Column: The Separatists & The School System

*This is an opinion column*

NORTHPORT, AL — Northport Mayor Bobby Herndon beamed with pride back in March when the City Council voted unanimously to move forward with a feasibility study for a potential Northport city school system. Even behind a blue disposable mask, the outline of a wide smile could be seen in a mix of relief and accomplishment.

And rightfully so.

A linchpin of one of his longtime platform issues, the feasibility study — at least for Herndon and the City Council —represented a crucial first step in what is sure to be a contentious process, but also provided early insight into the temperature of the City Council and its desires.

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Herndon, along with District 2 Councilman Woodrow Washington III, District 4 Councilwoman Jamie Dykes and other volunteer citizens, made up the Council's Community Outreach Committee responsible for further researching the city's proposed break from the Tuscaloosa County School System.

"Right now, the citizens of Northport don’t really have much of a say-so in the education process of their children," the mayor said that day. "The county school board has done a great job, but this time, it’s time we put our big boy pants on and look at what we can do."

This is what secession looks like — a smile concealing long-sought ambitions. It's a debate roughly a decade in the making, which has taken on varying incarnations and spans numerous administrations within Northport City Hall.

Herndon has been in the city's highest office for a large part of that, making a consistent talking point out of Tuscaloosa County High School. A vocal supporter of the school's athletics, he has given regularly toward supporting Wildcat sports, while at the same time chiding the county school system's lack of commitment in providing facilities acceptable for that of the county's only 7A high school.

As he mentioned in June, the county's largest school doesn't even have an auditorium.

Indeed, County High's principal came before the Council roughly a year ago to ask for $50,000 to help supplement the salary of its next football coach. This request, by itself, stirred debate among those on the Council, particularly Council President Jeff Hogg, who asserted that coaching salaries were the sole responsibility of the county school board.

Two months later, TCHS announced that Adam Winegarden, previously the highest-paid high school football coach in Alabama while at Auburn, had been hired as the school's next coach. Despite little success in his first season, the hire is still viewed as a great one in the community, as the fan base is more excited than it has been in years — resulting in more fans in the stands and more booster money flowing in for needed equipment and improvements to facilities.

But the anecdote of asking local officials for supplemental funding is a familiar and recurring one, with certain TCHS programs in the past often left with little choice but to grovel in front of elected bodies like Northport and the Tuscaloosa County Commission. The governmental bodies have been generous with their time and money, but supporters of a Northport city school system argue that these acts of support would not be necessary if residents had more direct input.

On the other side of the city, the situation is much more pressing than high school football, relating more to the basic necessities of the public school students who call that part of the city home. Several of these TCSS schools are in serious need of improvements in the city's only predominately-Black council district.

Washington, a Northport business owner who has been outspoken both on the campaign trail and during his first term in office, has repeatedly pointed to Matthews Elementary, Collins-Riverside Middle School and Crestmont Elementary as standing to benefit from more direct oversight by the residents it serves.

To Washington's past and present points, he's right. While intentions may not be mirrored by actions, it's hard not to view the county school system's priorities as being skewed toward serving those in rapid-growth, high-demand school zones like TCHS. This makes even more sense when you consider the decisions concerning their schools are made in the TCSS central office on the opposite side of the Black Warrior River. Due to this, many feel they have been treated as an afterthought and when taking stock of their concerns, I can't say I blame them.

Collins-Riverside, for example, has been allowed to languish in need of vast improvements, while $24 million was spent at the same time to construct the brand-new Northport Intermediate School that opened earlier this year — in one of the most in-demand school zones in the entire county. This has drawn the ire of many in the southern part of the city, which also happens to have the highest instances of poverty and crime in Northport. In my experience reporting across the southeast, when a school is neglected or in poor shape, it's hard to expect much different from the surrounding community.

I've been covering this specific topic for nearly two years and through the myriad conversations, interviews, notes and observations, it's clear that the desire for a Northport city school system is readily apparent across the spectrum of beliefs and backgrounds not just on the Council, but in the community.

In my view from the grandstands, it's not so much a matter of if, but when, the City of Northport will break away from the county school system. The votes are there, this Council obviously has the stomach for it, and with so much federal aid money flowing, now could very well be the opportune time to expedite the process while there is still access to millions of dollars in reimbursable funds.

What's more, the city — which has been widely reported as the fifth-largest municipality without its own city school system — has the power to do so.

According to Alabama Code § 16-11-1, any municipality with over 5,000 residents has the right to form its own city school system if they so choose. This population threshold alone has been a topic of debate, as smaller cities like Saraland and Chelsea recently formed their own city school districts after leaving much larger county school systems.

In opposition, State Sen. Linda Coleman Madison, a Democrat from Birmingham, led a failed push to have the threshold raised from 5,000 residents to 25,000.

While this would not have had any impact on Northport's ability to split with TCSS had it been signed into law, the senator has previously argued that:

"When schools break away from an existing system, the state takes on the extra expense to provide facilities, administrators, teachers, equipment, transportation, extracurricular activities, technology, and anything else needed by the system. This includes operations and maintenance of the entire school system, which creates a duplication of educational resources."

This is just one of the few arguments from those who have their doubts about the recent acceleration of certain cities to split from their respective county school systems.

But who's to say the move toward smaller-sized districts is not the better approach?

It can be argued that the Tuscaloosa County School System, with more than 19,000 students, has outgrown its infrastructure at a rate that is simply too costly to rectify without substantial change.

What if it actually alleviated some of the pressures on TCSS when it comes to the costly maintenance of old buildings, allowing the county school system to focus more on other growing school zones such as Brookwood, Hillcrest, Northside and Sipsey Valley?

