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The mantra that emerged out of the Vestavia Hills school system’s most recent strategic planning was “Learning without Limits.”

And with multiple Blue Ribbon schools, often-awarded faculty and competitive athletics programs, as well as a veritable laundry list of esteemed programs and academic accomplishments, limits may seem a non-issue.

But with ever-growing enrollment and a city burgeoning with development, there is one limit Vestavia Hills City Schools are having to face head on: space.

Over the next few months, the Vestavia Hills Board of Education will make decisions about renovating schools, potential changes to feeder patterns and what to do with the former Berry High School campus, all in order to address the expected continued growth in enrollment.

In December, Hoar Program Management (HPH), along with Lathan Associates Architects, presented eight possible facilities options to the BOE, ranging from minor tweaks to major shifts in feeder patterns and building usage.

A tight fit

The city’s school district has eight school campuses: five elementary, two middle and one high school. The 2016-2017 school year saw a student population of roughly 7,100 students spread among the schools.

Based on the most recent census data, when Superintendent Sheila Phillips gave a presentation to parents in the fall of 2016, enrollment in 2027 is expected to be nearly 8,500.

With the current configurations, overcrowding and space issues are not just a problem 10 years from now.

Seth Acuff, who has a child at Vestavia Hills Elementary Central and has had experience with Vestavia Hills Elementary East, said overcrowding is a major concern for him as a parent. He said he believes when facilities are a comfortable fit, students learn better because there are fewer opportunities missed.

“When it gets too crowded, they have to juggle,” he said, reiterating that the facilities that surround academic programs can have a major influence on learning.

Acuff pointed to the significant parking and carpool problems at Central as evidence of the challenges schools face.

For school events such as Grandparents Day or for recitals or performances, Acuff said he and other parents often have to park in the Walmart parking lot across U.S. 31.

“It’s kind of ridiculous,” he said, but that there isn’t much to be done considering the landlocked position of the school and the way it sits into the hill.

Phillips acknowledged the issues with Central, and also pointed to them as symptoms of the greater problem.

“If parents and grandparents can’t get to your facility, or if it’s not accommodating, whether it’s in size or whether or not it’s just a matter of parking … that doesn’t make for a stellar experience for our students and/or our families,” she said.

A change in conversation

While some may see the facilities conversation coming into focus over the last few months, Phillips said in actuality, setting out a solid plan has been a longtime coming.

“We want our facilities to mirror the expectations we have academically,” Phillips said, adding that process began three years ago when the schools engaged in the strategic planning process.

“It was an opportunity for everyone to re-evaluate where we are, and the relationship between development of the city, and the level of impact,” she said.

Over the last few years, she said the BOE and city leaders have been working to find the balance between development for the city and enrollment in the school system.

“As you have economic growth ad valorem implications, generation of funding for schools is significant,” she said. “At the same time, you’re balancing that with the growth in population and whether or not our facilities can support that.”

However, Phillips said it became clear through the strategic planning process, as well as a parent survey, that overcrowding, class sizes, facility conditions and inadequate space were among the top concerns, and the conversation quickly began to reflect that changes needed to be made.

With space disappearing and many existing facilities showing their age, Phillips said the conversation changed and became more urgent.

“[Facilities] had to immediately become something that we address,” she said.

In September 2016, the BOE closed on a $69.6 million bond issue, and after using a portion to pay down existing debt, was left with roughly $54 million to dedicate to construction projects.

Several projects are already in the works or have been completed, including a new cafeteria and gym at Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights, classroom and cafeteria expansion at Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park, baseball turf replacement at Vestavia Hills High School and cafeteria upgrades at Vestavia Hills Elementary East.

But the game changer, as Phillips said she has noted before, was the chance to purchase the former Berry High School property on Columbiana Road.

Berry Impact

The 38.5-acre campus opens up a range of opportunities, Phillips said, both academically as well as athletically, that changed the conversation to a more global approach to facilities, rather than looking just at the immediate needs of individual schools.

With the purchase of Berry and the potential for the campus to come online in the next two to three years, Phillips said it gave the board the chance to look at programming, feeder patterns and personnel, as well as at facilities.

“You would have, I would suggest, an opportunity to evaluate all of those things at the same time,” she said.

She said the decision was made to go back to the goals of the strategic plan and look at the overall picture of how resources are allocated and how the district is structured.

“That goes beyond the bricks and mortar,” she said, but added that taking facilities into account is a major part of the discussion, and one that elicits a lot of emotion from stakeholders.

“Those conversations get very messy in the meantime,” she said, because as the decisions are made, those involved have to balance the traditions and values she says make the district what it is, as well as the need to adapt and change.

“We didn’t get to where we are in the past three years,” she said. “It didn’t just happen, so now, how do we maintain and move forward at the same time?”

Options and Issues

At the December meeting, Brennan Bell of HPM presented the eight potential options to the board in front of a full-house audience. Bell also introduced Tracey Richter with Cooperative Strategies, who was contracted by the BOE to conduct a full demographic study of Vestavia Hills in order to get the most accurate picture of future enrollment.

“We have so many layers,” Phillips said, and the more experts the board can employee in order to have the best information to make a decision, the better.

Of the eight options, which Phillips said likely will be updated once the demographic study comes back, several would require significant changes in the system’s feeder patterns, and five would require rezoning.

One of the major threads throughout the options would be to move Central to the Pizitz Middle School campus, a move Acuff said he supports.

“I’m all for it,” he said.

A majority of the plans also include moving Pizitz students to the Berry campus, including some that would change the grade alignment to 6-9 or 7-9, creating a ninth-grade wing, which would take some of the pressure off the high school.

But with big changes, as some of the options propose, Phillips said they recognize there is only so much change a school system can handle at one time.

“You have to make as much progress as you can, but you try to minimize the disruption,” she said.

And there are some options that may simply be out of reach.

Phillips said the idea of adding an additional high school at Liberty Park is not new, and with continued growth in the area, was put back on the table.

However, the financial cost would be immense: a minimum of $60 million for the buildings and athletics facilities, which wouldn’t include the cost of the required 40 acres of land, as well as an annual cost of $12 million to operate the school and service the debt to build it.

At the January BOE work session, Matt Adams of Raymond James financial advisers explained that, in order to cover the cost, the BOE would need to ask the city for, conservatively, at least a 4-cent sales tax increase, or an  increase of 20 mills for ad valorem — which on a $300,000 home would be an additional $600 annually.

“There’s only so much money,” Phillips said.

Next steps

The path to sustainability, Phillips said, is not an easy one.

“If it were just about renovating Berry or just about renovating the high school — that’s easy,” she said.

If that were the case, she said HPM and Lathan could present a plan, the board would vote and construction would begin.

But with an overall redesign of the school system, the decision is far too complicated to have that kind of timeline.

“It has to play out properly, and we have to ‘chase the squirrel’ if you will, as it comes to us, because this is such a big task,” she said.

Still, the clock is ticking.

The current bond issuance has a limited lifespan, and decisions on how to use the remainder of the funding need to be made in the coming months.

Once the demographic study is final, Phillips said HPM will revise the options, and that while decisions will be made as methodically as possible, they also will be made as quickly as possible.

That being said, major changes, such as moving schools to different campuses, are at least two to three years out.

And along the way, she said the BOE will continue to conduct its discussions in public, getting as much information from experts and stakeholders along the way.

“You just keep fleshing this out and vetting it out,” Phillips said, “and making as many decisions as you can along the way knowing that you’re not going to answer everything, you’re not going to please everyone.”

The renovation options in their most recent form can be viewed here.