Are our local city schools failing?

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

We’ve had quite a dust-up over the Great Dothan City Schools Mini-Appliance Crisis of 2024.

And while I don’t mean to downplay a nice creature comfort for city school teachers who always appear to be swimming upstream, it’s far from a priority.

I worked at the Dothan Eagle from 1996 to 2019. I do not remember a time when people were not complaining about the city school system.

Teachers were too permissive or too strict. Administration was fat, happy and not attentive to classroom needs.

Affiliation with the Good Ole’ Boy network was the best way to land a job with the system. The city was too consumed with athletics to worry about academics, or missing a golden opportunity to leverage athletics as a way to spur attendance and get the system on good footing.

The buildings were too old, or so much money was put into new buildings that it crippled the city system’s ability to invest in other needed upgrades.

The city hamstrings itself by an unwillingness to put more local money to schools through a tax increase, or wasteful spending proves it already has enough money to do what it needs.

I could go on.

Let’s start the discussion with a baseline statement that most of us can agree on without engaging in all the hyperbole out there that serves no good interest.

Dothan City Schools are not the worst, but far from as good as they need to be to help move the city forward.

There are a million factors that got us here. It should be noted that, for many years, the Dothan City Board of Education had no real control over major decisions within the system until about 2007. For years, the city system operated under a consent decree after the courts ruled Dothan was one of several school systems across the state that did not properly integrate its schools. Only around 2000 did Dothan regain control in the areas of facilities, transportation, hiring and assignment of faculty and student assignment across schools. It took around seven additional years for the city to regain control over the areas of faculty recruitment, student assignment within schools, special education, discipline and extracurricular activities.

Let that sink in for a moment. For years, Dothan City Schools had to make sure policies like its discipline plan complied with the consent decree. It even needed to be super clear on how it conducted things as simple as cheerleader tryouts.

However, since 2007, the local school board has been out from under the consent decree and it has still been a bumpy ride.

The Alabama Department of Education has issued a letter and number grade for all city school systems since the 2021-22 school year, and Dothan’s numbers have been OK.

The system received a C, or 76 in 2021-22 and improved to a B, or 80, in 2022-23, the latest available numbers.

Overall, however, Dothan City Schools graded 54.09 in the area of academic achievement, an amalgam of how proficient students are in English and math. This puts the system as a whole in the red. For comparison, Enterprise City scored a 79.57 (yellow), Decatur City scored a 61.51 (orange), Gadsden City scored a 56.09 (red) and Tuscaloosa City scored a 55.23 (red).

It is worth noting that there are 15 schools within the city school system and academic performance varies greatly.

Below are letter and number report card scores for each city school for the 2022-23 school year:

• Girard Primary D (68)

• Heard Elementary B (82)

• Hidden Lake Primary C (70)

• Morris Slingluff Elementary C (70)

• Highlands Elementary A (92)

• Kelly Springs Elementary B (80)

• Selma Street Elementry B (84)

• Faine Elementary D (64)

• Carver School of Math, Science and Technology A (98)

• Beverlye Intermediate C (70)

• Girard Intermediate D (65)

• Carver 9th Grade Academy C (70)

• Dothan City Virtual C (78)

• Dothan Prep D (65)

• Dothan High C (73)

Now, let’s look at a few questions.

Some nearby county school enrollments are surging, most notably Rehobeth, Wickburg and Headland. We have numerous successful private and Christian schools in Dothan including Houston Academy, Providence, Northside Methodist, Emmanuel, Bethel, Westgate and new startup Ridgecrest. There is also a thriving homeschool population in Dothan.

Are students leaving the school system?

The answer appears to be yes, although the Covid year changed everything. Below are Dothan City Schools enrollment numbers for the past seven years, minus early head start and early education enrollment.

2022: 7853

2021: 7910

2020: 7891

2019: 8701

2018: 8869

2017: 9156

2016: 8987

So, if students are leaving the system, why?

Parents decide to move schools for many different reasons. Inserting a blanket answer for every situation isn’t helpful, but here are a few possibilities:

Let’s start with the three As:

Academics

Parents who can afford an education that offers smaller teacher-to-student ratios, or who can choose a school with a long track record of graduating students with significant scholarship money will do so most of the time.

Aside from just the batting average of academic achievement, parents may shy away from a federal education curriculum that has to be government approved.

And, parents who move in from out of town may simply look at the same numbers reported above and write off city schools from the beginning.

Athletics

Some may want to pursue athletic opportunities at a smaller school compared to 7A Dothan. Some may be offered athletic opportunities at other schools.

