It might be a 99-yard drive but Semmes, MGM can go to the next level with a city school system

 

 

Not long ago, people laughed at the prospect of Semmes becoming a city. Isn’t that the languid place far out in the fringe of Mobile County where they grow flowers and rarely win a football game?

Well, the giggling has been squelched.

Not long thereafter, people rolled their eyes over talk of forming a police department and building a new city hall, all without collecting any property tax.

[√] Police department.

[√] New city hall.

On top of those cheery developments, Mary G. Montgomery High School’s football program — a traditional pinãta — lost one game all season instead of one per week, proving that its days of paddling without an oar are over. That 12-1 season is no fluke and those who doubted Semmes would ever grow anything beyond azaleas and camellias have found their contrarian naysaying resting atop a rubbish heap.

Next up: Those running the land of greenhouses might soon give a green thumbs up to establish a city school system.

Get the next checkmark ready.

It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick — nothing worthwhile ever is — but it’s the right thing to do if Semmes can afford it; the city council has commissioned a five-month study to determine exactly that.

Mobile County Public School System officials aren’t talking about the possibility of yet another city breaking away — as Saraland, Satsuma and Chickasaw did — perhaps because they know they can’t stop it.

But Semmes officials are moving forward. Mayor Brandon Van Hook, a restauranteur and long a prominent voice in the community, called a city school system “the next logical step” since infrastructure, public safety and the quality of life have improved in Mobile County’s sixth-largest municipality.

“Education is vital for Semmes to continue to thrive,” said Van Hook, an MGM alumnus.

 

Best schools are city schools

 

Van Hook is correct. He didn’t say a city school system would be good for just football — which it would be — or any other sport. A city school system would have just as profound an effect on academics. Last year, 24 of the 25 top school districts in the state were city systems, including Saraland’s, according to niche.com.

By the way, 25 of the 29 Class 7A state champions in the three major sports (football, basketball and baseball) have come from city school systems. Only two county schools have won Blue Maps, none of them in football.

The fact that Mary G. Montgomery is now competitive with the finest football programs in the state has been accomplished with a fraction of the resources of the teams atop the food chain. The big schools with the biggest bank accounts — Central-Phenix City, Thompson, Hoover, Auburn and Enterprise, among others — will continue to dominate because they have their own city school systems and need not share their treasure with anybody.

While they can dig into deep veins of cash to build opulent facilities which attract and develop players — and that will only escalate — MGM and other county schools must dig with everything they can lay their hands on to find a few comparative coins.

Mary G. Montgomery finds itself in the unique position as the only 7A school in its region that could reap considerable benefit from a city system. Imagine what the Vikings could do with a covered or indoor practice field and state-of-the-art training facilities, which these days are not luxuries but necessities to compete at the highest levels. It would give them a huge competitive advantage over their rivals.

The MCPSS and Semmes are not meant to dance together forever, although the county system has in recent years thrown as much candy and flowers as it can at its outlying schools — including spending $10 million to install field turf at on-campus stadiums at Mary G. Montgomery, Alma Bryant, Baker, Blount, Citronelle and Theodore.

There is no animus toward the MCPSS — which is probably being operated better and more competently than it ever has — but the largest public school system in the state must distribute money among 92 unwieldy schools and 52,000 pupils. Peel down the $566.5 million budget to what is allocated for capital outlays this fiscal year and it’s $49.3 million.

Even if a Brink’s truck hauled all $49.3 million out to Snow Road and dumped it at MGM’s front door, it would still pale to the most recent budgets for the city school systems cited earlier in this column, which range from $81.4 million in Enterprise (population 29,000) to $216 million in Hoover (population 92,000).

 

Different planets

 

To help understand the different planets Semmes and the biggest schools in the state live on, Enterprise just broke ground on a $14.8 million indoor practice facility, which is more than the entire budget for the City of Semmes in fiscal-year 2024 ($13.5 million), although estimates for 2025 push that to $15.6 million, Van Hook said.

A Semmes city school system wouldn’t have an $80 million budget at the outset; a more similar point of reference is the Brewton City Schools’ budget of $19.3 million for a city the size of Semmes, about 5,200 people. Incidentally, Brewton’s system is among those top 25 school districts in the state and T.R. Miller has won six football state championships and is tied with Oneonta as the state’s all-time winningest football program with 726 victories.

That is no coincidence, nor is the fact that Semmes has noticed the growth of its neighbor to the east since the Saraland City Schools was established in 2006. Both cities have adroit leaders with a vision and in Saraland that vision has drawn thousands of new residents and many new businesses, which helped vault the median income from just under $50,000 in 2010 to $62,800 in 2020. Saraland’s population has also surged 31% from 12,300 in 2000 — long before the schools were built — to 16,170 in 2020.

Those are good enough reasons why a city school system will eventually be formed in Semmes but there are others.

There is political willpower in Semmes to do it and there are enough citizens willing to open their wallets to finance it. The study will tell them how wide.

Van Hook said the city would likely implement an ad valorem tax and the taxpayers will support it if it means better school facilities and especially some Blue Maps in the trophy case.

So, yes, it will be expensive but what isn’t these days? Contrary to what Joe Biden has been pretending when he’s not fast asleep, sometimes even when he’s in bed, inflation does not exist only in party balloons or your imagination.

Semmes residents, most of whom are conservative, put great store in fiscal responsibility and would love to see their tax money controlled and kept locally instead of sending it to the county school system, where it is divided among 12 high schools.

 

A worthwhile endeavor

 

There is also precedent for splitting away. Saraland, Satsuma and Chickasaw nearly engaged in a civil war with the MCPSS before the county consented to the breakaways, and state law provides a path to independence, so the county can’t block Semmes’ unfettered conveyance.

Semmes also has the numbers to justify a move. According to U.S. News and World Report, the estimated enrollment of MGM, Semmes Middle School, Semmes Elementary School and Allentown Elementary School is 4,666 — bigger than 52 other city school systems in Alabama, including Saraland’s (3,400).

But Semmes residents must also accept that it will take time for their system to provide the resources the MCPSS does. Using Brewton’s $12 million instructional budget as an example for 4,666 students, that’s $2,571 per student compared to $9,333 spent per student by the county, although the ad valorem tax, state and federal contributions would fatten Semmes’ numbers. The MCPSS tried to scare Saraland with that argument to no avail — and Saraland now spends $9,544 per student.

Semmes will also have the cumbersome task of negotiating with the MCPSS to take ownership of the schools and property and annex all of it into the city limits.

But the arduous transition will be worth it. Some in the debate will fear the price is too high and the community will be changed for the worse. But over time, the assets a city school system provides will vastly outweigh the costs. If the people in Semmes want the best for their children, academically and athletically, a city school system is the remedy.