Fayette County School System is a public

school district A school district is a special-purpose district that operates local public Primary school, primary or Secondary school, secondary schools or both in various countries. It is not to be confused with an attendance zone, which is within a school dis ...

based in

Fayetteville, Georgia Fayetteville ( ; locally ) is a city in and the county seat of Fayette County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 18,957, up from 15,945 at the 2010 census. Fayetteville is located south of downtown ...

, United States and covering residents of Fayette County. The county is included in the

Atlanta metropolitan area Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell metropolitan statistical area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the sixt ...

. The school system serves all of Fayette County. Residents elect a five-member school board to set policy and hire a superintendent of schools. Until May 2013, school board members were elected

at-large At large (''before a noun'': at-large) is a description for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent a whole membership or population (notably a city, county, state, province, nation, club or association), rather tha ...

in the county; this jurisdiction was one of only 20 remaining among the 180 school districts in the state to elect board members by an exclusively at-large process. After trying to persuade the county board of commissioners to change the system, a coalition of residents, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, filed suit against the county and school board for violation of the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights move ...

, asserting that the county system diluted the voting power of the significant minority of

African Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...

, who today comprise 20% of the county population. They had been prevented by this system (and

disenfranchisement Disfranchisement, also disenfranchisement (which has become more common since 1982) or voter disqualification, is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing someo ...

prior to 1965) from ever electing a candidate of their choice to the board or county council in 191 years. As a result of ''Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, et al. v. Fayette County Board of Commissioners, et al.'' (2013), the federal court ordered the county on May 22, 2013 to change its electoral system for the County Council and the County School Board to single-member districts, in order to correct and prevent such dilution of voting power. The court's ruling required "the Board of Commissioners and Board of Education to develop a district-based remedial plan that contains at least one district in which black voters comprise a majority of the voting-age population by June 25, 2013."ABS Staff, "Fayette County at-large election process violates the Voting Rights Act"
''Atlanta Black Star,'' 22 May 2013, accessed 11 April 2015 In August 2014, the ''

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' (''AJC'') is an American daily newspaper based in metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger ...

'' reported that superintendent Joseph Barrow Jr. created a tax-payer funded position to pay his wife $75,000 per year through the Fayette County School System. Despite concerns of nepotism raised by at least one member of the board of education and many teachers in the district, the district followed through with the plan.

Elementary schools

*Braelinn Elementary *Robert J. Burch Elementary *Cleveland Elementary *Crabapple (Lane) Elementary *Fayetteville Elementary *Huddleston Elementary *Inman Road Elementary *Kedron Elementary *Sara Harp Minter Elementary *North Fayette Elementary *Oak Grove Elementary *Peachtree City Elementary *Peeples Elementary *Spring Hill Elementary

Middle schools

*Flat Rock Middle School *J.C. Booth Middle School *Whitewater Middle School *Bennett's Mill Middle School *Rising Starr Middle School *Utopian Academy for the Arts at Trilith

High schools

*Fayette County Open Campus * Fayette County High School * McIntosh High School * Sandy Creek High School * Starr's Mill High School * Whitewater High School

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.fcboe.org/ School districts in Georgia (U.S. state) Education in Fayette County, Georgia History of voting rights in the United States