Some may be put off by a particular selection process, or be more familiar with a coach at another school. More and more, parents are making decisions about where their kids go to school based on athletics.

Atmosphere

Some parents prefer smaller schools. According to numbers reported to the Alabama Department of Education for the purpose of classifying schools for sports, Dothan High reported an average daily enrollment of 1,620, making it the 8th largest high school in the state.

Wicksburg, for example, reported 220, although that number is expected to jump over the next two years.

Parents may prefer a Christian-based educational environment, whether in a church-based school or a homeschool setting with a co-op where homeschool students study together at least one day a week.

So there are any number of reasons parents choose other school options when they can, and nothing really points to one achilles heel for Dothan City.

It is worth noting that Niche, a website that analyzes data and aggregates reviews for schools, colleges and neighborhoods, gives Dothan City Schools an overall grade of B-. A handful of student reviews on the site are mostly positive. Teachers and Administration received a rating of B-.

The Big Swing

Another thing that must be mentioned is the Big Swing. Dothan City Schools made a radical change a few years ago in hopes of bringing those exiting students back into the system.

Former Dothan Mayor Mike Schmitz gave up running for Mayor and instead chose to pursue the position of School Board Chairman. He was elected easily. More on why he chose to do that later on in this piece.

Not long after assuming the chair, the board hired a new superintendent with a mandate to make significant changes. Dr. Phyllis Edwards was hired and soon recommended sweeping moves, including the closure/consolidation of five schools, the creation of specialized niche themes at each school and other major initiatives.

Here are a few recommended changes:

• Art, music, and physical education at all schools on a scheduled basis.

• A foreign language program at all schools beginning with kindergarten and resulting in credit prior to high school.

• Each school designating a planned instructional theme; such as International Baccalaureate, Expeditionary Learning, STEM, A + School or School for the Arts

• Reading and Math Specialists to demonstrate lesson for teaching staff and help tutor students needing additional help.

• The opportunity to loop or stay with the same classroom for two years

• Providing CTE experiences and opportunities at the middle grades level as part of a diploma requirement

• Community and parental connections such as the hiring of house mothers or fathers

• Additional extra-curricular offerings at each school which connect to the desired theme

• Opportunities for students to compete in math contests, spelling, science, CTE, Future Problem-Solvers etc.

• Anti-bullying programs beginning at grade 5

• Social workers/Case Workers on staff supporting students and parents

• Tutoring and mentoring programs as needed at each school

The plan also included merging Dothan and Northview High Schools.

Some applauded the changes while many resisted. It resulted in numerous emotional public meetings before the board finally approved the changes.

“We must be honest about where we are,” Edwards said in October of 2018, about a month before the changes were approved. “In looking at proficiency levels I see that we are below where we need to be in reading and math.”

Edwards noted a gradual decline in city school enrollment during her recommendations for change and said the system will continue to suffer declines if changes aren’t made.

While the idea had momentum early, still not everyone was pulling in the same direction. Some of the changes remained. But less than two years later, a fractured board parted ways with Edwards, who sued the school system and many of the proposed changes dissolved.

And here we are.

Why the Big Swing?

Industry recruitment, primarily.

Major businesses and industries looking for new locations place a high emphasis on a skilled labor force. A lot of the big players simply look at the numbers, see that Dothan schools are in the red in Academic Achievement, and cross it off the list of possible locations.

This is something Dothan’s mayor and other industry recruiters heard over and over again.

“As Mayor I was able to see that we have all of these companies that need to hire folks and we’re not creating high school graduates with the skills to go to work,” Schmitz said in an interview with the Dothan Eagle in 2019. “What I hope to get is our business community, our medical community, our agricultural community and get everyone involved to see how we can be the best system to help kids get good jobs.”

So, the city took a big swing and tried to do something about it.

Was everything about it done correctly? Was Phyllis Edwards the right person to lead the effort? Was it communicated well?

Or was it doomed to fail from the beginning because we just don’t like change?

Now What?

Whatever the reason, Dothan school officials find themselves crawling out from under something again, just like they did in the early 2000s after the consent decree was lifted.

Attend any school board meeting or look on any school Facebook page and you see students achieving great things. The tools for a high quality education are available and being grasped by A LOT of students every day in Dothan City Schools. We certainly need to celebrate those achievements.

But, how can we continue to improve schools enough to make sure they aren’t a barrier to the future growth of the city?

We swung big one time. Do we need to swing again?