Longtime Pizitz educators reflect on current campus as move approaches

When David Miles became principal of Louis Pizitz Middle School in 1991, he knew he wanted to make the front entrance of the school something visitors would remember.

“We want people to walk in here and ...instantly see what really matters here,” Miles said.

Miles, who retired in 2014, put pictures of students and teachers and activities around the walls, making the front of the school the “refrigerator door” of Pizitz.

“You find out more about a family by standing at the refrigerator door than anywhere else in the house,” Miles said.

That “refrigerator door” and the rest of the Pizitz campus will soon be transferred a few miles to the south, as Pizitz Middle School takes up residence in its new home, the former Berry High School on Columbiana Road, this fall. The current campus will house ninth-grade students.

“I hope they make it something where nobody says, ‘Old Berry’ anymore,” Miles said.

“It will be exciting for the kids,” said special education teacher Jill Clark, who has taught at Pizitz for 34 years. “I think it’s going to be great.”

The current campus has been part of the Vestavia Hills City School system since 1970, the first year of the school system. Before that, it was part of the Jefferson County system for three years.

It was renamed after Louis Pizitz, a local philanthropist and founder of the Pizitz department store in Birmingham, in 1972, after the Pizitz family donated the land for Vestavia Hills High School. Miles said the family originally wanted their name to be part of the high school, but because the school system wanted the high school to be named after the community, the family agreed to have his name attached to what was then Vestavia Hills Junior High School.

The campus is filled with memories of students who have passed through its halls, Miles said. The most visible reminder may be the mural in the gym, painted by students and longtime art teacher Larry Gibson. Miles had a professional mural painted in the lunchroom of a pirate, the school’s mascot, but there’s something special about the gym’s murals.

“As beautiful as that professional mural is in the lunchroom, that gym has a piece of the kids who went there,” Miles said.

Gibson, who is finishing his 36th year of teaching at the school, has been at Pizitz since he started his teaching career. He helped lead the painting of the murals in 1995 and 1998, with one half being painted each year.

Gibson said the work took six weeks and students would stay until 6 or 7 p.m. each night to finish it. All art classes helped paint the mural.

Some of the mural will be preserved at the new campus, which will have a “memory wall” at the front entrance, Gibson said.

Pizitz Principal Chris Pennington said the goal is to create a sense of identity at the new campus, starting with the memory wall.

“I could see the development and history going through the photos,” Pennington said.

As he and other school leaders have worked to preserve the school’s history while moving to a new campus, Pennington discovered what makes the school stand out.

It’s unusual to have people go out of their way to claim to be an alumnus of a middle school, Pennington said. “It didn’t take long to realize how much pride and investment a lot of the community has with our school.”

The sense of family at Pizitz is quite obvious, Pennington said.

In his more than 20 years at the helm at Pizitz, Miles experienced firsthand what it was like to be a part of that family.

“It was more than just a place to go to work, clock in and teach class,” he said.

Miles preached a funeral for one teacher and had a part in the engagement of another, he said.

Even in the most trying times, the Pizitz family showed its character. When students passed away, faculty and staff came together to create programs about their lives and showed them to students through closed-circuit television.

When Sept. 11 happened, Miles said the faculty and staff developed a strong sense of unity and pride.

Teacher Nancy Chilton put together a “living American flag,” where people wearing red, white and blue assembled on the field to create the look of the American flag.

“That was powerful,” Miles said. “The halls of that place echo with these [memories].”

Clark said she has enjoyed being able to help each student every year with whatever they need, and she has been helped herself by the family of teachers at Pizitz.

“It just felt like home,” Clark said. “When you walk in the door, you feel like there’s someone there that will help you if you need it.”

But Clark said the most important part of the campus is coming with them over the summer: the people.

During his tenure, Miles would often remind his staff during their meetings that it is the people who make Pizitz “the best middle school in America,” a moniker he has long bestowed on the school.

“What makes a school special and unique is ... people,” Miles said. “Every school’s got stuff, but no school has the people in this room.”