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DeKalb History Center archives includes history on several elementary schools from the county, including Evansdale Elementary on Evans Woods Drive in Doraville. Jim Cherry, Superintendent of DeKalb County Schools from 1947 until 1972 requested a brief history of the schools he supervised and the Evansdale one is included in the archives.
According to the school history of Evansdale Elementary, it opened in September of 1967 with an enrollment of 650. The following year enrollment was 720 and in 1969 enrollment grew to 788.
Improvements reported during the early years include the addition of instructors in Music, Learning Disabilities, Reading, Band and String instrument teachers.
I was there in 1967 when Evansdale opened, but only for a couple of weeks. A group of students from nearby Warren Elementary were moved to Evansdale expecting this to become our new school. My recollection is that Evansdale was immediately overcrowded, and they sent some of us back to Warren.
Since I didn’t attend Evansdale for long, my only memories are that everything was new, and that the cafeteria was better than at Warren. It seems it was only a matter of days or maybe two weeks before we went back to our old school.
During this time when new schools were constantly opened to keep up with Baby Boomers, Pleasantdale Elementary opened in 1968 and I attended 6th and 7th grade there.
Evansdale history reports that the first principal was Robert Dunning, and Phillip A. Bradley took over in 1969. James D. Turpin was principal in 1970. Enrollment increased to 805 students but then began declining and leveled off at 475. The history includes enrollment numbers and basic improvements through the years, ending with enrollment of 287 for the school years 1985-1986.
Evansdale Elementary is located on Evans Woods Drive off Evans Road. The age of homes around Evansdale line up with the opening of the school.
Evans Road existed long before Evansdale and I did find records of the Evans family on ancestry.com. It looks like the Evans and Henderson families are related. According to Vivian Price book “History of DeKalb County 1822-1900,” Greenville Henderson operated a corn and wheat grist mill along the road we now know as Henderson Mill Road. Georgia historic marker for Henderson's Mill
I’d like to know more about these two families, so look for that in a future blog.
The DHC Education files can be found here. The ones in blue are digitized, but you can visit the archive to review the file of a school whose records are not digitized.