The Elberta High School girls’ volleyball team might pursue championships this year.

But no matter what the outcome, victory is already theirs as the Warriors last Thursday became the first official participants of a scrimmage inside a new $6.9 million, 29,970-square-foot state-of-the-art gymnasium anchoring the high school that opened six years ago.

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“I don’t know anyone south of Montgomery that has anything like this,” said Branton Bailey, principal at Elberta High School referring to a new gym for the high school basketball, volleyball and wrestling programs and includes new laundry facilities, among other features.

“To see this building take shape is unbelievable,” he said.

Massive construction

It’s also a sign of more to come for both Elberta, and the Baldwin County School System.

The gymnasium was officially opened during a ribbon cutting on Thursday. But school officials are anticipating plenty more ribbon cuttings in the coming year with multiple programs occurring at the same time, all which are aimed at addressing the school system’s ongoing growth needs.

They include:

• $101.3 million in the “Pay As You Go” program’s Phase 4. The Elberta gym project was among the final projects within this phase. A new $25 million K-6 elementary school in Silverhill is under construction, as is a new elementary school in Spanish Fort. But other facilities within this phase – such as the new Stonebridge Elementary School between Spanish Fort and Loxley – have long been opened.
• $94 million in Pay As You Go’s Phase 5 are now underway and are highlighted by a new $30 million middle school in Elberta, and a $26 million elementary school in Loxley. Elberta will get an even further boost within this phase with a $10 million expansion to the elementary school that includes a new cafeteria.
• $57.2 million in new athletic facilities, band rooms and parking lot reconfigurations are expected to be underway soon, once design work is completed. The projects include roughly more than $6 million in athletic facility enhancements to each of the school system’s seven high schools.

Five of the county’s high schools will be getting new gyms, though they will be smaller than the Elberta project. Those include Daphne, Fairhope, Foley, Robertsdale, and Baldwin County in Bay Minette.

Elberta High School, under the proposal, is set to get new bleachers at its high school stadium that can seat 2,500 people, as well as a new press box and restroom building, and field turf.

“We’re in a very competitive market right now in education,” Baldwin County School Superintendent Eddie Tyler said. “We are competing with all forms of education whether that is charter, private school, home school, parochial. All of those folks want the same thing we do and that is educating children. It’s competitive.”

He added, “That’s why there is this $57 million-plus athletic enhancements that are ongoing around the county. We got to be ready. Nobody will be marketing us. We’ll be marketing ourselves.”

The building projects are continuing to move forward at a time of continued growth for Baldwin County which is the fastest-growing county in Alabama since 2010, and among the fastest-growing in the state on an annual basis.

Elberta, and its surrounding areas near Foley, Summerdale and Lillian, are among high-growth areas.

“Neighborhoods are going up everywhere,” Tyler said. “We just have to deal with it. People want to live in places like Elberta and move along the (Alabama State Route) 59 corridor, west of (Alabama State Route) 181. It’s exploded.”

Cost advantages

The county is going into very little long-term debt to pay for the work.

John Wilson, the school system’s CFO, said he will be asking the School Board to approve an $80 million, 4-year bank loan to pay off the construction projects. The balance will be financed through reserves.

“It’s for 4 years,” he said. “Then it’s all paid off.”

The only long-term debt related to school construction for Baldwin County is with an $82.7 million career-tech school under construction on Route 59 north of Loxley. The 196,340-square-foot school, which could cost up to $92 million once its furnished, is financed through long-term bonding. It’s expected to open next fall.

“Since 2015, the only thing we’ve bonded out is the (career-tech center),” Tyler said. “If we took out a bond for a high school, we couldn’t build other schools. We don’t have an appetite for bonds.”

Tyler said that since 2015 – the year the Pay As You Go program was first adopted – the school system is approaching $500 million total in construction costs.

The program was bolstered two years later in 2017 after public officials agreed to a permanent extension of a one-cent sales tax that brings in $60 million or more a year. That revenue is also used to pay for hundreds of teachers and support staff.

The program started relatively small – the first two phases, beginning in 2015, financed around $40 million in projects. By Phase 3, the program climbed to $116 million.

The athletic facilities and band room investments are also being supported through a $35 million cash payment the school system received after the City of Orange Beach agreed to break away from the Baldwin County School System in 2022.

“I hated to see the Orange Beach family leave us,” Tyler said. “But I respect their decision. That’s what they had to do. But we were the beneficiaries of the financial compensation. We were able to go in and do athletic enhancements. We wish them well, but we have to worry about ourselves.”