Photo by Jon Anderson.
Ali Pilcher talks to the Vestavia Hills Board of Education about the 1Legacy campaign during a school board meeting on Oct. 5.
The Vestavia Hills school system is getting ready to launch a new campaign, called 1Legacy, that is designed to foster better relationships between Vestavia schools and the community at large, including alumni.
The plan is to make a focused effort to keep the community informed about what’s going on in the school district; share needs in the district that the community can meet; acknowledge alumni accomplishments; attract financial support for schools; identify mentors for students, faculty and staff; and bridge any gaps between schools and the business community.
The vision for this came from Jaclyn Hudson, who just completed a five-year term on the Vestavia Hills Board of Education at the end of May. Hudson said she started pushing this idea during her first year on the school board, but it got derailed as district leaders focused on pushing a property tax increase for school funding.
When that effort failed in May 2023, officials refocused on building stronger relationships with the community.
Faith Lenhart, the district’s fine arts director, put the initial framework together for the 1Legacy campaign, but the school board in July agreed to hire Ali Pilcher, a Vestavia Hills High School alumna, to run the campaign. She’ll be paid $50 an hour, not to exceed $22,500 a year.
Pilcher said the new campaign will be a great way not only to pull alumni back in, but to pull the entire community together to support schools.
Seventy percent of the people who live in Vestavia Hills are empty nesters, Pilcher said.
“We’ve got to find a way to get them in our schools,” she said. “Our big goal is to involve all families in the Vestavia Hills community. That is current families. That is future families. … We have an amazing community, but I feel like at some point we can get kind of fragmented, so let’s bring it back together.”
Superintendent Todd Freeman said colleges for a long time have worked to leverage the power of alumni, but the Vestavia Hills school system really hasn’t thought in those terms. He thanked Hudson for her vision and called the upcoming launch of the 1Legacy campaign “a really exciting next step.”
Community members are invited to join the Vestavia Hills City Schools’ Community and Alumni Network by signing up at 1legacy.me. They’ll begin receiving communications about things such as district academic initiatives, fine arts and sports events and alumni accomplishments. Communication about the new network has already started, and the official launch is scheduled for January, Pilcher said.
Members will have an easy way to make donations to meet school system needs. Other goals, hopefully sooner rather than later,
are to facilitate career shadowing opportunities and develop a strong volunteer program, Pilcher said.
“You have amazing alumni that are doing really big things,” Pilcher said. “What better way to give back than the schools that gave them the tools to get where they are?”
Hudson said it’s important to keep the older generation of Vestavia Hills residents connected.
“They’re givers. They want to give back, and that’s huge — getting them involved,” she said. “I think it’s going to be amazing for our community.”
