Crabapple Lane in Peachtree

City is Fayette County's newest elementary school, the shiny and

gleaming model for all other schools yet to come, officials say.

Its 450 students learn in bright

classrooms and walk down spotless hallways, lined with creative and colorful

artwork. They check books out of a state-of-the-art media center that

comes complete with an in-house TV studio where each morning, students

report the day's school news reading from teleprompters.

Nearby, they have access weekly

to a computer lab full of Gateway computers and loaded with the most current

technology.

When it's time for recess,

they don't just head to the playground, but spend time with certified

phys-ed teachers in the school's comfortable full-size gym with rubber

floor.

As fortunate as they are, the

Crabapple students are learning an important lesson in helping the less

fortunate this holiday season, said Principal Doe Evans.

Through an effort to help improve

classroom instruction at an unnamed school district in South Georgia,

teachers at Crabapple learned of the vast needs of that county's

single elementary school, which enrolls 1,200 students in a facility far

inferior to Fayette County's buildings.

"They went down there

overnight to help these teachers learn to integrate special ed instruction

into their regular classroom lessons," said Evans, who opened Crabapple

on a wing and prayer last August, getting occupancy permits just days

before students arrived.

When it came time to return

to Peachtree City, the Crabapple teachers handed over to their peers lesson

plans they had prepared which included a key element of Fayette County's

curriculum: Send books home with students and have them read, read, read.

But there aren't nearly

enough books to meet the needs of all 1,200 students in this county, the

local teachers were told.

When it came time to brainstorm

the first-ever holiday project for Crabapple's kids, somebody suggested

collecting new books of all sorts and donating them to the community down

south.

The rest, as they say, is history.

As of Monday, about 500 books

had been brought in, and another 1,000 small paperback storybooks had

been donated by Scholastic Press, Evans said.

She hopes to ship the books

to South Georgia sometime before Christmas, with the UPS Store at Kedron

Village already donating the cost to send 10 boxes.

It will take more books and

more boxes if the Crabapple kids are to meet their goal of 1,200 books.

Contributions from the community are welcome.

"We'll continue to

take them as long as people bring them in," Evans said.

If interested in donating to

the Crabapple book project, contact Evans at the school at 770-487-5425

or go online at www.fcboe.org/schoolhp/crabapple/index.htm.