Reopening Daleville middle school discussed at board meeting

Plans to reopen a middle school at Daleville City Schools was the topic of discussion at the Daleville Board of Education meeting March 18.

“A lot of research has gone into this,” Daleville City Schools Superintendent Dr. Lisa Stamps told those at the meeting held in the high school cafeteria in order to comply with the mandated COVID-19 precautionary six-feet “social distancing” space between those attending.

Currently the school system has a high school and an elementary school located on two geographically separated campuses. A middle school for fifth through eighth graders, planned to open in August of this year, would be housed on part of the high school campus. The former middle school closed in 2010.

“The middle school will utilize space we already have for classrooms, labs, library, media room and offices, space that has for 10 years not been used,” Stamps said. “It will provide an opportunity to have an exemplary middle school academic program.”

Other benefits include separating the intermediate aged students from younger and older students, reducing the number of lunches prepared at the high school and transported to the elementary school, and placing a state funded full-time principal over the middle school grades.

It also provides more space at the elementary school and returns a state funded full-time librarian for the middle school grades.

“Our goal is to build something exemplary for these middle school kids,” Stamps said. “We took a pretty good sized team of our current fifth through eighth grade teachers and some administrators and toured Homewood Middle School.

“Their facility is not anything out of the ordinary but what they do inside of the buildings is really, really great,” Stamps said. “We got some great ideas of how we can help our students. We want to make this exemplary.”

Stamps said that the DCS population is increasing after a period of decline that has occurred since the 2010-2011 school year. From 1,199 students in the 2010-11 school year, numbers reached an all time low of 930 students in the 2017-2018 school year.

“Student enrollment has increased by 156 students in two years, not including the Pre-K students,” Stamps said. The 1,041 student population in 2018-19 was a 12 percent increase from the year before. The 1,086 students in 2019-20 is a 17 percent increase from the 2017-18 school year.

Stamps said that re-opening the middle school is expected to be done in two phases, the first of which will begin this summer. “On Phase 1, we’re not looking at changing anything electrical, heating and cooling or plumbing,” she said. “It will just be “powder and paint” and we may get to be the lucky ones who do the powder and paint this summer.

“With school out, we’re going to be cleaning out, scrubbing and waxing floors, painting walls and doing whatever it takes for Phase 1 to get started because ready or not, we’re going to start school with it in the fall,” Stamps said. “Then Phase 2 is planned to be done next summer.”

Some of Phase 1 includes security doors and a secure vestibule in the lobby for the middle school. There will be a totally separate entrance for the middle school.

The elementary school counselor will continue to serve fifth and sixth graders and the high school counselor will continue to serve seventh and eighth graders for the 2020-21 school year.

The next meeting of the Daleville BOE is Wednesday, April 22, at 4:30 p.m. in the high school cafeteria. The meeting is open to the public.