County schools host community meetings

Information is key to everything and Elmore County Schools is trying to get its message out.

The system has been going into each community, holding meetings and sharing information about funding and priorities. The idea of sharing information directly with shareholders started about five years ago.

“We were dealing with teacher retention,” superintendent Richard Dennis said. “We were fighting to keep our teachers and our personnel. So we started a teacher retention committee. We find out that they've got a very different perspective on what's going on than what we have going on at the central office.”

The committee now reports on a semi-regular basis with the Elmore County Board of Education and the directors in the central office.

Questions from teachers and staff arose surrounding funding and priorities. Dennis went to the schools and shared lots of information. Now Dennis and central office staff are in the middle of sharing the information in a series of community meetings to make the public aware of education issues.

“We want to try to bridge that gap, to make them aware of what's taking place and the rationale behind the way we make decisions,” Dennis said.

The first thing Dennis shared with everyone was Elmore County ranks near the bottom in funding on a per pupil basis. He said the system ranks 136th out of 152 public school systems in the state. Data shows Elmore County receives almost $13,000 per student in local, state and federal funding while the state average is nearly $14,000.

While property taxes are strong, increased assessments and more property doesn’t equate to more funds for schools. Based on the way the funding mechanism is set up, the 10 mils in ad valorem that is collected in Elmore County is taken from the total the state allocates from the education foundation. If the collection goes up, then less comes from the state back to the county.  

The price of buses has almost doubled in the last five years, while state funding for their purchase and maintenance has remained the same.

“It means we have to fund the difference from somewhere else,” Dennis said. 

He also wants the legislature to increase the apportion for Elmore County. It’s a system that runs 140 buses per year that travel more than one million miles.

Another area for improvement is the divisor the state uses to allocate teachers. 

“The legislature will say they have changed it,” Dennis said. “They have but only a very small amount in the middle schools.”

The divisor for the middle schools improved from 19.9 to 19.7. In grades K-3, grades 4-6 and grades 9-12, the divisor remained unchanged at 14.25, 20.06 and 17.95, respectively.

The divisor says how many students there are per teacher. But it doesn’t take into account adding additional teachers for STEM, music, art and more in the elementary and middle schools.

Where Elmore County makes up some ground to add teachers is through its virtual school, The Edge, because it doesn’t use all of its allotments. It allows Elmore County Schools to place music teachers in middle schools.

Extra revenue in the Child Nutrition Program thanks to breakfast and summer programs means no transfer of funds from Elmore County Schools general fund for the CNP.

Funding during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed HVAC systems and more to be changed out with little to no cost to the school system. 

Currently Elmore County Schools have about $6 million in excess funds that it has saved since the pandemic. But federal funding is decreasing because Elmore County has the third highest median income in the state.

“We have to save that for some of those losses,” Dennis said. “We are also going to have to find ways to fill the gap in other areas such as transportation.”

Parents in the Redland community said they want a high school to avoid travel and for the anticipated growth. Dennis said Elmore County Schools can’t do that right now.

Elmore County Schools want to build a performing arts center at Wetumpka High School at an estimated cost of $4 million. It will allow for more classrooms to be constructed in the current music areas and accommodate anticipated growth from the Wetumpka High School district.

New schools are needed at Holtville and Eclectic high schools at a cost of $50 to $ 90 million each.

“We don’t have the funding to do any of that right now,” Dennis said. “Both of the schools in Eclectic and Holtville are almost 100 years old.”

Dennis said some projects in the county have been confused with spending by the school board. He said the Elmore County Commission has funded $10 million in quality of life projects in Holtville and Eclectic to install turf on the football and diamond fields, install video boards and create a drive at Eclectic Elementary School. The school board has contributed only $1.25 million of the projects. Meanwhile, 17 Springs is a partnership primarily between Elmore County and the City of Millbrook.

“It will help generate sales tax for years to come,” Dennis said. “That is one thing that we get that doesn’t have strings attached to it. As it grows we might be able to do more.”