Thirty-two Gulf Shores residents have submitted paperwork hoping to land one of five seats on the city’s newly formed school board, as officials continue laying the groundwork for a system separate from Baldwin County Schools.
Among the applicants is Angie Swiger, who currently represents south Baldwin County’s District 5 on the Baldwin County Board of Education. That district covers Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Fort Morgan, Ono Island and Elberta. Swiger said that if selected for the new city board, she would step down from her county post.
Her potential move has raised a legal question for the Baldwin County Board of Education, which has asked the Alabama Attorney General’s office whether a board member who lives inside the boundaries of the newly created city school system can continue serving on the county board at all. Swiger, a longtime Gulf Shores resident, would live within the new district’s lines. She believes she is legally entitled to finish her term through 2020 if she is not chosen for the Gulf Shores board.
“I owe it to the citizens of my district who have elected me twice and who have entrusted me to make certain that the children and parents of Gulf Shores, as well as the children and parents of the rest of my district, have my unwavering representation,” Swiger said. “I want to be certain that all of the children in my district have proper representation at all times.”
If appointed, Swiger would play a key role in negotiating how assets and responsibilities are divided between the city and county systems. Gulf Shores has set a goal of opening its own schools in 2018, a timetable that Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Eddie Tyler has publicly questioned.
“There is an aggressive timeline the city has,” Tyler said. “I don’t know how realistic that is.”
Swiger acknowledged there is significant work ahead, from dividing assets to sorting out whether students living outside the new district boundaries can finish their education in Gulf Shores schools, but said she believes the deadline is achievable.
“The timetable is ambitious, but not impossible,” she said.
Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft said the city has done the necessary groundwork to ensure the new system can be financed without straining its budget.
“There’s been a lot of noise being made about how can the city do this, how can they afford to do this,” Craft said at a recent meeting. “We’ve got that figured out. Jason, our Finance Committee chairman, went into great detail about how we’re not taking money out of the reserves, we’re not putting more money in the reserves. We’ve got the ability to cover that $2.1 million deficit between having a top-performing school and we’ve already committed to doing that,” he said, referring to Finance Committee chairman Jason Dyken.
According to Economic Development Coordinator Blake Phelps, current revenue projections would allow Gulf Shores to fund about $8,600 per student, compared to the roughly $8,900 per student currently spent by Baldwin County. By redirecting some of the $2.1 million that would otherwise go into city reserves, Phelps said Gulf Shores could match the roughly $9,500 per student spent by top-performing schools statewide, or, by committing the full $2.1 million, push spending to just over $10,000 per student to aim for the state’s highest-performing tier.
Craft said the incoming board of education, once seated, would ultimately determine how those resources are used.
“The board of education and the superintendent will decide what needs to happen here to run the school,” he said. “We’ve got to give them enough money to manage the education outcome we’re looking for and add some component to allow them to build the necessary facilities where we’re not overcrowded and we’ve got a great place for our kids to go to school.”