On the other side of that coin, could it not also be possible for it to free up the administrative bandwidth for TCSS to improve schools lagging in places like Holt?

Still, while the support is no doubt apparent in Northport City Hall, many questions persist, prompting officials to take a more cautious approach.

As I reported on Friday, the Northport City Council is set to vote Monday to hire a Chelsea-based law firm to help answer questions concerning the logical next steps. This comes after the Council received favorable feedback in the form of the feasibility study — despite detractors viewing it as city officials paying a firm to tell them what they wanted to hear.

Regardless of subjective viewpoints, the study concluded Northport could indeed support its own school system, and now city leaders are looking to seek more feedback on topics such as tax referendums and the potential annexation of unincorporated areas of the county.

Perhaps the most obvious gray area, which was explicitly mentioned in the presentation of the study's findings in the spring, can be seen in the simple question of how such a large endeavor will be funded. This doesn't, however, factor in how amicably the numerous properties would be split between the new school system and TCSS — a story all its own for another day.

As I've reported, the largely hypothetical feasibility study said, once up and running, the estimated budget for a Northport city school system would come out just short of $54 million for the first year. Of that total, $2.5 million would be allocated from the city's ad valorem tax, while another $6.4 million represents the Tuscaloosa County School System's portion of the county's 3 cent sales tax for public schools.

This is where it gets problematic and a place where clarity will likely be needed.

When discussing the $6.4 million allocation for TCSS from the county's sales tax, this is one of the few instances where it's unclear just what the Council is permitted to do without prior action by the state legislature.

For instance, House Bill 600, which established the county's 3 cent sales tax and the Tuscaloosa County Road Improvement Commission in 2015, mandates that 25% of the revenue generated by the tax be given to the Tuscaloosa County School System. Under that state law, the City of Northport currently receives 5% of the revenue, while a total of 45% is set aside for the current school systems.

In my novice analysis of the law, it seems clear that the funds are explicitly set aside for Tuscaloosa City Schools and the Tuscaloosa County School System. While attorneys and consultants can no doubt provide their own interpretations of the legalese, the language is plain with respect to who the money is earmarked for. It's only logical to surmise that to restructure the payouts for three school districts instead of two, it would take a legislative amendment to the law to do so.

And while $6.4 million is not likely to make or break such a large initiative, the questions around funding sources underscore the legal and financial challenges that are sure to the litter the path that leads to getting a city school system off the ground.

Separately, Mayor Herndon has pointed out on more than one occasion, the biggest hurdle to clear with the public would be the inevitable increase in property taxes within the city limits that would be necessary to fund an upstart school system.

Herndon told Patch earlier this year that he expects Tuscaloosa County to raise its ad valorem taxes within the next two years. But as it stands, he argues that county residents pay less than most across the state, which begs the need for something to be done.

Indeed, as AL.com's Rebecca Griesbach reported earlier this year, the tax base for Tuscaloosa County schools is just 10 mills, which is the state’s minimum requirement and leaves TCSS as one of the most under-funded among the state's larger school systems.

Property values would inevitably rise as a result of a Northport city school system, but raising taxes is sure to prove a difficult pitch when the idea is put to empty-nesters and home owners without children in Northport's public schools.

"Why should I have to pay more in property taxes for someone else's kids?"

When considering this public apprehension, the divisive nature of the issue alone could prompt a unilateral decision by the Council to secede from TCSS, as opposed to a referendum at the ballot box. But even what it will look like when the city finally crosses the goal line remains murky and is months, if not years, from being considered.

And as far as the process is concerned, the Council would then have to reckon with appointing a city board of education or allowing the citizens to vote — another can of political worms all its own.

But what the mayor has lauded more than anything with respect to the need for a Northport city school system is the city's boom in population.

In August, I reported that Northport added a little more than 5,000 new residents within the city limits over the last decade, with the 2020 U.S. Census reporting a population of 31,125 as of April 1.

This elevated Northport overnight from the 21st to 17th most populous city in Alabama — a fortuitous development that is not lost on city leaders, particularly Herndon. It's also worth noting that the current Council is one of the youngest in recent years and one focused on quickly recruiting businesses and services to keep pace with the rapid growth.

What's also being closely watched by those in City Hall, whether they will admit it or not, is the building boom north of Lake Tuscaloosa, with new subdivisions, lakefront property and the Northside school zone proving an attractive selling point to those dissatisfied with city schools in Tuscaloosa or county schools in Northport.

The sustained — and expected — growth north of the river will likely be used to justify a more expedient push for the city to break away, but my hope is that patience and pragmatism will prevail.

There is arguably more untapped potential in the northern part of Tuscaloosa County than anywhere else in the metro and debates like a city school district should be viewed as a positive thing — a symptom of so many people choosing to call Northport home.

Execution is everything, though, and instead of rushing to immediately appoint a school board and gobble up the county school system's properties, the Northport City Council is continuing to ask questions and give due diligence to the fledgling endeavor.

I will say, though, that from my reporting and observations, the communication between the Council and school system has been minimal at best, which will further complicate matters in more ways than I think either are considering. While I understand the TCSS line of not interfering in Northport's affairs, the school system does stand to undergo a seismic shift in the way in operates — for better or worse.

So it's my hope in the comings months and years that the lines of communication will open so a constructive dialogue can begin to best serve the people of Northport. Also, I urge Northport residents to be involved in discussions and educated on what's at stake.

Above all, this is a push that is being done with you in mind and it's crucial that your voice be heard when it comes to your schools.

Ryan Phillips is the founder and field editor of Tuscaloosa Patch. The views expressed in the column are his and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of our parent company.