BOE discusses future of school facilities to accommodate growth

During its November work session, the Vestavia Hills Board of Education discussed the future of the school system, and addressed some raised eyebrows about the possible options.

With projections indicating that the system will be seeing close to 8,500 students in 20 years, Superintendent Sheila Phillips and board president Mark Hogewood wanted the board and public to understand why there is a sense of urgency.

At the work session, Phillips presented several options for how to handle growth and the facilities that are already reporting overcrowding, while planning for sustainability while making renovation and addition plans.

However, she reiterated that these were only possibilities, and that no decisions would be made without obtaining as much feedback and research as possible.

“The most important thing is to gather as much information as we can,” Phillips said. 

In the weeks of late October and early November, Phillips held multiple public forums to discuss facilities issues with parents and community members.

At the work session, Phillips presented current enrollment numbers and compared those to some of the possible renovation options to the current school facilities, including how those renovations would impact classroom numbers, parking and carpool congestion and other things that may change with different enrollments. Some schools, such as Vestavia Hills Elementary Central and Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights, are so land-locked that Phillips said renovating the current spaces would not necessarily alleviate all of the issues. In fact, she said, in some cases simply adding classrooms can even add strain on things such as parking and cafeteria space.

Phillips said she has also been in talks with officials about hiring a demographer to further study how the enrollment trends might impact future plans.

Phillips said 661 people responded to the parent survey about facilities, with a pretty much even spread of geographic and grade demographics. Phillips said she wanted to look at both the overall concerns, as well as how each area and grade level viewed facilities issues.

The results of the survey indicated that parents had concerns over overcrowding, zoning, alignment programs, safety and other issues relating to facilities.

The presentation Phillips gave at the work session offered multiple ideas, some of which she said have a long way to go before being viable options.

One option that Phillips said came up often in the survey results would be to acquire additional land in Liberty Park and build an additional high school.

The school, to house between 750 and 1000 students, would be around 20,000 square feet and would require the acquisition of at least 40 acres of land to meet requirements. The school, which in its current concept would be for grades 9 - 12, would cost between $37 million and $50 million, not including the land acquisition and any athletic facilities.

Other options included the consolidation of the middle schools into one school on the former Berry High School property that the board acquired earlier this fall. 

Phillips said that the idea to combine the schools was something she had not considered until someone brought it up to her.

However, she said it would solve at least the concern from parents that the middle school experience is different for the two current middle schools.

Phillips acknowledged that there were significant concerns from parents, especially those that do not want to drive their children from Liberty Park to Columbiana Road each day.

Another option would be to move VHEC to the Berry campus, an option that would help both the overcrowding at Central and the traffic and safety issues Phillips said parents have expressed concern over.

Depending on which option or multiple options the board elects to take, Phillips said that shifts would likely begin to occur somewhere around 2019 or 2020.

The November session ended with Hogewood and Phillips reminding the board and audience that no decisions would be made until at least January or February, and that this issue would come up again at the December work session in order for the board to get as much input as possible.

City Council Place 4 councilor George Pierce was at the meeting, and urged the board to continue with its process of including the community and emphasizing communication about proposed changes.

“I think we’ve all got to be sensitive to making changes,” Pierce said.

The slide show explaining the system's growth and possible solutions was to be posted at vestavia.k12.al.us.