A nearly 15-month journey filled with distrust and a recent lawsuit over the split of Gulf Shores from the Baldwin County School System, ended Thursday with an agreement that will allow the new city school to begin on June 1.
Both Gulf Shores city and Baldwin County school officials, along with Republican state Sen. Chris Elliott, announced the agreement during a news conference in Robertsdale.
It was the first time the two sides were publicly together in months.
“We’re happy and looking forward,” said Gulf Shores City School Superintendent Matt Akin.
“I’m excited for their journey,” said Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Eddie Tyler. “We are excited for this.”
‘Getting this done’
The agreement, officially approved later in the evening by both school boards, prompted Alabama State School Superintendent Eric Mackey to withdraw his final order from last month. It will presumably lead to a dismissal of Baldwin County’s lawsuit against the state superintendent, the Gulf Shores city schools and the Baldwin County Commission.
Mackey’s initial order, unveiled in January, had prompted outrage among county school officials and led to the lawsuit.
Mackey, in a statement Thursday afternoon, praised Akin and Tyler. He later called them “heroes” during an interview with AL.com.
“I have to say how happy I am when I was able to talk to the superintendents individually, with no attorneys present, and those superintendents were committed in getting this done,” said Mackey. “We had hurdles along the way, and even in the last 24 to 48 hours, we had new hurdles.”
Terms of the agreement included a half-dozen items, and do not involve either school system paying the other side any upfront costs related to the split:
-The city’s debt payments to the county are waived for five years, until June 2024. The city school system estimates the total savings at around $2.85 million in debt obligations for a variety of projects such as roof replacements and HVAC work, that previously occurred to school facilities in Gulf Shores.
- The county will handle payroll obligations for positions assigned to Gulf Shores city schools through the end of their current contractual periods. The city will then be responsible for their own payroll no later than Sept. 1.
-The county will receive all countywide sales tax until Oct. 1, and pay no start up costs.
- Both systems will be responsible for transporting their students.
- Both systems agreed to work together to resolve personnel situations fairly and equitably. Equipment, materials, supplies and other personal property will remain in Gulf Shores, according to the city school system.
For Tyler and Baldwin County Schools, the agreement ended concerns they had last month over Mackey’s 19-page decision in which county school officials claimed would have cost the school system $7 million this year in payment for Gulf Shores’ payroll.
Gulf Shores city school officials countered that by saying that Baldwin County had misinterpreted Mackey’s ruling.
“The money would have been taken away from what was already budgeted in the 2019 fiscal year,” said Tyler. “What would we have to do, as a school system of close to 32,000 students, had we had to handle proration in the middle of the school year. That was a concern. Through (this) settlement, it is not a concern.”
The settlement came from negotiations involving Elliott, the local superintendents, Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft and others. Mackey was not involved in the recent talks.
“We settle things better here among ourselves than we do in Montgomery,” Elliott said. “That was part of the problem. It was time for the state superintendent to step back. There were politics getting caught up in this that did not need to be involved in the conversations.”
Mackey said his office worked “with a lot of parties” during the negotiations including Craft and Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon, whose city will be opening a new middle-high school in the 2019-2020 school year.
Mackey credited the State Department of Education’s involvement in the split, saying that had his office not gotten involved, “it would have gone to court.”
“It would’ve been a lengthy and extremely expensive lawsuit,” said Mackey, whose statement earlier in the day credited the Department of Education for being “ultimately instrumental” in leading to the agreement. “I’m proud of the work the department did, especially over the last month. I think it did help smooth the way.”
Lessons learned
Mackey said, in hindsight, he wished he’d gotten involved more in the talks earlier on and shortly after he became state superintendent in April. He said he only met once with both sides last summer, and only more recently had gotten deeply involved toward the competition of his final order.
Mackey’s order was criticized by Tyler and the county school system, who argued that it could establish a precedence in incentivizing cities statewide to break away from their county school systems.
“I learned a lesson out of this,” Mackey said. “When the next time a city tries to split from a county, I will know … should’ve personally gotten involved much earlier and pushed much harder. Had I to do this over, I would’ve gotten involved back in June and instead of saying ‘work this out,’ within a matter of weeks, we would have had a resolution.”
He added, “I was trying to stay out of it. That was a mistake on my part in staying out as long as I did, personally.”
Elliott said he wished the split had been settled sooner, though he understands why an agreement wasn’t reached months ago.
“I think everyone was acting in what was in the best interest of their system,” he said. “I don’t fault the superintendents or the schools in defending their system or what they (felt) was right. It came to a point where it was clear that these two parties needed to get together and work out some differences and get the ball across the goal line and get the (state) superintendent’s office to take a step back.”
Mackey apologized for the teachers, students and parents in Gulf Shores and elsewhere in Baldwin County for the “anxiety” the split talks caused.
“I’m sorry they had to go through that,” he said.
Gulf Shores is the 10th Alabama city to break away from a county system since 2000. In Alabama, there are 71 other city districts and 67 county districts.
Mackey said there are no other cities actively looking at breaking away, but the issue has gotten attention from state lawmakers. State Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, introduced legislation last month that would block cities with a population of 15,000 or under from breaking away from their county school systems.
Gulf Shores, with a population slightly below 12,000, would have been unable to split under Coleman-Madison’s bill.
But those issues and others are not a concern among Gulf Shores city school officials, who are itching to get started with Baldwin County’s first city school district.
City school officials, on March 12, held a “big reveal” event attended by around 400 people inside the Erie H. Meyer Civic Center in which plans were introduced detailing about $5 million to $7 million in construction projects slated to take place this summer. Those projects are unrelated to the agreement negotiation between the city and the county school system.
“Our destiny is our own,” said Akin, who reiterated the school system’s motto, “Makin’ Waves.”
Mackey said there were concerns that without an agreement, the lawsuit would have loomed over Gulf Shores as it moved toward starting its school year.
“There could’ve been some risks,” Mackey said, referring to the lawsuit potentially interfering with the start of the Gulf Shores school year in August.
County and city school officials, in recent weeks, said the lawsuit would not have interfered with the start of the school year.
“We had to figure out the transfer of property,” said Mackey. “Even though both sides agreed, and Baldwin said they were OK with (the city starting the school year in August), there were no agreements on how properties would be transferred. They could not legitimately start school in the fall without the transfer of those deeds.”
Mackey added, “I’ve been to the (Alabama) Supreme Court with cases before, and we know how long it takes. We didn’t want to do that.”
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