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End tuition – CSD closes its doors

Decatur

End tuition – CSD closes its doors

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City Schools of Decatur has effectively ended its policy of allowing out-of-district students to pay tuition to enroll.

City spokeswoman Courtney Burnett said the city school system stopped taking all tuition students last year. The year before that, the school system stopped taking students in grades K-5. The system still provides courtesy tuition for children of full time employees of CSD, Superintendent Phyllis Edwards said.

The Board of Education on March 11 set the 2014-2015 out-of-district tuition rates at $5,258. When Decaturish asked CSD staff questions about it, Burnett revealed that the current 122 tuition students will be the last admitted.

CSD decision to close the door to tuition students in the 2013-2014 school year was reported by Atlanta Magazine last March. At the time, Atlanta Magazine described it as a temporary solution to the school system’s burgeoning enrollment.

Burnett said CSD still receives questions from parents interested in enrolling their students.

“We get people calling asking us about it, and we tell them we don’t accept new students paying tuition,” she said.

CSD Finance Director Susan Hurst provided Decaturish with a list of tuition rates over the years. The tuition rates are based upon the school system’s revenues and expenditures:

2003-2004 – $4,650.00

2004-2005 – $5,700.00

2005-2006 – $5,500.00

2006-2007 – $5,750.00

2007-2008 – $6,570.00

2008-2009 – $6,430.00

2009-2010 – $6,080.00

2010-2011 – $5,690.00

2011-2012 – $6,110.00

2012-2013 – $5,480.00

2013-2014 – $5,926.00

Edwards said there were more tuition students when she took over as head of CSD in 2003.

“The schools were very small and even at that, there were not enough children to have any level of efficiency,” she said. “When the enrollment began to grow at rates of 10 to 11 percent annually, I stopped taking paying tuition because of the limited space at the schools.”

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