Racial

makeup is high on the list of criteria for new school

attendance zones recently drawn up by Coweta County Board

of Education officials.

Parents of

students in seven of the county's elementary schools will

now have their shot at telling school board members what

they think.

School

officials unveiled the new attendance zones Tuesday night

at the Coweta County Board of Education meeting and

announced a public hearing would be conducted next

Tuesday at Central Middle School in Newnan at 6 p.m.

Administrators

and school officials are encouraging parents to either

show up at the public hearing or e-mail their feelings to

the school board.

The new

lines reflect the work of a committee set up last spring

to try and solve the problem of redistricting in a

high-growth county, such as Coweta.

Under the

proposal, new district lines were drawn for seven

elementary schools: Atkinson, Elm Street, Jefferson

Parkway, Newnan Crossing, Ruth Hill, Poplar Road and

White Oak.

Director of

operations Doug Bennett said school officials took a

number of criteria into affect, including racial makeup.

"The

system was trying to have individual schools more closely

resemble the overall makeup of the school system,"

he said.

Newnan

Crossing, which was nearly 85 percent minority, will be

34 percent minority under the plan and have 792 students.

White Oak, which had a very small minority population,

now moves to 24 percent minority out of 780 students.

Another

factor school officials used was the growth area

surrounding the individual schools. Bennett said

Jefferson Parkway Elementary is sitting across the street

from Lullwater, which will bring several new families to

the area when it's built out.

Bennett

also is hoping to get feedback from parents on what size

they want the schools to be.

"There

was a time, not too long ago in this school system, that

elementary schools were 400 students. Now, we're looking

at 800 students," he said.

New

attendance maps were posted in all the schools Wednesday

and parents who want to respond by e-mail should send

their comments to [email protected] .