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Property Proposal Spurs Anniston Schools Consolidation Talk

Monday, January 30, 2012

As Anniston public education officials examine the possibility of consolidating schools within their system, members of the Board of Education differ on whether the changes should hinge on the transfer of the middle school property to the city.

Board member Mary Harrington said the decision should be based on what the community concludes is best for the students. The offer from the city is nice but not essential to the consolidation, Harrington said.

“I really don’t think that we would want to forgo an offer from the city if it was a good offer,” Harrington said. “But what I’m saying is that it’s just not that we’re desperate and we’ve got to have that.”

The board is taking a serious look at consolidation because waning and shifting populations have created an uneven distribution of students — one school is bursting at the seams with 355 students and two others have well under 200 students. The board has been talking about consolidation for a long time but the conversation suddenly became serious when Anniston City Councilman Herbert Palmore proposed that the system transfer the middle school property to the city, which would build a new school for the system in exchange.

The talk was able to get serious, board member Bill Robison said, because the city is offering something that any consolidation will require — an influx of cash. And he notes the middle school is probably the only building the system owns that would draw any offers anyway.

“Who would be in the market to buy one of our current elementary school buildings?” Robison asked. “(The middle school has) potential, because of its geography and its size.”

But the school system has to consider the needs of its students and their parents first.

“We need to set the mission this evening with one thing in mind, the preservation and enhancement of the Anniston City School district,” Superintendent Joan Frazier told the board members as they prepared to discuss making changes two weeks ago.

Harrington notes that the system, even in this time of proration, has been hanging on to its money, so it’s not dependent on help from the city. However, money has become a large part of the conversation. Board member William Hutchings for months has criticized the City Council for its lack of support to the school system. The city has for years failed to support the system adequately, according to the Department of Education. It grades systems on their local financial support and Anniston has been getting an F for years.

But the city sees potential in the school property. The city’s revenue has been declining due to the economy, the declining population and the ever-increasing shopping base in Oxford luring shoppers away from Anniston.

As officials have looked for ways to turn things around, they spotted the middle school property. Back when the school first opened, its location was rejected by some as being too far removed from most of the school-age population that would use it. Fast-forward 25 years and the school is now situated at a key entrance to McClellan and just a couple of stones’ throws away from the northern terminus of the soon-to-be-completed Veteran’s Memorial Parkway.

That means the property will soon have one thing that, according to William Snowden, director of the Office of Economic Development for Tuscaloosa, attracts retailers: traffic.

“You’ve already heard it,” Snowden said. “Location, location, location.”

The location must provide two critical things to attract retail investment, Snowden said. There has to be traffic — lots of potential customers. In addition, retailers like to know they will provide something shoppers want.

“The retailers generally know,” Snowden said. “There are various formulas and they’re not rocket science.”

For instance, within the population a certain number of people will spend, say, $800 a year on clothing and $600 on restaurants. If the city clothing stores and restaurants aren’t already selling what the population is probably spending, that means the customers are going elsewhere, Snowden said. A retailer might see that and think he could capture those dollars that are slipping away by bringing the store or restaurant closer to customers at a high profile location — such as the middle school property.

That potential isn’t lost on the board members. Shortly after Palmore presented his proposal, the board asked the superintendent to have the property appraised.

But Robison said regardless of any appraisal, the property is only valuable if someone wants it and the board has an interested party and a bona fide offer.

Harrington points out, though, that the city hasn’t made clear exactly what it is offering.

If the property is valuable, the school system could benefit from that and do some much-needed work on its facilities and add programs and curriculum for the students. Robison said he believes the system could put the school out for bid and sell it. But Snowden, who is in the business of economic development, said it takes more than putting the property on the market.

“It’s a 24-hour proposition,” Snowden said. “This field of dreams stuff don’t work because they’ve got so many field of dreams that are out there. It’s competitive.”

This isn’t the first time the city has considered selling the middle school. In July 1999, then board members decided to close the middle school and make all the elementary schools kindergarten through eighth grade.

They abandoned those plans the following December for financial reasons, according to an article in The Star.

The system still owns Norwood School, which it closed in 2001. The system leased that school to Head Start. Robison wasn’t sure if the system had tried to sell the property or not.

“They took control of it so we didn’t have to spend any money on it,” Robison said. “It kept us from having a building out there that’s empty and deteriorating.”

Harrington thinks that’s a good thing. It keeps the building in the possession of the school system in case it does need to expand sometime down the road.

“Maybe it’s just me, but I really do believe we will do a little increasing in numbers,” Harrington said.

With much of McClellan still undeveloped, the possibility of increasing population is there. She also said adding a magnet school could lure students from private schools back to the system.

But the question of how to pay for the changes is one that so far the board hasn’t answered or even discussed, she said. First the system has to figure out what is best for the community, and then it can look at how to fund those changes, she said.

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Keywords: Anniston,City Schools,Property,

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