Dougherty County may be lone GNETS holdout

ALBANY — The Dougherty County School System may be the lone holdout in the ongoing saga between the district and the Georgia Board of Education, which last month targeted eight GNETS centers, including the Oak Tree Center at the Sylvandale Complex, for closure by today because of “unsafe” conditions.

State School Board Chair Mike Royal said Tuesday that six of the eight — Cedarwood in Appling and Toombs County; Coastal Academy in Glynn County; Horizon Academy in Tifton; Oconee in Baldwin County; Sand Hill in McDuffie County, and Woodall in Muscogee County — have agreed to move students in the GNETS program elsewhere. Burwood in Carrollton City was being inspected Tuesday.

Burwood, Royal said, had major structural problems, including cracks in the building’s foundation. He said he expected Burwood would move its students. That would leave little wiggle room for Dougherty County as the lone holdout.

Oak Tree is a GNETS (Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support) center and houses 24 programs that support the local school systems’ continuum of services for students ages 3-21 with disabilities. The programs provide comprehensive educational and therapeutic support services to students who might otherwise require residential or other more restrictive placements because of the severity of one or more of the characteristics of the disability category of emotional and behavioral disorders.

The local center provides services for 51 students from a five-county area. Complicating matters is Dougherty County’s Pre-K program, which serves 264 4-year-old pupils, in the other wing of the complex.

Over the weekend, the DCSS brought in an independent architect and structural engineer who inspected the building and deemed the facility structurally sound and not a danger to the lives, health or well-being of students, faculty or staff.

The results of the local inspection were sent to DECAL (Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning), which oversees the state’s Pre-K programs, and to the Georgia Department of Education.

On Monday the DCSS received a response from DECA Assistant Commissioner Susan Adams.

“I appreciate your system’s quick response to the inquiry regarding the facility structure, safety and maintenance,” Adams wrote. “Thank you for submitting the review letters to our department. It is my understanding that Dougherty County Pre-K will begin school tomorrow (today) at the Sylvandale location. Our agency would like to be in communication regarding the ongoing repairs and maintenance at the Sylvandale location and/ or the relocation plan of the students to a new facility. Please let me know how our agency can support this plan.”

Reached today for comment, Royal said he had not seen the DCSS documents because of his daughter’s graduation.

“I haven’t had a chance to review the documents or talk to (Georgia School Board Facilities Director) Mike Roland, who is at the inspection site at Burwood,” Royal said. “We’ll get together and talk, and I’ll make some phone calls and we’ll see where we go from there.”

On Saturday, Dougherty School Superintendent Butch Mosely said it was likely the system was looking at the prospect of moving 305 students from Sylvandale.

“We want some time to come up with a plan and not go off half-cocked,” Mosely said. “We will come up with a plan, but we want it to be our plan.”