Split decision: Trussville marks 30 years since its first attempt at a school system

Three decades ago, more words were printed in newspapers about overcrowding in Trussville schools than are written today on Facebook about trains blocking Trussville crossings.

Clearly, it was big news. This is what happened.

The Alabama Department of Education in late 1991 conducted a feasibility study to find if the city of Trussville could financially support a school system independent of Jefferson County tax money. At the time, there were 4,800 total students enrolled at Hewitt Elementary, Hewitt-Trussville Middle, Hewitt-Trussville Junior High and Hewitt-Trussville High schools. A move toward its own school system at the time would force nearly half the enrollment — 835 students at Clay Elementary School and 1,247 at Chalkville Elementary School — to find an alternative to Hewitt-Trussville Middle School when reaching the seventh grade.

In early 1992, a group of parents from the Clay and Chalkville areas formed Save Our Schools, a group in opposition of the city of Trussville forming its own school system. According to Jefferson County Board of Education figures, 62 percent of the students attending the four Trussville schools lived outside the city. A report from the Alabama State Department of Education in March 1992 said Trussville could financially support its own school system, with an annual operating budget of about $13 million if appropriate taxes were raised. That budget amount assumed Trussville residents approving a 15-millage property tax increase that was projected to generate $450,000 annually. Under that plan, non-resident students could stay in Trussville schools.

Hal Riddle, who later coached football at both Clay-Chalkville and Hewitt-Trussville, lived in Chalkville at the time.

“Clay and Chalkville were small little towns that had been there for a long time,” Riddle said. “They were neighbors and cared about each other and wanted to help each other out.”

On April 28, 1992, the Trussville City Council tapped a five-member school panel to serve as the city’s first school board, its first task negotiating with the Jefferson County school system for a solution to overcrowding. The five appointed to the school board were former Trussville City Councilman Dennis Hill, Donna Cornelius, Terry Fleck, Don Haisten and Cecil Medders.

On Sept. 29, 1992, an eight-millage property tax hike was approved countywide, a measure that was projected to generate $9.6 million each year. Hill recommended to the Trussville City Council that it abolish the newly formed school board, but Mayor Charles Grover and Councilman Gerald Glenn said they did not support abolishing the board immediately. Grover said that he would recommend that the board be inactive while a lawsuit over the eight-millage property tax increase was resolved. After about a year of planning and discussion, Trussville did not form its own school system and remained as part of the Jefferson County school system. 

The millage increase that had been approved, however, remained and helped ease the overcrowding of Trussville schools. Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Bruce Wright announced in April 1993 that the county would build a high school instead of an elementary school in the Hewitt-Clay-Chalkville zone. Wright’s plan included building the high school and a middle school in the Clay-Chalkville area to serve students who would have otherwise been routed to schools in Trussville. The plan called for reducing enrollment at Hewitt-Trussville High School from 1,234 students to about 1,029 students. The new middle school in Clay would be fed from Chalkville Elementary School and Clay Elementary School. The new middle school would reduce the number of students attending Hewitt-Trussville Middle School from 1,107 students to 834 students. 

Jack Wood, the Hewitt-Trussville football coach at the time, was against the plan. After all, the more kids available at one school, the better the team.

“It would have been hard for me to mess that up,” Wood said, laughing. “Part of any program is numbers. That’s definitely a key. It would be by far the largest school in the state. I was a heck of a lot better football coach before we split in half.”

The possibility of that today, while not practical, is intriguing. According to Alabama Department of Education average daily enrollment statistics released in December, Auburn High School is the largest in the state with an average daily enrollment of 2,131.70 students. If the split had never happened and Hewitt-Trussville High School continued to grow, the current average daily enrollment of Hewitt-Trussville High (1,209.10) and Clay-Chalkville High (1,061.95) would exceed Auburn’s average daily enrollment by 139.35 students.

“If CCHS had never been created, the folks over there would be missing out on their own local high school and middle school,” Riddle said. “The folks from Clay and Chalkville now have a high school in their neighborhood, and they have a lot of pride in their school.”

Wood understands it was the right decision.

“I think the success Trussville has had and Clay as well in athletics has given more kids more opportunities to play, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

In 1995, the Jefferson County Board of Education gave the community a $750,000 line of credit toward developing athletic fields. The unincorporated Clay-Chalkville community had no official city to look to for money. The old Shades Valley High School steel-frame football stadium was transplanted and re-erected behind Clay-Chalkville High School, now known as Cougar Stadium. It cost between $225,000 and $250,000 to move the stadium, roughly $200,000 less than building new concrete bleachers. Some of the $750,000 line of credit went toward other fields, such as baseball. Clay-Chalkville High School and Clay-Chalkville Middle School opened for the 1996-97 school year.

Matt Wiram attended Trussville schools through 1996 and chose to transfer to Clay-Chalkville for his final two years of high school. He was excited for the split.

“It was a tough decision, but I thought it would be neat to be part of something brand new,” Wiram said. “It was hard to leave friends that I had grown up with to go to the new school. However, many of my best friends had all agreed to go. I was excited to get to suggest names for the new school and vote for mascots. Everything we did was the first time for it at the school.”

In early 1996, it was predicted that Hewitt-Trussville High School would lose about 200 of its 1,480 students to Clay-Chalkville High School. It was projected that over the next few years, a total of about 400 students would move from Hewitt-Trussville to Clay-Chalkville. That breathing room, it was predicted, would allow HTHS to again accommodate ninth-grade students. Despite the breathing room, Trussville maintained its elementary, middle, junior high and high schools. 

Sarah O’Kelley attended Chalkville Elementary School and graduated in 1996 from HTHS. She knew younger classmates who chose, when offered the choice, to attend the new high school in Clay.

“I remember being impressed with the bravery of the ones who were choosing to go to CCHS,” O’Kelley said. “At the time CCHS was built it was very impressive and I’m sure very attractive as a new school. I was a color guard in 10th grade and then a high-stepper in 11th and 12th and was asked, along with a friend, to help train the new CCHS color guard over the summer after graduation. I think I did this two years. It was a nice way to be connected to the excitement of the new school.”

Wiram has a Hewitt-Trussville letterman jacket and a Clay-Chalkville class ring, a duality that most living in these communities today can’t imagine.

“Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I graduated as a Cougar,” he said. “I was a Husky for a long time and have lots of memorabilia from both schools.”

Riddle may have one of the best perspectives on the split, considering he graduated from HTHS, lived in Chalkville when Trussville tapped its original school board, coached at Clay-Chalkville from 1999-2001, and coached at HTHS from 2002-13.

“I don’t know or remember all the details about the [property tax] increase, but here’s what I do know,” Riddle said. “CCHS and HTHS are two prominent high schools in the state of Alabama. They have both had a lot of athletic and academic success, and because of the split, there are now two sets of teams getting to compete. Both schools have a full complement of athletic teams, they have academic squads, they have bands, they have choir and theater programs, [and more]. This gives twice the number of youngsters an opportunity to be involved and be a part of a team where they learn and experience life that will hopefully help them be successful as adults. I think the split was a good thing.”