ECS tuition origins clarified at board meeting

The decision to charge tuition for out-of-district students attending Enterprise City Schools was not an easy one.

That was what Enterprise City Schools Superintendent Greg Faught told the standing-room only crowd attending the Enterprise Board of Education meeting April 24.

What sparked the need for rows of extra seats lining the walls of the central office conference room was the EBOE vote April 16 to join the ranks of public schools charging tuition to out-of-district students.

“I realize that the decision that I made—and my recommendation to the board—and that the actions that we have taken over the last month have put a strain on people,” Faught said. “I’ve made it difficult for our board because this is a difficult decision they’ve had to make.

“I have put a lot of stress on our staff. Over the last month we have fielded literally hundreds of calls and what I would like to do is to take you through a brief history of the last few years and how we have reached this point,” Faught said. “My only goal is to make sure that this school system remains in a position of strength so that we can continue to offer the kind of quality—and build upon the quality–that our parents expect.”

Crediting “some great leadership over the years,” Faught said ECS is in strong financial shape. “But we could not afford to lose a revenue stream without addressing it. I think that would have been irresponsible on my part.”

Faught said that in the 2014-2015 school year, Enterprise Junior High and College Street Elementary Schools were decommissioned based upon a capital facilities study that begin in 2013. The move resulted in a rezoning of the elementary and junior high schools and all city school ninth graders attending Enterprise High School.

The schools’ enrollment over the past four and one half year has grown from 6,548 to 7,183, Faught said. “We’re experiencing over crowdedness and as a precaution I decided to stop out-of-district enrollment for the remainder of this school year to ensure that there would be room for students who are actually moving into the city limits of Enterprise.”

ECS transports more than 1,000 students who live outside of Enterprise city limits. “We will continue to bus our normal routes outside the city next school year,” Faught said. “Bus routes do not determine eligibility to attend ESC. Eligibility for out-of-district students is based upon available space and overall academic standing.

“ECS is currently ranked 123rd out of 137 school systems in per pupil expenditure, which is lower than Coffee County, Daleville City and Ozark City Schools,” Faught said.

“Where you live determines how much tax you pay toward public education and where it goes,” Faught said. After the 2017-2018 school year began, the State Department of Education decided that the way taxes allocated for each school would be distributed differently. That decision is currently being challenged in court locally by the school systems within Dale County.

“With no clear end (to the lawsuit) in sight, I began to look at the number of students who live outside the city limits of Enterprise and how each group is funded,” Faught explained. “Where you live determines how much tax you pay and where it goes.

“After a lot of research and consideration I recommended what I believed to be the lowest tuition in the state of Alabama at $150 per student for 2018-2019,” he said, adding that neighboring Ozark charges $500 per out-of-district student per year.

“Impact Aid is very important to any school system around a federal installation,” Faught said. “But Impact Aid does not adequately fund education by itself. It does not close the gap in funding that we are currently experiencing. It’s not close,” Faught said. “But we appreciate it because it helps our school system do a lot of extra things for the children who are here.

“We certainly understand that the $150 really doesn’t make a dent in what we are losing or the difference in funding between out-of-district students and the Enterprise city students but I felt like we needed to do something other than just kick the can down the road and hope things go better,” Faught said. “I felt like this would give our parents an opportunity to plan for this over the next three and a half months and I am very sensitive to the fact that this affects people in different ways.

“Some people will struggle with this if they are able to do it at all,” Faught said. “But we appreciate our students who do not live within our city limits and hope that they will be with us again next school year.”

Faught invited any person interested in discussing their specific situation to call his office. “I will be glad to make an appointment with you or talk to you on the phone,” he said. “I will sit down with you as long as you want me to sit down with you.”

“If you have any further questions please reach out and give me the opportunity to square it up with you,” he added. “I think that’s the fair thing to do and I’ll be glad to make the time to do it.”

EBOE member Bert Barr, who cast the single vote against tuition, told Faught that individual meetings were not necessary and asked Faught to instead meet with any interested people in a public meeting.

EBOE member Reid Clark disagreed with Barr’s request. “I respect a man who will say that he will meet with you individually to discuss your specific situation,” Clark said. “That meeting is going to be specific to you.

“The community of Enterprise pays taxes to educate the children of Enterprise and the problem with that is there is a bucket of money that comes with taxes and when you add 2,000 other children that are drawing from that bucket, we don’t have the funds to educate the kids the way the taxpayers want,” Clark said, adding that many Enterprise taxpayers do not even have children in school. “We chose to come back to Enterprise because it is the best place to raise a family, no doubt in my mind.

“I voted for (tuition) with the stipulation that we would evaluate it every year looking two years forward,” Clark said. “We’re not trying to run anybody off. We are just trying to figure out a way to make sure this is the best school system going forward.”

Longtime EBOE member Dorothy Richardson, who abstained from voting on the tuition issue, said that she thought that citizen input was lacking in the decision. “I know that people feel left out,” Richardson said. “That’s my only thing about this issue I think we should have given this study a complete year and not pushed this out.

“We are not overcrowded but we expect to be overcrowded so what would 12 months have done? It would have given everybody a better understanding,” Richardson said. “Understanding is the best thing in the world.”

EBOE President Danny Whitaker noted that there has been confusion about the city limits of Enterprise. “That has nothing to do with the board of education,” he said. “You can take that up with your city planners and the folks that run the city.

“Every resident in the county, in the city, in this state is zoned for a school system that will give your child a free public education,” Whitaker said. “So all this saying that we’re kicking you out and you won’t get a free public education—yes, you do where you are zoned. If you live in Coffee County or Dale County, those counties are there to provide your child with a free public education. That is a true fact.

“The sad thing about our school system is that we are running in the top 15 of all the school systems in the state but we are last of those 15 in expenditures per pupil. That’s because we don’t get the tax dollar from non-resident students that we do for our city students,” Whitaker said. “We are spreading our funds from the city thin. The next thing that goes along with that–and this is a fact—children do better in smaller class sizes.

“Out of those top 15 school systems in the state we have the highest student per teacher ratio, not by a little bit,” Whitaker said. “We have around 20 students per teacher. The other systems ahead and behind us have anywhere from 15 to 17 students per teacher. That is a funding issue. We are doing more with less and we are doing a great job. We have great leadership. We have great teachers.

“The question is how long can we keep doing that? We can’t keep kicking this can down the road thinking that someone else is going to fix it.

“We need to fix it now,” Whitaker said. “And this is a step forward in fixing the situation that we have been kicking down the street for a long time.”