Each year the Dunwoody City Council identifies items that are legislative priorities in a list given to the city’s local representatives in the General Assembly.

Councilman Terry Nall said although there has been no specific talk about the city of Dunwoody creating its own school system, the idea was added to the list.

“I raised the question because if we ever in the future want to consider having a school system, we’d have to change the constitution to permit the creation of new school systems,” Nall said.

Currently Georgia’s constitution doesn’t allow for the creation of any new school systems in the state. Nall said the idea was added to the list of legislative priorities simply to pave way for discussion of the possibility in the future.

“There has long been conversation in the community about us having our own school system and I trust that conversation has also gone in some of the other small cities as well,” Nall said.

Nall said that since Dunwoody is working well since it became a city and the reason it was founded was based on the premise of local control, it’s not unusual to discuss the creation of its own school system.

“It’s a natural conversation—to talk about local control of schools,” Nall said. “The city limits also mash up very well with the elementary, middle school high school feeder system already in place.”

With Dunwoody being created fairly recently, along with other small cities in the area such as Brookhaven, Nall said it is logical to discuss the possibility of allowing the creations of new school systems.

“We believe that this isn’t just about Dunwoody as a city, this is about every city in the state of Georgia and there are over 500,” Nall said.

Nall said if the constitution is eventually changed to allow cities to establish new school systems, the legislature could still create restrictions such as making them go through an approval process for a charter system.