Why Isn't Decatur at a Better Rate? (Huntsville, Madison: 2014, elementary schools)

[SouthernBoy205]

Before all of you start buzzing your negative comments, I want to know why isn't Decatur growing at a nice rate? Traveling along I-65 in Decatur seems a little rural for a city of just shy of 60,000 residents. In onther words, in my opinion, Decatur 's growth seems to contrast with Huntsville's growth! What is holding Decatur back?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by KE111691

Before all of you start buzzing your negative comments, I want to know why isn't Decatur growing at a nice rate? Traveling along I-65 in Decatur seems a little rural for a city of just shy of 60,000 residents. In onther words, in my opinion, Decatur 's growth seems to contrast with Huntsville's growth! What is holding Decatur back?

My 10 second guess is no Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park and the associated jobs in it's backyard. If you work at Redstone or in Cummings, why live in Decatur when you can live in Huntsville or Madison?

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by KE111691

<snip>... I want to know why isn't Decatur growing at a nice rate? Traveling along I-65 in Decatur seems a little rural for a city of just shy of 60,000 residents. ...<snip>... What is holding Decatur back?

Perhaps because Decatur is NOT located on I-65?

[Southlander]

Well, SOME of Decatur is on I-65, but it's a rather rural area. Get off the interstate and you'll find the rest of Decatur.
Also, Charles, Decatur has its own industrial base. Here's a sampling: http://www.mceda.org/default.aspx?id=47 (broken link) and http://www.mceda.org/default.aspx?id=46 (broken link) . Most Decatur residents don't work in Huntsville. Some do, yes, but a very small percentage.

What's holding Decatur back is our schools. We have had a heavy influx of Latinos over the past 10 years - legal and illegal. Most of the children come into the school knowing NO English. Just in the past couple of years are the teen-agers actually staying in high school long enough to graduate. We have a couple of elementary schools where English is spoken as a native language by less than 20% of the student body. So, you have teachers having to teach the kids English before they can even begin to teach reading, writing, arithmetic and all the other stuff that schools have to teach now.

The fact that we are still under an integration court order more severe than Huntsville's does NOT help. We can't build a school or change school attendance zones without federal court approval...and they take years to approve or deny anything. So you'd better choose your residence location carefully, to get into the right schools. Of course, that's true everywhere.

It wasn't always like this. Our schools used to be rated second only to Mountain Brook's.