BY STEVEN STIEFEL
FOR THE OBSERVER
LEE COUNTY — Lee County Schools lost a net 276.4 students this year, a decline that will cost the district 17 state-funded teacher units, Superintendent Mike Howard told the Board of Education during an Oct. 20 work session.
Alabama funds schools based on average daily membership, which produces fractional student counts. The district was funded on 8,519 students last year, after losing 148 from the year before. It now stands at 8,242.
Howard said the losses reflect a statewide trend.
“We lost over 12,000 students in the state of Alabama this year,” he said. “Remember, last year was historic numbers, around 6,000. Now we’re at 12,000 lost. This is an epidemic for everybody to face.”
Citing State Superintendent Eric Mackey, Howard said only six of Alabama’s 159 public school systems gained students. “That means 153 systems lost students,” he said. “There was one system lost 1,100 students, which means they lost over 60 teacher units this year alone.”
Howard attributed many of the losses to the CHOOSE Act. Lawmakers passed the act in 2024, creating Alabama’s first statewide education savings account program, which opened for the 2025-26 school year. Funded through refundable income tax credits, the accounts provide up to $7,000 per student at a participating private school and $2,000 per homeschool student, capped at $4,000 per family. Families can spend the money on tuition, textbooks, curriculum materials, school fees and certain educational services.
“This year, any parent can pull their student, anybody can homeschool them, anybody can private school them, charter school them,” Howard said. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no guardrails anymore.”
Parents who withdraw a child fill out an exit document explaining why, he said.
“There’s not one individual reason. It’s kind of spread out,” Howard said. “Some are going across state lines. Some are … going to private schools. Some are going to homeschool. We’ve seen a lot of church schools pop up around the area, which has pulled a lot of our elementary students. We’ve seen a lot of homeschools pop up. These micro schools, a lot of online schools pop up.”
Enrollment fell this year at Beauregard Elementary, Beauregard High, Loachapoka High, West Smiths Station Elementary, East Smiths Station Elementary and Wacoochee Elementary. It rose at the Loachapoka and Beulah schools, Samford Middle and Smiths Station High.
“Loachapoka Elementary was our big increase this year. They went up 53.95,” Howard said. “That’s phenomenal because they had been going down year after year.”
The Loachapoka schools now enroll 608 students, a net gain of 43.5 after a loss of 20.35 last year. The Beulah schools enroll 1,197, up 33.7 after a loss of 9.15 last year. Howard said school changes enacted this year made comparisons difficult but not impossible. He also presented grade-by-grade figures showing how each class has grown or shrunk over the past three years.
“This is a bigger year because the state lost the largest number in history. We’re not immune to that whatsoever,” he said. “We’ve been statistically going down anywhere between 100 and 200 students a year for the past decade.”
Because the state funds districts on the prior year’s enrollment, the losses will hit the next budget cycle. Administrators must plan staffing changes by spring. Howard said he gave principals school-specific enrollment numbers Oct. 21 so they can plan staffing ahead of March deadlines.
Alabama sets state funding and teacher units using average daily membership, calculated from the first 20 school days after Labor Day.
The district previously cut locally funded teacher units from 80 to 50 and now holds about 30, Howard said. Keeping operations unchanged would force the district to pay for another 17 units with local money.
“Over the past few years, we reduced those units quite a bit, so that it was more manageable,” he said. “If [a teacher unit] is state-allocated for funding, that’s one thing, but local-funded means it’s 100% on the board to pay for those teacher units.”
Fewer students and fewer teachers mean bigger classes, Howard said. Three teachers with 25 students each serve 75 children. If the school loses 10 students and one teacher, two teachers split 65 students, or about 32 per class.
“That’s the byproduct of losing students and teachers, is that classroom sizes get bigger,” Howard said. “Those are the things that will be concerning moving forward.”
District 1 board member Mark Tomlin said the district must avoid a repeat of the hardships it faced in 2008. He urged the board to consider a policy that would allow students who live outside Lee County to enroll. He said neighboring counties have started poaching student athletes.
Board President Rusty Courson, who represents District 2, said the board needs innovative ways to raise enrollment.
“Ten years ago, we had 733 kids enrolled. Now we’re down to 400,” Courson said.
