Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles on the debate over whether Fairhope should form an independent city school system.

FAIRHOPE, Ala. - The group that organized last week’s education forum has come out in favor of Fairhope city schools splitting from the county and hired the expert who conducted the $25,000 independent study on the issue for the city as its consultant.

“Ultimately yes,” Scott Thompson, a spokesman for Fairhope Schools Good 2 Great, said Monday, regarding whether Fairhope should split from Baldwin County Schools and form its own system. “Because the research we have done has shown that these city systems are doing it better because they’re smaller. They’re also more efficient and better able to control costs.”

Thompson said his group has hired Ira Harvey as its consultant to advise the group as they seek to form a system separate from the county.

“We paid him $1,500, which was his consulting fee,” Thompson said, adding they initially estimated payment of $1,700 for his trip to last Monday’s education forum, but that Harvey has since waived his travel expenses. “We have him basically at our disposal. He came to do the presentation for the panel, and he is available to us for questions to make sure we’re putting the correct information out.”

The City Council sponsored the Nov. 15 education forum attended by more than 200 people, but it was organized by Scott Thompson and Amy Thompson (not related), according to both Thompsons and Council President Lonnie Mixon.

The advocacy group is not a membership group nor organized as a nonprofit with a board of directors or officers, but it has recently formed an advisory committee of nine current or former educators or administrators. It also has an active Facebook page.

“If I were Baldwin County Board of Education, I would let Fairhope go,” Harvey is quoted as saying at the Nov. 15 meeting in an e-mail the Fairhope Schools Good 2 Great group sent the next day.

At the September meeting at which Harvey presented the $25,000 study commissioned by the city on the feasibility of the city forming an independent system, he told the group assembled at the Civic Center that he was not there to recommend whether the city should form a separate system or not.

The council appropriated $25,000 in January for the study, after it was requested by about a dozen area residents.

Similar studies by the Birmingham-based educational finance consultant have preceded the formation of separate city school systems elsewhere in Alabama such as in Saraland.

The Good 2 Great group also planned to pay the travel expenses of another panelist, Suzanne Freeman, superintendent of Trussville City Schools, but she has since waived her expenses, Thompson said. The Courier was told at the forum Monday night that the group would reimburse her travel expenses from that city in Jefferson County near Birmingham and reported that in its Nov. 17 edition.

The owner of the Fairhope Inn, a local supporter of the group, also provided free rooms at his establishment for both Harvey and Freeman Monday night, Thompson said.