As Baldwin County students return to the classroom, it is the perfect time to look back at the state of the education system in Baldwin County as it has evolved over the past 100 years. Most students today will begin their lifelong learning process in comfortable, climate controlled, state-of-the-art classrooms.  And they will study alongside other students of all races as they learn advanced mathematics, grammar, and the complex history of the world around them. Today’s classroom is modern, offers a wide variety of teaching tools and is safe and comfortable.

Nonetheless, as Baldwin County students from the past can attest, the previous statements were not always true.  In all aspects of education, the system has evolved as both the students and the world has changed.  For example, the very halls of education have advanced remarkably over the last 100 years. Prior to the 1920s, most Baldwin County school buildings were small, often one-room structures that were more reminiscent of the past century rather than that of the modern era. However, in the late 1920s, that changed locally, as it did on a statewide level. From at least 1927-1929, the State Board of Education offered standardized plans to local school boards, from which schools ranging from one room to multiple rooms with indoor plumbing and auditoriums could be constructed. The “modern” plans were extensive—no detail was spared, from the exact manner in which the bricks were to be laid to the color of the paint for the walls. 

School transportation in the form of the familiar yellow bus has been constantly refined for efficiency and safety throughout the twentieth century. According to an Alabama State Board of Education publication, “An Administrator’s Handbook of School Transportation,” school transportation apparently began in Alabama in 1912 when Ben L. Tew arranged to close the one-room school he was teaching and to transport himself and the school children by wagon to join the faculty and student body of the Ward School of War in Sumter County. In Baldwin County, individuals from all over the area used wagons, specially modified trucks and more to transport school children.

Education systems nationwide have made great strides in the last century, moving from a lack of diversity to one of limitless horizons. While desegregation is an event not far removed from us today, the black educational institutions that arose during that era in Baldwin County triumphed over discrimination as they sought to teach more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. One example of such a school was the Baldwin County Training School, which functioned as a school for the area’s black children from 1889 to 1970. More than that, however, it served as a foundation for all black residents of the county. Classes at the school ranged from classical literature and mathematics to vocational agriculture and home economics, thus providing a wide range of skills.

Even though the Training School closed its doors in 1970 after integration took effect in Baldwin County, its legacy lives on today in the lives of the men and women who attended, as well as their children and grandchildren. Today, Baldwin County’s school system is one of the best in the state, with modern facilities, dedicated teachers and a firm grounding in the spirit of the Baldwin County residents.