The enrollment discussion grew out of a presentation by Marcus Fuller on the district’s capital outlay plan. Howard, who retires Jan. 1, said the plan will be the first topic he discusses with his successor.
The state requires the district to list any project over $100,000 in the plan, Fuller said.
“We are required by the state to enter our numbers based on the projects the board has decided to work on,” he said.
Projects in the plan, with estimated costs and completion dates, include:
- A new track at Smiths Station, $500,000, due in 2027.
- Demolition and renovation of the Beulah High concession stand, $500,000.
- Renovation of the kitchen, cafeteria, auditorium and common office at Loachapoka Elementary and High, $20 million, due in 2032.
- New bathrooms at Loachapoka Elementary, $800,000, due next year.
- Renovation and expansion of the West Elementary cafeteria, $10 million, due in 2030.
- Renovation of the former baseball complex and recreation fields, $3 million, due in 2032.
- Replacement of the Smiths Station High sprinkler system, $3 million, due in 2029.
“Everything is the board’s decision,” Fuller said. “Y’all decide on what we need to do, when we need to do it. If it’s a higher emergency thing, for example, if we’ve got some areas that we know need to address based on safety and security, we address those first.”
Fuller cautioned board members against overextending the district.
“Once a significant amount of debt rolls off in 2030, we can do it more easily without it creating a financial strain for us,” he said. “We always want to stay where we’re stable. I know we’re not a bank, but we don’t want to spend money frivolously when we don’t have to.”
Fuller said he will include a more detailed spreadsheet in board members’ November information packets. He said the district will spend state and federal money before local funds.
Board Vice President Larry Patterson noted the plan projects years ahead, and most or all board members may change before the money is spent.
Howard said Phase Two at Smiths Station High School should be finished in early to mid-December, before he retires.
“The track will be very close to completion. It’ll depend on the weather for the surfacing,” he said. “We’ve been working on that for two and a half years.”
On the sprinkler system, Howard said, “We want to allocate a little money to the side to ensure that we go in and put in the new pipe, correct everything, so we don’t have issues where it … starts spewing water at midnight. That’s why we plan five years ahead, saying, ‘Hey, let’s allocate this money so we can ensure we do it and do it correctly, and we can sleep easy.’”
During its regular meeting, the board:
- Approved the capital outlay plan discussed in the work session.
- Raised full-time bus drivers’ hourly pay by $2, effective immediately. The starting rate rises from $24 to $26. Pay for bus driver trainers rises from $12 to $19 an hour.
- Recognized Samford Middle School Principal Steven A. Davis, named District 4 Middle School Principal of the Year by the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools.
- Approved a request from Nick Collier to conduct dissertation research.
- Approved the August financial report and cash reconciliation report. Financial Director Ken Roberts skipped his presentation, citing year-end variables. “I hope to talk to you a little bit more in length in November,” he said. “We’ll be able to discuss where we’re at and how it aligns with your objectives.”
- Approved out-of-state and overnight field trips. The Beauregard High basketball team will compete Nov. 10 in Greenville, Georgia. Students from Smiths Station Junior High, Smiths Station High, Wacoochee Elementary and East Smiths Station Elementary will attend Special Olympics events in Columbus, Georgia, on Oct. 21, Nov. 4 and 18, and Jan. 13 and 27 and Feb. 3, 2027. Beulah Elementary students will visit the Coca-Cola Space Science Center in Columbus on March 25.
- Approved a two-year agreement with Employee Assistance Services. EAS will provide employees and qualified family members up to three confidential counseling sessions a year at $350 an hour. It will also provide critical incident stress debriefings, at $400 an hour, after tragedies such as a co-worker’s death or workplace violence. In those cases, counselors meet with employees as a group on site. EAS will also offer free supervisor training on “How to Spot a Troubled Employee.”
- Approved the September seclusion and restraint report prepared by Angela Arnett.
- Selected District 5 board member Mary Ensley and District 6 board member Larry Patterson as state delegates, with Tomlin as alternate.
- Met briefly in closed executive session to discuss a student expulsion case, then reconvened and adjourned.
- Set its next regular meeting for 5 p.m. Nov. 10 at the district office, 2410 Society Hill Road in Opelika.
