BREAKING NEWS: Briarlake Elementary - A Community Led Astray?

Signs of the times.  Trees outside Briarlake Elementary School are tagged and ready for chopping.  The outside classroom  bleachers and stage sadly sit in the background.  It, too, will likely be a memory soon as it appers to be in the way of progress, according to the plans drawn up by T-mobile.  Briarlake Elementary and Lakeside High School were the only two schools that reportedly were in favor of cell towers at the time of the July 2011 school board vote.  But, after news spread about the plans, the community stepped up to tell a different story.  It may be too little, too late.  And, there may even be more towers on the way!

One of the most vocal opposition groups to the DeKalb County School Board's decision to place cell towers at 9 schools has come from the Briarlake community. GTCO-ATL was the first group to reach out to them and provide information in an effort to be good neighbors and good citizens helping to spread the word, as several school board members have admitted they did not do a very good job at themselves.

Shortly after our initial meeting, however, the PTA stepped in and decided to plot their own course. Stephanie Byrne is a parent who admits she knew about the proposal back in May, but didn't think it was anything serious enough to warrant telling her neighbors. She was even interviewed by CBS Atlanta way back then since her property backs up to one of the proposed cell tower sites and T-mobile will likely have to buy a portion of her property in order to comply with the county's setback requirements.  She said she followed the story until June when it was postponed and she didn't hear any more about it until after the July vote.

An ominous scene on Nov. 11, 2011.  Cell tower near Briarlake Elementary School and the address for the newly formed Briarlake Foundation which will be accepting money for iPads, despite RF radiation concerns growing worldwide.

While other neighbbors are in a panic to sell, from the looks of all the signs around the school, the Byrne household is only interested in setting out exensive signs opposing the towers and handing out buttons. Maybe that is because Stephanie and Mark Byrne have also been lucky to learn that their property values have somehow been swapped around just in 2011 where the property is valued far higher than the building. That should work in their favor when T-mobile comes knocking. Hopefully they will knock loud since they don't respond well to visual cues like the ones in orange and green all over the landscape that will soon be chopped and shreaded.

Byrne has led the movement to gain publicity and hound the school board even though it has been stated publically multiple times that the contrats are signed and it is a done deal. The school board began talks of cell towers back in the Fall of 2010, according to Paul Womack, school board representative and nearby neigbhor to Byrne. 


GTCO-ATL has recently learned that the timing of initial cell tower talks (Fall 2010 according to a statement by Womack) coincides with the application submitted by a big name construction law firm to file the paperwork for tax-exempt status and set up the Briarlake Elementary School Foundation, which can receive gift donations. Byrne and a fellow Briarlake parent, Michelle Decker, a parent council represenative, are the only ones with their names tied to any of the information that can be found online about this foundation, except the pricey paralegal who filed the paperwork.  With only 22 "likes" on their empty Facebook page, it is difficult to determine how a school of only 400 students has raised more than $4,000 with very little publicity for their efforts. Even more baffling is why they would state that their annual goal is $100K, which rivals that of Lakeside High School's similar foundation, The Valhalla Group, which is in a higher income bracket neighborhood and has more than 1,500 students.

Where Did They Go Wrong?
The questions are many and the answers are few. GTCO-ATL encourages anyone in the Briarlake community sincere about wanting to stop the cell tower to take their own actions rather than waiting for Superman, or anyone else, to do it for them. This is a long-term deal, spanning 30 years, that will be much more difficult to undo once the tower is up than it will be to stop it from going up in the first place.

Wonder if these folks know that the person who voted yes

at the School Board Meeting in July lives directly across

the street.  It would have been easier to walk over and talk

to Paul Womack about the decision than use an expensive

yard sign to send a message, don't you think?  Then again,

maybe they are already acquainted and that's the reason

for the metal fencing around the property, too.

We are not attorneys, but would like to recommend, as we have all along, that the time for speaking up in front of the school board and hoping to be heard has long past. The board has rendered its decision and stated that the contracts are signed. They have been asked to reconsider the vote and have stated many times that a reconsideration will not happen. The issue is now with the county's office of Planning & Sustainability and the Director of Planning's office under CEO Burrell Ellis.

DeKalb County commissioners have stated that T-mobile claims it is exempt from following our county's regulations for proper zoning procedures, but that issue is debatable and has not been decided in a court of law. They have also stated that their power is limited by the FCC ruling of 1996, but we suggest that there is language indicating that local govenment still has some control over the placement and location of towers, especially in residential areas.

Can a school board that is only elected for 4 years and is headed by an Interim Superintendent, sign a contract with little or no community input, for 30-years that will lease public school property that is actively being used for the primary purpose of educating children? And, if so, should they disclose the terms of the ageeement to the public?

Can they agree to allow some or all of the money to be directed toward individual PTAs or private foundations being led by PTA board members who also state they are against the cell tower and that they formed a resolution to official declare thier opposition?

And, most importantly, does the exemption to zoning regulations that is provided to the school system automatically apply to a commercial entity (and not even an American-based company at that), not at all related to education or providing any educational value, so that it may also enjoy the tax exempt status and the lax building approval process that the county gives its own school system?


Too Little, Too Late
At GTCO-ATL, we know what we would do. And, we are quite surprised to see how easily a community can be led astray without questioning the intentions of the people stepping in to help, the funding by which they are doing so, and the steps they are advocating in order to bring about a change.

Thowing out the Trash, alongside the SPLOST.  Briarlake's PTA also advocated

for SPLOST despite their "outrage" over the school board's recent decisions.

Henderson Middle and Lakeside High School are their feeder schools.  Henderson

is slated for SPLOST IV dollars while Lakeside is under construction with

SPLOST III.  What the SPLOST couldn't pay for, they hope cell towers will.

The Briarlake Elementary School Foundation has a new website www.briarlakefoundation.org/ that states "iPad technology" is one of the reasons it is rasing funds. Someone needs to tell Byrne and Decker to do a little more reseach about the real reasons true opposition groups have formed against the cell towers - RF Radiation has been upgraded by the World Health Organization to class 2b, possible human carcinigin. And, children are the most vulnerable population to this form of microwave radiation. If the iPads will be connecting wirelessly to the Internet, then they will add even more radiation to the classrooms that will already be seated under a massive 4G cell tower in a neighborhood that some can say is already drowning in a sea of radiation.

The community website Nobriarlaketower.org is now listed as an LLC. And, the organizers are not returning our calls. The site is updated on a regular basis, but has no mention of the activity at the cell tower site and only suggests the community do more of the same - which has so far resulted in nothing more than a lot of attention that could have been spent alerting the other 8 schools rather than just listening to the outcry from one.

And, we continue to wonder if the entire education system is so badly broken here in DeKalb that no one remembers to think about the most important thing at the bottom of all this mess - the children.  If anyone bothered to ask them, what do you think they would say?