Mr. James Wilson of EdPlanners addressed the Coweta County School (CCSS)Board at their June meeting. I discussed his presentation in my last column. One thing that stuck with me, however, was his emphasis on the effects of housing affordability on school system population.

Mr. Wilson made the point that with rising house prices, people who can purchase houses exceeding $300,000 may already have school age children. This results in more children entering the system in higher grades. Superintendent Horton commented that CCSS has its highest middle school population in the current school year. Given that the system has not significantly grown in total population, there must be a deficit in other areas such as elementary schools. 

Unfortunately, unlike other systems such as Fayette, Coweta County Schools does not make historic data readily available. However, given the total population, and the superintendent’s comment, we can extrapolate.

Mr. Wilson’s comment was proven by my recent drive down MacDuff parkway. While I did not slow to count, it seemed to me that the Everton neighborhood graduation banners had as many graduates as Centennial which has been there over twenty years, while Everton has been around less than ten.

However, hearing the “A word” (Affordable) sets off other cautionary alarms. As Mr. Wilson was using ARC (Atlanta Regional Commission) data, we cannot help to acknowledge the ARC’s focus on “affordable housing”.

While Coweta already has a substantial number of apartments clustered around Ashley Park and Fayetteville has built substantial multifamily housing, the question is what is the future of affordable housing in Peachtree City?

In the last round of Peachtree City elections, there was a lot of discussion about affordable housing, where at least one candidate and several groups came out in support of affordable multifamily housing in Peachtree City. Stephanie Wagner send this letter (and others) to the editor, Candidates can keep us on or off track in our planned city | The Citizen

At the time I reminded readers that the challenge with redeveloping existing commercial areas into mixed use (Shopping, Housing, Work) that the school infrastructure is already fixed. Therefore, dropping a population into an area that already exists will stress and may change school zoning. NEWS ANALYSIS: Adding more housing units will put pressure on Peachtree City schools and school zones | The Citizen

For example, McIntosh and Starr’s are over 80%  capacity. ( MHS 88% SMHS 83% based on 2024 data) If a mixed-use development is dropped into Crosstown shopping center, what happens at the two high schools or Booth? For the data above, we can see more market housing would like attract families with “older” students (middle, high school). Now let us ask how many students would be attracted to “affordable” housing in one of Georgia’s best school systems. 

Some will point to the success of the Trillith mixed use area and propose that Peachtree City could use something like that. However, its important to note that three of the four schools closed in 2012 were in that area and Bennet’s Mill Middle school has plenty of seats. 

Some will say that there are no current plans for apartments, without being clear to speak of the future. Realize that apartments and townhouses can both be built with enough density to be affordable for residents and profitable for the developer, 

Voters have the opportunity to get clarity from candidates to hear not only current plans but understand the view of the future.