Board of Education Resource Guide & Surplus Decision Support

The county tax parcel number, such as 15 032 06 001. One parcel is one piece of land with one tax record. DIPADS maps the 200 parcels on the Board's property list, plus 10 more the district uses whose county owner of record is a different name (see Ownership), plus seven school sites on land the Board doesn't own. Where more than one district site sits on the same parcel, the card lists the others under “Also on this parcel”.

The land area of that one tax parcel, from the county record. The “Acres owned” total in the top bar is the sum of parcel acres.

The acreage the district records for the whole campus or site. Parcel acres and site acres come from two separate records, so they don't always line up:

• Site larger than the parcel: the campus covers several parcels. Cedar Grove HS is a 25.56-acre site, and the parcel under the school building is 10.57 acres.
• Site smaller than the parcel: the parcel also holds land outside the campus. The Cedar Grove MS parcel is 59.5 acres, but the school's own site is 48.73. The strategy matrix places the Environmental Studies Center on the same parcel.
• Small gaps on the same land: the county and the district measured differently. Indian Creek ES is 15.56 acres on the county record and 14.69 in the district's site record, but the district's drawn boundary measures 15.3 acres, the same as the county's parcel outline. The 14.69 is a stored figure that doesn't match the district's own drawing.

For 114 of the 147 sites, the two agree.

The zoning district on the county record, such as R-100 (single-family residential) or C-1 (local commercial). 59 parcels have no zoning on the county record. For surplus sites, DIPADS then shows the zoning listed in the strategy matrix. Parcels inside a city follow that city's zoning, which may not match.

The total appraised value on the county tax record. School property is tax-exempt, so the county has little reason to keep this current. Treat it as a rough reference, not a market value.

The year and price of the last recorded sale of the parcel, which is usually when the Board bought it. 156 parcels have a date. Most recorded prices (131 of 147) are under $1,000, which usually means the land was transferred or donated rather than bought at market price.

Which of the seven Board of Education districts (2022 boundaries) the parcel falls in, and the member who represents it.

The city the parcel is in, or “Unincorporated DeKalb”.

The high school attendance area the site sits in.

Elementary, middle and high schools follow the school type on the facility record. Charter schools are those run by a non-DCSD operator or in the Charter cluster. Bus depots are sites with “Transportation” in the name. Athletics are stadium sites. Land (no building) is a parcel with no site or with a vacant site that has no facility. Everything else is Admin & support or Other schools & centers.

Surplus sites are linked to parcels by the parcel number in the matrix. Where a surplus site spans several vacant parcels, all of them are marked.

Board list parcels are on the Board's property list, which includes only parcels the county lists under the exact owner name “DEKALB BOARD OF EDUCATION”. District, not on list parcels are used by the district but recorded under another name: “DeKalb County Board of Education” (Dunwoody ES, Princeton ES, Parklake Administrative Facility, part of Sequoyah MS), “DeKalb County School District” (part of the Chamblee HS campus), or an association. Their cards show the owner of record. Chamblee HS (Georgia Municipal Association) and Flat Rock ES (Georgia School Boards Association) carry a Title check flag: the association may hold title under a lease-purchase financing arrangement, which should be confirmed.

Not Board-owned sites are seven schools the district includes in its site map even though the land belongs to someone else: six charter schools (PATH Academy, Leadership Prep, D.A.T.E., Tapestry, and Globe Academy's two campuses) and one private program (UHS at Laurel Heights). The district plans around them because their students are DeKalb public-school students.

They are shown in their own color with a clear “Not owned by the Board” banner. They are never counted in Board parcels, acres owned or surplus totals, and they have no county appraisal or sale data.

The parcel has no building on it. That means no site record, a site marked “Vacant”, or a county tax class for land without improvements. A vacant parcel can still be part of a working campus, such as a ball field next to a school.

On the map, a vacant property has a white rim. Every other property has a rim in a darker shade of its own color (25 points darker, so very dark colors bottom out at black).

Whether a football stadium is on the property, with its approximate seating and which schools play home games there. The district runs five stadiums that host most high school home games:

• James R. Hallford Stadium: about 15,000 seats (Wikipedia; no district figure).
• William “Buck” Godfrey Stadium: 8,500 (district facility-rental listing).
• North DeKalb Stadium: 6,500 (AJC, Oct 2026). It isn't on the Board's parcel list, so it appears as its own site.
• Adams Stadium: about 6,500 (low reliability). It sits on the Former Briarcliff High surplus parcel.
• Napoleon B. Cobb Stadium (formerly Avondale): about 6,500 (low reliability).

