Cash News
Bessemer City Schools will operate under state, not local oversight, effective immediately.
The Alabama Board of Education voted unanimously to take over Bessemer City Schools at its Thursday board meeting in Montgomery.
That means the local school board is no longer in charge of decisions about personnel, finance or operations.
Bessemer City, located just west of Birmingham, enrolls about 3,000 students and employs just under 240 staff members. The district, which celebrated its first day of school Thursday, will retain its current superintendent and school board, but will now operate under the guidance of a state intervention team.
“Some of these issues are deep, they go back a while,” State Superintendent Eric Mackey said before the vote. “The board, in my opinion, has gone through periods where it was more responsible and more effective, but they have really not been highly effective in a very long time. And so many things have systemically gotten out of order.”
State board members appointed longtime superintendent Daniel Boyd as the chief administrative officer who will oversee the intervention locally.
Mackey told AL.com he may hire a few other staffers to help sort out finances, and will oversee the district’s ongoing search for a new chief financial officer. Bessemer City Superintendent Dana Arreola, who was hired last year, will remain in her current role.
The state resolution outlines the sequence of events leading to the intervention.
On July 3, Mackey issued a strong warning to local school officials, telling them the state would intervene if they didn’t fix key finance and governance problems.
A special audit later revealed that, over a period of two years, officials had not approved an updated salary schedule and had repeatedly violated state bid law with a number of construction projects and contracted services.
Mackey said the district has been plagued by “dysfunctional” board meetings, where members have refused to fix key issues because they were unable to reach a quorum.
“They have plenty of money to fix their roofs, but they’ve got buckets in the hallways because the board can’t approve an architect or a contractor – they’ve just got all kinds of problems,” Mackey said.
After a meeting with Mackey, Bessemer board members voted on July 22 to agree to the intervention.
“We are committed to ensuring that our students and staff have what they need to be successful, so if that’s working with the state department, we will be working with them cooperatively to make sure that they have what they need to help us be successful,” Board Vice President Terry Dawson told reporters after the vote.
Immediate next steps include overseeing outstanding repairs and settling staffing matters, Mackey said.
Eventually, an intervention team will take a deeper look at classroom instruction and curricula. The district received a 61, a “D” grade, on its latest state report card.
“We generally see that a high-functioning board will lead to high-functioning students,” Mackey told AL.com. “I truly believe, just by having really good governance and oversight and clean buildings that don’t have leaks in the hallways — those kinds of things will raise student achievement without working on student achievement.”
According to the resolution, intervention will continue until the school system “demonstrates suitable progress towards correcting the deficiencies that led to intervention including, but not limited to, plans addressing board governance, finances, personnel, facilities, and student learning.”
Mackey said he expects the takeover to last a least a couple of years.
Trisha Powell Crain contributed reporting.