Officials from Atlanta Public Schools and the Atlanta Preservation Center standing side-by-side, taking questions from the public about a chummy historic preservation plan, would have been unimaginable less than two years ago.

That’s when APS, out of the blue, announced a demolition of the highly historic Lakewood Elementary in Lakewood Heights. This is how things typically go in Atlanta: a powerful institution makes a secret decision imposed on a community; residents and advocates protest but are dismissed as naive idealists; and someone (never the planners) lives next door to a fait accompli.

A few things were different with Lakewood and APS’s larger process of surplus property disposal. Even another government entity — the Atlanta Department of City Planning — called foul on the historic destruction. The APC offered not only criticism but free grunt work for a historic preservation classification system led by intern Benjamin Schmidt. APS turned out to be one of those rare institutions genuinely willing to admit error and consider change with some inkling of adherence to its public-service mission.

The result is APS teaming with the City’s brand-new affordable housing organization on community-led, history-preserving remakes of several surplus properties. A historic significance inventory from APC is core to the process’s decision-making.

Thus came that unusual moment on Nov. 2, when APS entered the lion’s den of the APC to explain the new property process and its focus on preservation and affordable housing. Leading the conversation was Daniel Drake, APS’s senior executive director of Facilities Services, with commentary by Schmidt and APC Executive Director David Yoakley Mitchell.

A packed house at the L.P. Grant mansion in Grant Park — APC’s historic headquarters — had plenty of questions about speeding up or refining the process. Such questions reflected how much trust-repairing APS rightfully has to do….