dreams about the Atlanta we thought we knew. We were so proud to be a part of a great city that would show the rest of America that it is possible to live side by side with each other, integrating our schools, learning about each other’s cultures, educating and caring for all our children.

We never expected that our schools, of all things, would be the beginning of the downfall of our the prestige and momentum this city was gaining after hosting the Olympics in 1996. We never heard of SPLOST and didn’t know anyone who had ever been foreclosed on, or laid off or “furloughed.”

So, let us know what you think. Is this a fight worth continuing? Is there a way to get our government to pay attention and stop taking advantage of all of us? Is there any hope we can stop fighting among ourselves long enough to see the big picture so we can unite instead?

Do you realize that once a single tower goes up at a school, a door will have been opened for the school board to place any kind of commercial business they want on ACTIVE school property whenever they want? And with the no-zoning laws, they can select any type of business they want, even if it is offensive, dangerous or an eyesore that drags property values down.

They don’t care, but they don’t live here. We do. They don’t care, but it’s not their money. It’s ours and we just keep giving them more. They don’t care; they’re rich. Are you?

As we consider the options before us and we continue to make new friends along the way, we will be asking ourselves the same question we have asked so many time, "What can we do?" I hope that somehow that spirit will be contagious enough that you might ask yourself the same question. And, perhaps together we might be insired and lucky enough at the same time to find something that works!

IMPORTANT: Please urge your neighbors and friends to VOTE NO ON SPLOST IV on November 8, 2011.
Stop funding the projects of the people who did this to us.


Caption 1: Kids at Stone Mountain Playground help tell others about a cell tower coming to their school courtesy of T-mobile, DCSS and something called an "Administrative Permit" that means the public does not have a say in the zoning process and the schools are exempt from regulation.

Caption 2: A very large cell tower mast already functioning in DeKalb County and registered to AT&T. Where is it located? About .25 miles down the road from an elementary school that will also be getting a tower on their property and wi-fi in their classroom if the school board gets its way. The cumulative effects of multiple sources of low-level RF radiation is the subject of controversy as it has not been studied, is barely regulated and is suspected by the World Health Organization to be a possible human carcinigen that can lead to a variety of forms of cancer. It's effects on chilren are unknown but suspected to be more harmful as RF radiation attacks DNA cells and causes damage to them. These are the cells that children are still developing as their systems are not fully developed and are rapidly growing. In addition to cancer, a long list of symptoms are known to degrade the quality of life of those who are forced to live near a cell tower or attend a school that has one.