Coming soon: Seacrest Stadium at Dunwoody HS, about 3,000 seats after expansion, planned to open August 2027. It counts only when “Coming soon/tentative included” is set to Yes. As of October 2026, no other DCSD high school has its own stadium.

Anyone signed in with their own name can keep one note per property, shared with just themselves, with Diana, or with Diana and the Board. Hovering shows saved notes; pin a property to add, edit, remove or share. The Notes filter finds sites with notes by me or shared with me.

Fields the administrator adds under ADMIN → Manage Data → Additional Data. Each one gets a filter that matches its type: free text gets a “contains” search box, select text gets one pill per choice, number gets a minimum–maximum range (with its prefix and suffix, such as $ or ac), and date gets from–to date pickers.

Students enrolled at the school in the October 2025 count. 117 parcels have a matching school on the Planning pages.

How many students the building is designed to hold. DIPADS uses the Planning website figure, or the GIS facility figure when the website doesn't list the school.

Enrollment divided by capacity. 100% means the building is exactly full. DIPADS calculates it from the Planning website's October 2025 numbers. If those are missing, it falls back to the utilization on the district's facility record.

How many seats the school is under capacity (open) or over capacity (over), from the 2025 consolidation metrics. The label switches to “over” for schools the district rates as over-capacity.

The Facility Condition Assessment score: how sound the building and its systems are, as a percentage. Higher is better. A recently built school scores in the 90s.

The Educational Suitability score: how well the building supports teaching today (classroom sizes, labs, layout and so on), as a percentage. Higher is better. A building can be in good condition but poorly suited, or the reverse.

The year the main building was built, from the facility record.

Any special program at the school (magnet, IB, theme and so on) and the high school cluster it feeds into.

The group the site is marketed with:

Premier: high competition, high value, high scrutiny. Commercial: on a commercial corridor with commercial potential. Specialty Repurpose: a school building with limited other uses. Residential Land: land in residential neighborhoods. Redevelopment: raw land to be repurposed.

A: sealed bid, a defined competitive process. B: listing with a licensed broker or marketing agent. C: transfer to another school system, a local charter school or a government agency. D: auction, which is faster but not likely to bring the highest value. A ↔ B: the two in sequence. Bidding gives broad exposure and a firm deadline, and a broker handles negotiation if bidding falls short.

When the site should go to market and in which wave, plus any trigger to switch methods.

Current notes are the working team's latest observations. District notes are the district's earlier notes on the site.

What could complicate a sale, such as scrutiny, deed or legal restrictions, site condition or community interest.

The reasoning behind the chosen method, the likely buyer types, and how the site will be marketed.

The matrix's detailed factor columns, shown only where the matrix has an entry:

• Engagement: whether the board member, county commissioner and city council have been engaged.
• Financial: appraisal, broker opinion, asking price, cost to sell and offers.
• Opportunity: unsolicited, solicited, intragovernmental or other interest.
• Decision timing: urgency, ideal timeline, deadline and expected time to sell.
• Purpose: cost to hold, need for funds, public pressure and strategic plan.
• Challenges: public scrutiny, site condition, legal issues and market conditions.

The most serious FEMA flood zone that covers at least 1% of the parcel. Smaller slivers are usually just where a zone edge meets the parcel line.

• Floodway: the stream channel and the land next to it that has to stay open to carry floodwater. New buildings and fill are mostly not allowed there.
• 100-yr flood: land with a 1% chance of flooding in any year (FEMA zones A and AE). Federally backed mortgages need flood insurance, and the county has extra building rules.
• 500-yr only: land with a 0.2% chance in any year, outside the 100-year floodplain.
• Outside: none of these.

How much of the parcel lies in each zone. The 100-year share includes any floodway, so a parcel that is 30% floodway and 50% 100-year has 20% in the 100-year floodplain outside the floodway. The card also shows the 500-year-only share. DIPADS works these out by laying the parcel outline over FEMA's maps, so treat them as estimates within a few points. The outlines are simplified, and one site (Tucker HS) has no outline, so its zone is taken at its map point.

The Flood Insurance Rate Map panel that covers the property, with its effective date. Use it to look up the official map at FEMA's Map Service Center or with the county's Floodplain Management Office (404-297-4518).

FEMA's flood zones drawn over the district shading and under the property symbols: red stripes for the floodway, blue for the 100-year floodplain and orange for the 500-year floodplain. DIPADS loads the zone outlines from FEMA the first time you turn the layer on (a few seconds) and draws them itself, so they show at every zoom level. Edges are simplified to about 10 meters, so check FEMA's official map for exact lines. It loads on the Cloudflare site; the version inside Claude can't load outside map images, but the card figures and filters work there.