Dear City Schools of Decatur Board of Education,

We are parents, educators, and concerned community members who have closely followed the discussion about an Early Childhood Learning Center being proposed on what the displaced Black Beacon Hill elders call “sacred ground” at 346 W. Trinity Pl.

The City of Decatur has recognized this property as a “traditional cultural place” that deserves historic preservation and it was recently named an historic district. This is the first and only area in the city to recognize and honor the Black residents of Decatur whose community was desecrated and destroyed by racist policies of urban renewal.

The City of Decatur has recognized that our community must take action to make reparations for historic wrongs to the Beacon Hill community. We have a moral obligation to end this historic pattern of displacement and preserve this land. We believe CSD already has the capacity to meet our community’s early learning needs without a new building. Multiple feasible alternatives should be examined, to allow for the preservation of this sacred ground.

We request CSD consider in detail the following proposals to meet the immediate needs of families for early childhood learning:

1. Create an additional classroom at College Heights;
2. Going forward, designate and prioritize DHA families for more 0-3 slots at College Heights using already existing scholarship money;
3. Fund the remodeling of the Frazier Center;
4. Fund a remodel or expansion of College Heights;
5. Prioritize city of Decatur residents, especially, at DHA for Frazier Center slots;
6. Fund on-site early childhood learning at DHA;
7. Consider the facility needs at other locations in the district that deserve consideration as capital priorities such as improvements at DHS.

We still don’t know how many kids CSD is seeking to serve. The foundation of analyzing each of these proposals is making public all relevant data regarding the waitlist which shows unmet needs of early childhood learning in the City. CSD has asserted legal privileges which have prevented the public from assessing the basic need. It’s past time to restore transparency and trust, by disclosing this fundamental data which forms the basis for all decisions.

CSD should convene a community-based process that incorporates working groups from various interests in the City to evaluate options to meet CSD’s early childhood learning needs without sacrificing our historic resources. This process should resemble the processes undertaken for evaluating Pre-K need, already underway, or the process initiated regarding school closures.

The staff presentation for the September board meeting does not consider in detail any alternative sites for meeting CSD’s early learning needs, instead merely making reference to DHS as a possible location. We need a thorough and comprehensive alternatives analysis to restore credibility in this process.