Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has turned an embarrassing demolition debate into a long-term historic preservation system that other government agencies would be wise to imitate.

A year after controversially proposing the demolition of Lakewood Elementary School, APS has partnered with one of the main critics of that idea — the Atlanta Preservation Center (APC) – on an inventory of the district’s historic properties and a rubric for scoring which to save and how. Expected to be adopted as part of a strategic plan update later this year, the inventory could be a precedent for other government agencies to follow.

The “Atlanta Public Schools Historic Inventory” also gets APS back on track as a district known for seeing shuttered schools renovated in acclaimed preservation projects, which made the Lakewood decision all the more puzzling. Stan Sugarman, the developer who led the highly praised transformation of the former Adair Elementary into Academy Lofts, calls the inventory “great news.”

“APS is an important owner of historically important buildings,” said Sugarman. “They reflect the demographic and societal changes that have been shaping Atlanta for 100-plus years. [The inventory] is an important first step in developing a vision for these buildings as they no longer fit APS needs to become community centers in new ways, whether commercial hubs or residential units.”

The inventory was put together by Ben Schmidt, a Georgia State University (GSU) grad student interning at APC, whose research uncovered such gems as Lakewood Elementary’s ties to one of the most significant labor-union strikes in U.S. history. He presented it to APS officials on May 10. He said situations like the Lakewood demolition proposal partly involve questions of equity, as APS was quicker to seek…