Grayson, the city, thinks it finally might be about to win a 16-year battle to have Grayson, the high school, have, of all things, a Grayson address. The push to the goal line is being driven, at least in part, by Grayson, the high school football team.
Confused yet? That’s OK. Loganville’s ZIP Code covers part of three counties, and students living in that ZIP Code are zoned for at least seven public high schools. Just look at it as small-town pride, explosive suburban growth and, of course and high school football combined with government red tape.
City officials had to reach out to Congress to get this done. Rep. Rob Woodall, a Republican who represents the state’s Seventh Congressional District, has led the push, city officials said.
Grayson, a bedroom community at the southern end of Gwinnett County, had its own high school until 1957, when the then-tiny school was combined to the sold Snellville High School to make South Gwinnett High School. The old Grayson High School was central to the town’s identity, and its building was slap in the middle of the city.
Fast forward to the start of the 21st Century, and add a few hundred thousand transplants to Gwinnett, and there was need for a new high school in that part of the world. City leaders in Grayson were successful then in having the new school take the Grayson name, but it wasn’t located in Grayson. It was located on a piece of land in unincorporated Gwinnett County between Grayson and Loganville, and it took a Loganville address. In fact, it is more than a mile inside the Loganville 30052 ZIP Code, well away from Grayson’s 30017. City leaders began a push to change that. It was a tougher effort than they expected.
Grayson Mayor Allison Wilkerson said the city’s push began with civic pride of having the school back, but when the school became a football power, that made it more important.
“It is an aggravation to see that on ESPN,” she said of the school being referred to as Loganville’s Grayson High School.
For more than a decade, Grayson has been that good in football. It has won 10 or more games nine times in the past decade, and earlier this month the school won its second state championship in the past five years. It is a recruiting hotbed. The nation’s top overall recruit in 2013 and later NFL first rounder Robert Nkemdiche played there. Those football recruits go on to play on Saturdays, and game announcers identify them as being from a Loganville school too often for Wilkerson’s taste.
But it isn’t just football. It is civic pride, she said. “This effort started 16 years ago when the school opened,” she said.
Now, it is close.
Wilkerson said the next step will be to allow residents who will be impacted to give feedback. She knows anything can happen, but insists that no opposition has surfaced yet. After that, the change would have to be approved by Congress. If that happens, Wilkerson has a symbolic target date to have Grayson High School and its football team inside Grayson’s 30017 ZIP Code.
“I would really like to have this done for kickoff to the 2017 season,” she said. Woodall’s office said the push has been a team effort.
“Everyone involved, from Grayson High School to the USPS, seems to be working hard toward the same common goal, and Rep. Woodall is happy to be a part of the effort,” the office said.
