Photo by Jon Anderson
Bumpus Middle School is one of the Hoover schools facing growth pressure as new homes are built on the western side of the city, school officials say.
The Hoover school board on Tuesday night voted to hire a facilities planner to do an in-depth analysis of the Hoover school system’s buildings and develop options for handling growth and enrollment patterns.
Superintendent Kevin Maddox told the school board last month that ever since he arrived a little over a year ago, people have been asking him how the school system is going to handle all the kids coming from new homes being built in Hoover.
There are about 4,080 homes approved but not yet built in Hoover, and just about all of them are on the western side of the city, he said.
Hoover High School, with roughly 2,900 students, already is the largest high school in the state, and he is told that Bumpus Middle School is getting full, he said. Elementary schools also are impacted by growth, and there is an 11th elementary school in the school system’s five-year plan as a placeholder, Maddox said.
The school board in December 2022 voted to ask the federal court to allow the Hoover school system, at some point in the future, to turn both South Shades Crest Elementary and Brock’s Gap Intermediate into K-5 schools. South Shades Crest formerly was a K-5 school, but a realignment plan in 2018 switched the school to a K-2 school and made Brock’s Gap, which originally was the home for Bumpus Middle School, for grades 3-5.
Maddox said everyone is asking him what the school system should do next and he has no idea. So he asked the school board to hire a Homewood-based company called HPM to do a study.
“We’ve reached a point where we need some professional help,” Maddox said.
The school board on Tuesday agreed to pay HPM $34,500 for the first phase of a long-range facilities plan. That first phase will involve an in-depth demographic study that looks at things such as historical enrollment data and historical data about how many children have come from different kinds of housing (apartments, condominiums, townhomes and various sizes of other single-family homes), said Tracy Richter, the vice president of planning services for HPM.
People may look at the number of approved homes not yet built (4,080) and think that’s going to mean 5,000 new students, “but that’s far from the truth,” Richter said. “Most houses don’t produce but .6 or .7 kids per house.”
Also, you shouldn’t think all of those homes are going to be built at one time, Richter said. Buildout of a subdivision typically is a 5-year to 7-year process, he said. Some of Hoover’s subdivisions are large and have longer-term buildouts.
Maddox said the school-age population in parts of Hoover is shrinking as parents turn into empty-nesters. He asked Richter whether those homes eventually will produce children for schools again as the empty-nesters sell to people with school-age children.
Richter said that happens everywhere, but the timing of it is almost impossible to predict. “Gentrification isn’t happening right now,” he said.
When interest rates were so low six or seven years ago, many people refinanced at rates around 2½%, and now that interest rates are back up, they don’t see the same advantage of downsizing to a smaller home and lowering their payments, he said.
“Some of those homes you thought would turn over may not turn over for a while, and those empty nesters will sit there and empty nest for a while and hold onto that square footage for a 2½% interest rate,” Richter said.
The first phase of this study likely will take until January, Richter said. Then school officials can decide if they want to proceed with HPM for future phases of the planning process.
The next phase will be facility planning — looking at existing facilities, their capacity and need for capital improvements. Hoover’s schools, while well-maintained, are beginning to age, Richter said. The original part of Hoover High School is now 30 years old.
Officials will need to examine multiple options for dealing with enrollment growth, Richter said. You can redraw school zones to shift students where there is available space, build additions, build new schools, close schools, change school feeder patterns and move particular academic programs from one school to another.
Hoover officials already have been doing a lot of program movement with the opening of the Riverchase Career Connection Center, which brings students from both Hoover and Spain Park high schools to a separate campus in Riverchase for specific career training. That has freed up space at both schools, but particularly needed space at Hoover High, where more growth is occurring.
Some school districts automatically build a new school when one gets too crowded, but “I’ve seen too many districts build their way out and find way too much space in their district in 15 years,” Richter said.
All options should be weighed, he said. There’s also the question of how big do you want your schools to be, he said.
“There’s no right or wrong answer to this,” he said. “I don’t get in the debate of small school, big school. … That’s for you and your community to decide.”
What his firm does is look at building utilization, down to the hour, he said. Building capacity is a fluid concept and usually involves ranges because capacity can fluctuate easily depending on the particulars about how many students are in each grade and how many classrooms are used for general education versus special education, he said. A building’s capacity can change overnight without moving any brick and mortar, he said.
Also, it’s important to consider the size of common areas, such as cafeterias, libraries and auditoriums, he said. Schools in some districts have expanded the number of classrooms without expanding the cafeteria and have to serve lunch from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., he said.
A further phase of planning would involve community engagement, sharing findings with stakeholders in the community and getting feedback, he said. And then finally would be implementation — coming up with solutions that could involve asking for additional funding from the community and then implementing those solutions.
With enrollment having slowed down and even decreasing slightly in recent years, Hoover has not had to build a lot of schools. For those construction projects the school board has undertaken, including additions, the board for the most part has been able to use its existing revenue streams and has not borrowed any new money since 2007, Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay has said.
But somewhere down the road, more facility decisions will need to be made, and those can be tough decisions, Richter said.
Maddox said he believes HPM can provide a valuable service in analyzing growth trends and presenting options.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:32 p.m. on Oct. 10 to correct the headquarters location for HPM. The company is based in Homewood.
