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Superintendent's Message, October 2022
Originally published in the October 2022 edition of Vestavia Hills Community News
October 1, 2022 -- Throughout this school year, I plan to provide our community with background information about Vestavia Hills City Schools’ 1Rebel 1Future vision. This month and next, the focus is on our campuses and facilities. If you enjoy numbers, this newsletter is just for you!
Over the past decade, because of the unparalleled support of the community, our school system invested $110 million in capital improvements to address growth in enrollment from 6,119 in 2010 to 7,192 in 2017 — a 17.5% increase. Our schools now have the necessary space for the number of students we currently serve. The focus moving forward is to make sure facility conditions meet the same high expectations we have for our academic programs.
The 7,000 children who attend Vestavia Hills City Schools will spend roughly 16,000 hours of their lives in our buildings this year alone. For 177 school days, about one-third of a student’s day is spent under our roof. And that doesn’t include time spent attending concerts, sports competitions, fall festivals, and many other events. Given the amount of time we have children on our campuses, I’m confident we can all agree that maintaining top-notch facilities must be a priority.
Vestavia Hills City Schools is made up of 9 schools totaling more than 180 acres of property, which includes 1.3 million square feet of building space, 11 ball fields, and 2,226 parking spaces. The age of buildings on our campuses range from 18 to 65 years, with the average being 49 years. We have 9 kitchens/cafeterias, 13 gymnasiums, 9 libraries, almost 400 exterior doors, and 600 classrooms. We also have additional spaces for school resource officers, nurses, counselors, speech language pathologists, interventionists, reading coaches, and administrators.
Our school system employs 54 custodians and 6 maintenance technicians who take care of our facilities. That amounts to each custodian for every 24,000 square feet of building space, and one maintenance technician for every 216,000 square feet. The combined utilities cost for our campuses is more than $3.2 million per year (more about this in next month’s newsletter). With an operations budget of just over $10 million, we spend about $1,400 annually per student to maintain buildings and grounds.
The 1Rebel 1Future vision was developed, in part, after VHCS completed assessments of our facilities to determine needs. These identified needs include safety and security; roofs, heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems; accessibility; parking lots and driveways; interior and exterior building conditions; electrical systems; and plumbing. This level of detail has provided the blueprint for developing a comprehensive plan to update and more effectively maintain our facilities. I encourage you to watch the September and October Board of Education meetings to learn more about these plans.
Todd Freeman, Ed.D.
Superintendent
Vestavia Hills City Schools