2006 Awards

Gadsden City High's population equals about the combinations of the high schools in Alexandria and Ohatchee, Saks, Weaver and Wellborn, or Jacksonville, Piedmont and Pleasant Valley. But in the past, as talk of school consolidation waxed in Calhoun County, the emotional ties to a community school and the desire for independent control have inevitably quashed discussion.

“I think most cities and towns want to control their own destiny,” said Calhoun County Superintendent Jacky Sparks. “I think they'd be very reluctant to give that up.”

The Anniston city government toyed with the notion of consolidating city schools with the Calhoun County system in 1982 and 2000.

Those proposals buckled under opposition from leaders and residents in both systems.

Even a 1998 move to close Anniston Middle School and make the city's elementary schools K-8 to stem student losses to other systems and private schools in the upper grades — an intra-city consolidation like Gadsden's — failed.

“I don't think that sentiment should be a factor,” said state Sen. Del Marsh, R-Anniston, who has pushed consolidation in the past. “If a system for whatever reason is not producing students with the test scores it should, then whatever we can do to enhance those students' abilities to get the best education they can receive should dictate what we do.”

Marsh attended Banks High School in Birmingham, which no longer exists.

“The change of neighborhoods, the closing of schools,” he said. “I hate the fact that the school doesn't exist anymore, but things move on.”

Strong ties to community schools aren't unique to Alabama. This month, a board of education meeting to discuss closing schools in Seattle ended in the shouting of racial epithets and one man arrested for harassment and trespassing.