Baldwin County school board members got a firsthand look this week at Gulf Shores’ vision for tackling overcrowded classrooms, as Mayor Robert Craft laid out a proposal for a combined high school and community college campus during a facilities committee meeting held at W.J. Carroll Intermediate School in Daphne.
Craft’s pitch centers on a parcel of city-owned land at the corner of County Road 8 and the Foley Beach Express, where officials envision a joint facility that would house a traditional high school alongside a satellite campus of Faulkner State Community College. The idea, Craft explained, does double duty: it would relieve pressure on Gulf Shores’ increasingly packed schools while also cutting down on the daily traffic crunch along Alabama 59, one of the busiest corridors in Baldwin County.
Beyond the high school and community college partnership, the plan leaves room for dual-enrollment arrangements with four-year universities. Craft told board members he has already gathered letters of interest from Faulkner State, the University of South Alabama and the University of Alabama, each expressing willingness to explore how their programs might connect with a Gulf Shores-based campus. If it comes together, the project would represent a joint effort spanning the city, the Baldwin County school system, Faulkner State and the participating four-year schools.
The proposal also touches on a sensitive regional issue: schooling for Orange Beach students. Craft said in a follow-up conversation that Orange Beach students would still be welcome to attend the new high school as long as the city remains part of the Baldwin County school system. That caveat matters because Orange Beach voters are set to weigh in later this month on a proposed 5-mill property tax increase, a ballot measure widely seen as the opening step toward the city breaking away to form its own independent school district.
Craft said he was invited to present at the meeting because board members are gathering input from cities across the county on how each community sees its educational future taking shape. For Gulf Shores, the new campus fits into a broader roadmap the city council adopted last spring, a long-range planning document built around sustainable growth that treats education as a core piece of the city’s identity going forward.
The same meeting included a broader look at growth pressures facing the entire Baldwin County school system. Associate Superintendent Russ Moore updated committee members on efforts to track enrollment and space needs systemwide, work that includes an independent facilities-utilization study examining how every square foot of every school building is currently being used. According to a school system spokesman, the fastest-growing pockets of the county remain Gulf Shores, Foley, Spanish Fort and Daphne, with districtwide enrollment now topping 30,600 students, an increase of more than 600 since the previous school year.
The meeting wasn’t only about Gulf Shores’ ambitions. Residents from the Elberta community also spoke up, asking the school board to consider building a new high school in their area as county leaders weigh where future construction dollars should go.