Athens City - EdTribune AL - Alabama Education Data

Leslie Sedberry Wants Athens Middle Students Welcomed and Challenged

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Leslie Sedberry sees her move from assistant principal to principal of Athens Middle School as a chance to continue serving a community she already knows, with relationships built among students, staff and families.

“Stepping into the principal role allows me to build on that work and continue serving a school community I care deeply about.” Sedberry described that commitment in written answers to The ALEdTribune.

The district's leadership directory lists her as principal. Her earlier assistant principal role also appears in an archived school course catalog, documenting the continuity behind the change in position.

Alabama's most recent published enrollment report records 935 students at Athens Middle in 2025-26, last school year. The figure describes the school before this principal transition. Sedberry's plans now center on students feeling welcomed, supported and challenged, with staff working together to meet their needs.

A familiar community, a new role

Sedberry said serving as assistant principal gave her opportunities to build strong relationships across the school community. Those connections are central to why she wanted to take on the principal's responsibilities.

Her professional background includes National Board certification, recorded in the Athens City^↗ Board of Education's teacher recognitions. In her answers, she connects leadership with teaching and learning, describing the principalship as an opportunity to carry forward work with a staff and community she values.

“I want families to notice a school where every student feels welcomed, supported, and challenged to grow each day.” Her description brings a positive school environment together with academic expectations. She hopes families will see strong classrooms, positive relationships and staff committed to helping children succeed.

The emphasis is on how students experience the school, as well as the work adults do together. Sedberry's answers return to collaboration, support among colleagues and the importance of keeping students' needs at the center of school systems.

“I also hope they see strong classrooms, positive relationships, and a staff that is committed to helping every child succeed.” Her answer puts the adults in the building alongside the classroom experience. She wants families to see a common commitment to their children, with positive relationships supporting the expectations she describes for students.

A larger middle-grade school

Alabama publishes school enrollment in two reports that count differently, so this profile reads each one on its own terms.

The state's Report Card counts, which run through 2024-25, show a school that grew once those records began covering sixth grade. Athens Middle reported 817 students in 2018-19, the first year those records cover sixth through eighth grade, and 937 in 2024-25. That is 120 more students, or 14.7%. Before 2018-19 the records cover only seventh and eighth grade, so the chart keeps those years on a separate line.

The rise was not continuous. The Report Card total peaked at 970 in 2021-22, and 2024-25 sat 33 students below that high.

The fall attendance report, the source for the 2025-26 figure, is the one to use for last year's change. On that basis Athens Middle counted 935 students in 2024-25 and 935 again in 2025-26, so enrollment held level in the year before the principal transition.

Asked what growth asks of staff, Sedberry emphasized their ability to work together around students' needs. “Growth asks our staff to remain flexible, collaborative, and focused on meeting the needs of every student.” She also described strengthening school systems, supporting colleagues and maintaining a positive learning environment.

Supporting students across the grades

Last school year's grade counts were close in size: 311 sixth graders, 309 seventh graders and 315 eighth graders. Those counts reconcile exactly to the published school total of 935.

Sedberry's emphasis on collaboration has a practical context in the school's posted curriculum guide. It describes a Problem-Solving Team involving teachers, administrators, counselors and other participants as needed. The group discusses students' needs and ways to assist teachers, including instructional approaches, interventions and behavioral support.

The same guide describes core coursework in English, mathematics, science and social studies, alongside elective choices. It also identifies PowerSchool as a way for parents and students to access grades. These descriptions put classroom instruction, individual support and family access to information within the broader school setting Sedberry discusses.

Athens Middle within the district

Athens Middle accounted for 16.4% of Athens City's published district enrollment of 5,688 in 2025-26. It was the district's second-largest school by the individually published school totals. The district count includes 160 pre-K students at other schools, while Athens Middle's published total reports none, so the share is a guide to scale rather than a like-for-like comparison.

Those figures show the scale of the community Sedberry is leading. Her own answers focus on the experience within that community: classrooms where children are challenged, relationships that support them and adults who remain flexible as they work together.

For families, her stated goal is a school where welcome and support accompany learning. For staff, it is collaboration and support for one another. Sedberry's principalship builds on existing relationships, with a commitment to continuing the work of a school community she says she cares deeply about.

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Nick Looney Builds on Relationships at Athens Elementary

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 12:00:00 GMT

For Nick Looney, becoming principal of Athens Elementary School means continuing work in a building he already knows, with relationships he wants families to feel as soon as they enter.

“When they enter our building this fall, I want families to feel welcome, comfortable, and confident that this is a great place for their children to learn and grow.” Looney offered that perspective in written answers to The ALEdTribune, describing a neighborhood school where contact with families is part of everyday life.

His appointment appears in the Athens City^↗ Board of Education's spring personnel approvals, and the district's school directory lists him as principal. The move follows his work as the school's assistant principal, a role also documented in an earlier board school report.

Alabama's most recent published enrollment report records 454 students at Athens Elementary in 2025-26, last school year. That total includes 73 pre-K students. It describes the school before this principal transition and gives context for the early-grade work Looney discusses.

Continuing work in a familiar school

Looney said his move from secondary education into an elementary setting initially brought uncertainty about what to expect. Working at Athens Elementary changed that perspective. When the principal position opened, he wanted to continue serving the school and building on its existing work with staff.

His secondary-school background also appears in the Athens City Schools Foundation's Teacher of the Year archive, which names him as an Athens Middle School honoree. His path to the principalship thus includes both secondary teaching and elementary administration.

In his answers, Looney emphasizes staff participation in the systems and structures developed at Athens Elementary. The direction he describes is continuity: maintaining a shared approach to instruction while investing in the collaboration needed to carry it forward.

