Baldwin County school officials have launched a random telephone survey of parents, seeking input on how the fast-growing district should handle years of steady enrollment increases, including whether residents would support higher property taxes to pay for new buildings.
The survey will reach an estimated 500 to 600 households within the 30,000-student system, according to district spokesman Terry Wilhite. It marks the second phase of a broader outreach effort that began last spring with community meetings held across each of the system’s six geographic districts, where administrators laid out capacity constraints, capital needs and enrollment projections.
District leaders have watched enrollment climb by roughly 2 percent annually since around 2000, but this year’s growth has caught officials off guard. Final numbers for the current school year won’t be finalized for several more weeks, but the district already counts more than 600 additional students compared with the same point last year. In past years, enrollment typically dipped slightly in the opening weeks of school before climbing back up; this year, Wilhite said, the increase showed up immediately on the first day of class.
Capacity concerns are not new. A 2013 analysis from the district’s geographic information systems coordinator warned that several Gulf Shores-area schools were already at or near maximum enrollment, that an elementary school on the eastern side of the county would reach full capacity within a couple of years, and that a Foley-area high school could swell to roughly 2,000 students within five years.
The phone survey is designed to give school board members a clearer sense of what taxpayers are willing to support as the district weighs its options, Wilhite said, including the politically sensitive step of asking voters to approve a property tax increase dedicated to school construction.
“It’s unquestionably a community issue,” Wilhite said, adding that resident input is essential before the board moves forward with any funding plan.
The outreach comes as the school board works through a proposed budget exceeding $300 million for the coming year. A second public hearing on that spending plan was scheduled this week at the system’s central office in Bay Minette, giving residents another opportunity to weigh in before board members finalize their decisions on both the budget and any long-term facilities strategy.
For families across Baldwin County, the survey results could shape decisions in the coming months about where new schools get built, which existing campuses get expanded, and how the district pays for it all.