can someone please explain something to me about the AL school systems..... (Huntsville: elementary schools, money) - Huntsville-Madison-Decatur area - Alabama - City-Data Forum

TN2HSV · 09-03-2014, 01:02 PM

Why is there a high school for nearly every little town, hamlet, village, wide spot in the road? Some of the towns that have high schools can barely be called towns: Fyffe, Section, Ider, Tanner, Paint Rock, etc. etc. These schools can't be grauduating 100 kids per year. Seems incredibly inefficient to me, and an area where significant money could be saved by consolidating these schools by county or something.

I'm from a very rural area in TN, not unlike the Sand Mtn area of AL, and I grew up in a town of about 1,000 people. There are several towns of similar size in the county, and each town had its own elementary that fed into ONE county high school. The surrounding counties were done in a similar way. Or if there is one town in the county large enough to have its own HS, it does, and the rest of the county towns all feed into one county high school. Not every little wide spot in the road has its own high school. It would be like, for example, Ft. Payne having its own high school and all the other communities in Dekalb Co feeding into 1 high school. (I know Ft Payne does have its own HS...just an example).

Why does Tanner have its own high school? Fyffe? Section? Woodville? Paint Rock? How many kids are they graduating? Is there something I'm missing? It just seems incredibly inefficient and redundant to me.

lem1985 · 09-03-2014, 01:25 PM

some schools not graduating a 100 but that's how it goes its like that in more than likely all states have communities like that

CoreLysium · 09-03-2014, 01:32 PM

I think they generally have a high school when they need to educate the 9th through 12th grade kids. If there are no kids, they don't build one. I'm sure there is a tipping point where it goes from being able to part of another school into needing to have a separate building.

I'm sure some less populated areas have the kind of school that I know Madison Academy had in the 1980s, where K-12 were in the same building.

I'm guessing Tanner has it's own school because there are kids there. According to this, it has 762 kids.
Tanner High School - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TN2HSV · 09-03-2014, 01:44 PM

I know there are kids in the communities. But in Tennessee (where I grew up), every little town may have its own elementary school but several elementary schools feed into one high school. It would have been incredibly inefficient for each little town to have its own high school.

Fyffe, Ider, Woodville, Section....all have smaller populations than the town I grew up in, but they have their OWN high school. How does the state/county have money to support that?

Where I grew up, the county had 6 "towns", each about the size of Fyffe/Ider. EAch had its own elementary, but ALL the towns fed into 1 county high school. That's what I have a hard time understanding....how does the state afford to run al these buildings and pay all these teachers???

Floating_by · 09-03-2014, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TN2HSV

I know there are kids in the communities. But in Tennessee (where I grew up), every little town may have its own elementary school but several elementary schools feed into one high school. It would have been incredibly inefficient for each little town to have its own high school.

Fyffe, Ider, Woodville, Section....all have smaller populations than the town I grew up in, but they have their OWN high school. How does the state/county have money to support that?

Where I grew up, the county had 6 "towns", each about the size of Fyffe/Ider. EAch had its own elementary, but ALL the towns fed into 1 county high school. That's what I have a hard time understanding....how does the state afford to run al these buildings and pay all these teachers???

If your in Huntsville you're pretty much still in TN. You don't see a difference that far upstate.

Floating_by · 09-03-2014, 02:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TN2HSV

I know there are kids in the communities. But in Tennessee (where I grew up), every little town may have its own elementary school but several elementary schools feed into one high school. It would have been incredibly inefficient for each little town to have its own high school.

Fyffe, Ider, Woodville, Section....all have smaller populations than the town I grew up in, but they have their OWN high school. How does the state/county have money to support that?

Where I grew up, the county had 6 "towns", each about the size of Fyffe/Ider. EAch had its own elementary, but ALL the towns fed into 1 county high school. That's what I have a hard time understanding....how does the state afford to run al these buildings and pay all these teachers???

If you're in Huntsville you're pretty much still in TN. You don't see a difference that far upstate.