The Meade of Avalon

Below is a letter sent by residents of the Cool Springs area development “The Meade of Avalon” to Williamson County School Board members regarding the controversial WCS rezoning:

“November 2, 2010

Dear Williamson County Board Member:

We understand the school board faces difficult decisions with the pending rezoning of the Williamson County Schools. However, we urgently request that you reconsider the rezoning of our neighborhood The Meade of Avalon away from Ravenwood High School.

We have used two independent sources to map a 1-mile-radius from the middle of the Ravenwood school building as well as its driveway entrance. As you can see from the attached map, the Meade of Avalon falls within the 1 mile zone. We have used the Williamson County: Franklin and Brentwood, Tennessee Street Atlas published by NorthernStar ISBN 978-1-59862-197-6. We also used Google Map’s application at http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm .

We do not understand how the WCS proposal map puts us outside the 1-mile-radius protection zone. The distance from the southern entrance to the intersection of McEwen & Wilson Pike is 1.1 miles. Clearly, our neighborhood lies within 1 mile of the school.

The proposal has set a point somewhere to the north of the school property as the center of the “safety zone.” We request that the Board act with transparency and fairness in the mapping process. We request that an unbiased center-point be chosen for every high school’s safety zone. We recommend that the school building itself be the center point of the circle. Alternatively, we suggest that the safety zone should not include the school property itself, but rather start on the property’s perimeter. Either option is a fair measure of a true 1-mile-radius.

We respectfully request that a revised plan be created that truly places proximity to the school as a top priority. Proximity was a top priority request from the parent meetings that were held at the very beginning of the process. Neither the Sept. 17 Edulog nor the Sept. 27 Central Office plans for which the public provided feedback called for zoning The Meade of Avalon away from Ravenwood High School. During the Sept. 23 Q&A at Centennial High, Dr. Looney specifically said rezoning The Meade of Avalon would not make sense because of our proximity to Ravenwood High School. To see the current rezoning plan is disheartening.

Our parents and residents are also concerned about the safety of McEwen Drive. In their board minutes, the Franklin aldermen know the road, even with recent repairs, to be “substandard,” not meeting the city’s tough standards. It “will be a major project to fix the road properly.” It has already begun to deteriorate again, noticeably after the May floods. The section our students will be traveling is slated to go under a $17 million construction upgrade from 2011-2014. Undoubtedly the construction will make the road even more treacherous, particularly for buses and young drivers in the immediate future. In the spirit of keeping “students safe,” we ask if it is a responsible decision to route our students from a school as close to us as Ravenwood across such a dangerous roadway.

We point out these concerns as top, urgent priorities. Others include concern over the double-split feeder pattern for our neighborhood. We are a relatively small community compared to others in the county and have been given little opportunity to provide feedback on this new proposal that will affect us. We ask to be treated fairly, with our students’ safety as a top priority.

We would also like to point out that we are an independent neighborhood with our own homeowners’ association and property management team. We have no official association with the Avalon subdivision located to our west. In fact, our closest neighbors live in Inglehame Farms.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Concerned residents of The Meade of Avalon

Enclosures:
2 maps of the Ravenwood High School 1-mile-radius

Sources:

City of Franklin website www.franklin-gov.com–
BOMA 2010-2014 CIP Project Summary & Priority Ranking, 12/22/2009
Minutes of the Work Session, Board of Mayor and Aldermen, 7/27/2010
Meeting Minutes, Capital Investment Committee, 2/12/2009

Free Map Tools, Ravenwood High School, Brentwood, TN, Google Maps,

http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm

Williamson County: Franklin and Brentwood, Tennessee Street Atlas, NorthernStar, ISBN 978-1-59862-197-6″

Radius of Ravenwood High School to Meade of Avalon