Corner, Bagley school grade-shuffle plans now officially under consideration by Jefferson County Schools

A long-developed plan to restructure grade levels at Corner and Bragg middle schools is now officially on the table.

The plan was one of several presented to the Jefferson County Board of Education on April 29. The change would turn Corner into a school for grades five through eight, while Bagley would switch to grades K-4.

Whit Colvin, an attorney for the school system, presented the proposed changes to the board at a special work session to gauge the board’s feelings about the changes before he presents them to the U.S. Department of Justice the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the federal courts — a requirement as part of the decades-old desegregation case Stout vs. Jefferson County Board of Education.

“I wanted to make sure you were all were on board with this before we brought this to them,” Colvin said.

The plan would provide additional opportunities for children in the older grades, Corner Middle Principal Mike Manning and Bagley Principal Phillip Ackerman told the board.

“We’ve already combined the sports teams,” Manning said.

The feeder pattern for the two schools would not change, and the cost of the switch would be negligible, Supt. Dr. Craig Pouncey said.

Other changes for the system would include the implementation of a middle years program for the International Baccalaureate School, the program for high school students currently located at Shades Valley High. The proposed expansion, which was first made public earlier this year, has attracted more than 500 applications to fill a projected 300 openings. A number of those applications have come from students in other nearby systems, including Hoover.

The new middle years program would be housed at the current Pleasant Grove Middle School. To make room for it, the school’s seventh- and eighth-grade students would be moved to Pleasant Grove High. That facility, built shortly before the community was devastated by the 2011 tornado, currently operates at about 50 percent of capacity because of families who did not rebuild after the storm.

Another change would send some students who currently are zoned for the Pinson Valley feeder system, and move them to the Center Point-Erwin feeder. Most of those students are in an area bounded by 25th Street on the south and Sweeney Hollow Road on the east.

Still other students in the Grayson Valley area, as well as some living near the Trussville city limits, would be moved from the Pinson schools to Clay or Chalkville. Right now, a few students near Trussville have to travel all the way to Kermit Johnson Elementary north of Pinson, a journey of 15 miles or more. That’s a result of the vestiges of the breakaway by the Trussville City Schools, which grandfathered many of those students outside the city for several years. That grandfathering period has now expired.

No action was taken by the board on any of the proposals.