BAY MINETTE, Ala. — The Baldwin County Board of Education voted to close the Fairhope K1 Center during its regular meeting Thursday night. It’s an action that could be repeated throughout the county.

“I’m looking at a plan that would lower class sizes from the mid-30s to the lower 20s,” Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Dr. Alan Lee said in an interview after the meeting. “We’re looking at similar consolidations in four parts of Baldwin County, and that also includes Bay Minette, Foley and Daphne.”

Thursday’s action didn’t come without opposition. Fairhope board representative Bob Callahan cast the lone dissenting vote on the closure. He also echoed Lee’s forecast of possible additional consolidations.

“Other difficult decisions are beyond the horizon,” he said in an interview following the meeting.

The board’s action was also met with opposition from the public. Prior to the vote, several Fairhope residents asked the board to reconsider. Among them was veteran kindergarten teacher Cassandra Jones, who said moving a school was difficult on students and provided the example of Fairhope Elementary.

“They have already moved three times,” she said. “Now with K6, they will have to move again.”

But according to Lee, such a move is key to maintaining a manageable teacher-student ratio.

“We’re looking at a four- to five-year capacity there (at the Fairhope K1 Center),” he told Gulf Coast Newspapers.

However, several who spoke at the meeting said the move would actually fill classrooms to capacity and portable classrooms would be necessary at the elementary school.

Another issue discussed was the financial aspect of the move. According to Marion Lamie, the board’s findings that the K1’s closure would said $720,000 are incorrect. She told the board that her own research found it would garner a “savings of only $200,000.”

In her address, Fairhope resident Jean Norman pointed to a three-page “memorandum of understanding,” an agreement made between the board and the Fairhope City Council several years ago that paired bond issues and sales-tax issues to fund the school.

“Whether it’s legally binding or not, it’s a gentleman’s agreement, and for us women too,” she said.

According to Fairhope attorney and parent John Hunter, the K1 Center adds to the appeal of the city.

“That K1 Center is a jewel in what is a utopia,” he said in his address to the board. “It drew me from Mobile.”

He went on to say that same draw attracts commerce.

“What draws businesses is the quality of education,” Hunter said.

He was also among several speakers to ask the board why he and other residents haven’t seen the financial breakdown of the move’s cost-effectiveness.

“Where are the taxpayers able to analyze this?” Hunter asked.

According to Lee, the report has been available for eight months for those requesting a copy.

“We received the first request on March 2nd,” he told Gulf Coast Newspapers. “That was by a parent, electronically, and it was provided electronically. After that we had two more requestions, and they were provided eletronically.”

Also during his address to the board, Hunter asked why the public was being denied the opportunity to be part of the decision-making process for such a move.

“We do feel like our voting rights are being trampled on,” Hunter said.

The aspect of what happens to a school building once it’s closed was also talked about Thursday. In her address to the board, Wanda Weeks provided the board with a written proposal of an alternative plan, as well as photographs of Weeks High School, both in its heyday and after it was closed and the building fell into disrepair.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” she said.

But LeslieAnne Tarabella, chairman of Save the K1 Committee, asked the board if they had other plans for the building that included converting it to administrative offices.

“If you do have a plan, you should make it public,” she told the board. “We have a right to know.”

Immediately following the board’s vote to close the K1 Center, the action’s opposers in the audience left the meeting en masse.

“I was shocked that the Board of Education would not respond to our questions,” Tarabella  told Gulf Coast Newspapers in an interview after the meeting.

Find complete coverage of Thursday’s Board of Education meeting in the Wednesday, March 23, edition of The Baldwin Times.