A provisional fall 2027 rezoning plan for Glynn County elementary schools has polarized parents, some of whom worry about the consequences of the changes that would stop sending low income students from the mainland to affluent schools on St. Simons Island.
Superintendent Scott Spence, a 30-year public school veteran who spearheaded the redistricting proposal, says changes are needed due to population shifts in the northern part of the county and to fill New Glyndale Elementary, a school built by funds created by the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax IV passed in 2020.
The new school provides opportunity for younger children to attend classes closer to home, according to Spence, but as a result other schools in the district will need to readjust their student body population.
The proposal was approved by a committee that Spence stood up earlier this year, but needs to be voted on by the elected school board. Key details remain unknown, such as precise maps about which neighborhood blocks will be included in the redistricting. Meanwhile, community members have flocked to public meetings to express their concerns, especially about the fate of St. Simons Elementary, which is a location where Brunswick students have been sent to for decades.
Spence, who is retiring at the end of the school year, tried to explain the rationale for the change at one recent public meeting filled with emotional and angry parents.
“Our committee as a whole unanimously felt that we wanted to see our elementary school students go to school closer to home. We felt that it was important for those students and their parents to be able to get to the school,” said Spence.
The school board could take up discussions on the plan as early as December and, in the meantime, parents whose children will bear the consequences of the changes are engaged in deep conversations.
Island transportation logistics
Dominique Mack, a consultant and full-time senior manager for Partnership for Southern Equity, has a daughter in the third grade. As someone who attended Glynn County schools until she was 14, Mack has a depth of personal experience about the costs and benefits of busing Brunswick inner city kids like she once was to St. Simons.
As a girl, Mack traveled an hour each way from Gordon Arms, a public housing complex, to Oglethorpe Point Elementary on the island. She remembers those two years as harrowing.
“I was a Black child from who was who experienced a lot of poverty, and I felt very alone, and I struggled with a lot of internalized racism going to that school, and I spent many years after the fact, struggling with how I talked, how I interacted with other people, and although I started to thrive later on, I had some significant challenges psychologically, emotionally and socially,” said Mack.
The logistics of sending a child so far away to school are a hassle for parents who want to be engaged in their learning and after school lives, she said. As a working parent, she supports having a closer school for her daughter, even as she has some concerns about the social environment that a newly rezoned elementary school would bring for her child.
Under the new rezoning plan, her daughter will be sent to the New Glyndale Elementary School. Right now, the demographic split of the area is even among Black, Hispanic and white families, she said. She’s worried that it will become more predominantly white by the time the redistricting takes place in 2027.
“I’m only saying this because my child has attended some other schools where the children were primarily white, and she was not thriving and not doing well. And that is not an anomaly. I also share in that same experience,” said Mack. “When I say not thriving, I mean she was being picked on for her behavior…more so than other children in the class, when her class makeup used to look like she was the only black child in her class, or there was only one other black child in her class.”
The current school districting structure (map at end of story) allows students from downtown Brunswick living south of Gloucester Street to attend St. Simons Elementary. The proposed changes would place those children instead at Burroughs-Molette Elementary, where the student population is already 81% Black and 78% from an economically disadvantaged background, according to state data.
St. Simons Elementary, meanwhile, could lose its Title I status, which mandates that 40% of the school’s population must fall below the poverty line to receive federal funds for benefits like free or reduced school lunches. Since the start of the school year, all county public schools offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students.
Brunswick has a median household income of $29,781, the population is predominantly Black and poverty rate is 30.8% St. Simons Island, meanwhile, has a median household income of $99,432, is predominantly white and it boasts a 4.6% poverty rate.
Some Brunswick students now go to St. Simons or Oglethorpe Point elementary schools.
Proposed new districts would move these Brunswick children to Burroughs Molette.
Parent discontent with the plan
At the public meeting at St. Simons Elementary, parents like Catherine Martin had nothing good to say about the redistricting plan.
Martin is a restaurant manager at King City Kitchen and moved to Brunswick in 2012 from Alaska, showed up to the meeting. She said the St. Simons school’s culture of academic achievement and high test scores status makes it a better place for children from lower income families rather than transferring them to Burroughs-Molette, she said.
“It is not going to give them an opportunity. And let me make it clear that this does not affect me. It does not affect me in the slightest bit. It affects the future, and that’s what pisses me off,” said Martin.
Spence countered such arguments by reminding residents that Burroughs-Molette used to have the same status that St. Simons Elementary now boasts. He said that socioeconomic status, rather than race or teacher experience levels, is the factor that affects lower standardized test scores.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, which began in 1982, recognizes public and private elementary, middle and high schools for their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among different student subgroups. Each year, up to 420 schools may be nominated.
To address the underlying factors for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, Spence said the district is considering adding more administrators and counselors and paying teachers an extra stipend for working at schools with that student body profile.
Martin, whose two children are a sophomore at Glynn Academy and a kindergartener at St Simon’s Elementary, left the public meeting dismayed by the answers the school superintendent gave. Although Martin lives in northern Glynn County near Altama Elementary, her child attending St. Simons Elementary would be able to retain her place there, should the redistricting get approved.
“He did not answer a single question,” she said, referring to Spence. Martin accused the superintendent of ignoring the opponents and leaving her thinking that she doesn’t have a voice in the process. “When we got into percentages and the parent’s concerns about if he thought about the dynamic, or if he thought about the impacts, he said no, he didn’t think about it,” she said. “A majority of these people in this room don’t have a voice. They weren’t asked. They don’t matter, because they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.”
Who is making the decisions?
Eight community members, chosen by Spence himself, have worked on the proposed rezoning. The committee includes Brunswick City Commissioner Kendra Rolle, Bobby Henderson, Andy Jones, Joe Willie Sousa, Scott Ryfun, John Williams and Keith Reddings. The group was tapped in December 2023 and has been working on an elementary school rezone plan since February of this year.
“I took a lot of time and just didn’t choose people that I know. I didn’t choose my friends. I chose some people that I really don’t like because I wanted to hear their opinion. I wanted to hear what they had to say,” Spence told attendees at the public meeting.
Mack was vocal in her dissatisfaction with Spence deciding to leave who was on the board up to his sole discretion.
“I don’t think you should be hand picking anybody. I think that you should go through a process. If you say you’re gonna put together a task force to make decisions,” said Mack.
Before the final proposal is reached and presented to the school board, Spence has committed to holding another public forum at one of the high schools.
Spence expects the school board to possibly vote on the redistricting by January, he said. His plan is to start rezoning for elementary schools first, then follow up with middle and high school rezoning plans.
Annette Belt, a retired post office worker and lifelong resident of Glynn County has three grandchildren, one of whom attends St.Simons Elementary and two at Glynn Middle, as well as a child at Glynn Academy.
She says she understands the potential stigma for children who get bussed to St. Simons because of poverty. But she says that guardians like her have always been there to help those children get by and survive.
“I’ve been associated with this school for long enough to know that if there’s kids in need, that need clothes or shoes or something, the parents here, we all gather together and we try to input that. I don’t have a huge income at all, but I would give anything to help any of the community of our little school”, said Belt.
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