A plan under

consideration by the Fulton County Board of Education could end up creating

a school board district with both Sandy Springs and East Point residents.

The far-flung

district would be Gail Dean's 3rd District and school officials want public

input on the proposal before it is submitted to the General Assembly next

year.

Fulton County

school spokesperson Mitzi Edge said the board has narrowed down the redistricting

efforts to one of three choices, including the geographically diverse

proposal.

The ideal district

size for a seven-member board is 61,330. Each district must be within

plus or minus 5 percent of the ideal size. Because of the distribution

of the population, officials said, it is not possible to achieve this

without sharing a district between the north and south part of the school

system.

While the law

states that non-contiguous districts are not allowable, Linda Meggers

of the Reapportionment Office said Fulton's case would be considered an

exception, because the school system boundaries are not contiguous and

therefore a shared district does not violate the intent of the law.

The other proposals

would keep the board at seven members and elect six by district lines

and one at-large. The final proposal would increase the board to a nine-member

panel.

The board decided

Tuesday night to conduct public hearings on the proposals in August and

September before voting on the issue.

Board member

Zenda Bowie already has come out against splitting Dean's district, but

agreed to let the proposal be examined by the voters.

Edge said the

school system is working on getting all three proposals on the system's

Web site, but said interested residents should go ahead and contact their

board members for information.

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