That approach brings together organization and relationships. Clear instructional expectations matter to him, but so do children feeling safe and families feeling connected. He describes the early years as shaping children's first experiences with school, making the atmosphere of the building part of the work of leading it.

Looney wants decisions about the school to come back to whether they help students learn and thrive. His emphasis on teacher collaboration connects that question to daily practice: adults working together around the knowledge, skills and confidence children will need as they move through the elementary grades.

An early-grade landscape

Last school year's published grade counts place 100 children in kindergarten, 95 in first grade, 90 in second grade and 96 in third grade. Those groups, together with the pre-K group, form the reported enrollment landscape.

The kindergarten through third-grade counts sum to 381. Adding the 73 pre-K students gives the published school total of 454.

Looney's vision reaches across the grade span. He wants teachers to see students' learning as a continuous journey, with the work in a classroom preparing children for what comes next. His description includes pre-K and kindergarten as important parts of the school's learning environment, and the school's published total counts its pre-K children.

The school itself is listed as serving pre-K through third grade in the district's school directory. For Looney, the early-grade setting calls for an environment that is safe, joyful and structured, alongside deliberate attention to what children will know and be able to do when they leave.

A neighborhood connection

“We are a community school; our students and their families in some cases live literally across the street from the school.” Looney said being located among neighborhoods creates opportunities to interact regularly with families.

He also described language access as part of that relationship. In his account, the school has prioritized hiring staff who can help connect with Spanish-speaking families and support communication about children. He wants parents to know that the school sees them as partners.

“I want families to know that we see them, seek to partner with them, and we are excited to serve their children.”

The state's earlier English learner report offers a separate instructional-support measure. In 2024-25, Athens Elementary reported 113 English learners against a published school total of 396, or 28.5%. Those figures cover the same grades and exclude pre-K. English learner classification does not measure the language spoken at home, and this earlier report cannot establish the school's composition last school year or now.

Part of Athens City

Athens Elementary represented 8.0% of Athens City's published district total of 5,688 students in 2025-26. School and district totals use the same reporting year and both include pre-K.

Earlier years come from a different state report, the Report Card counts, which also handle pre-K differently. Setting those figures beside last school year's fall attendance count would mix two measures, so this profile uses the 2025-26 snapshot on its own to describe the school's scale.

Looney's stated priority is to connect that early-grade work with a school where relationships remain central. He wants students to experience joy and structure, teachers to collaborate around clear expectations and families to feel comfortable engaging with the school. For the new principal, continuing familiar work also means keeping those relationships at the center of the decisions ahead.

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28 Alabama Districts Have Recovered to Pre-COVID Enrollment. Four in Five Have Not

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Five years after the pandemic emptied classrooms across Alabama, the students have not come back. Of 138 districts with comparable enrollment data from before COVID through 2025-26, just 28 have returned to their fall 2019 levels. That is a recovery rate of 20.3%.

The state as a whole has fared worse than any individual recovery statistic suggests. Alabama enrolled 740,118 K-12 students in the 2019-20 school year (the last pre-COVID fall count). By 2025-26, that figure had fallen to 714,363, a loss of 25,755 students, or 3.5%. The pandemic did not cause a temporary dip followed by a rebound. It marked the beginning of a sustained decline that has now lasted four consecutive years.

The false recovery of 2022

Alabama's year-over-year pattern tells a story of one brief reprieve surrounded by losses. After COVID drove enrollment down by 10,332 students in 2020-21, the state clawed back 6,022 in 2021-22. That single year accounts for the entirety of Alabama's post-pandemic recovery. Every year since has brought another decline: 6,019 lost in 2022-23, then 11,073 in 2023-24 (the largest single-year drop in the dataset), followed by 1,243 in 2024-25 and 3,110 in 2025-26.

The 2022 rebound, in other words, was not the start of recovery. It was an interruption in a downward slide.

Had pre-pandemic trends held, Alabama would have enrolled roughly 741,860 students in 2025-26 (based on the 2015-2020 linear trajectory). The actual count of 714,363 leaves the state 27,497 students below that projection, a gap that has widened every year since 2022.

Three cities, 14,495 missing students

The largest raw losses are concentrated in Alabama's urban cores. Mobile County^↗ has lost 7,314 students since its pre-COVID count, a 13.5% decline. Birmingham City^↗ is down 3,665 students (16.0%), and Montgomery County^↗ has lost 3,516 (12.4%). Together, these three districts account for 14,495 of the state's 25,755-student shortfall, or 56.3%.

Jefferson County^↗, which surrounds Birmingham, lost another 3,254 students (8.9%), bringing the Big Four total to 17,749.

The losses extend deep into smaller systems. Dallas County^↗ has lost 29.3% of its enrollment since 2020. Selma City^↗ is down 25.5%. Walker County^↗ lost 1,042 students, a 14.0% decline. These are districts that were already operating on thin margins.

Where the students went

State Superintendent Eric Mackey offered a blunt accounting in October 2025. Of the 5,800 students Alabama's public schools lost that year, approximately 3,000 enrolled in private schools or homeschool programs using education savings accounts through the CHOOSE Act, the voucher-like program signed into law in March 2024. Another 2,100 students simply vanished from enrollment records.

"We know we have about 2,100 kids that were enrolled last year that have just disappeared. They're just gone." -- WBRC, Oct. 2025

Mackey reported that local superintendents identified a majority of the unaccounted students as Hispanic, though federal privacy law prohibits schools from inquiring about immigration status. The CHOOSE Act's first-year impact was more modest than its appropriation suggested: of approximately 24,000 ESA recipients, roughly 10,000 were already attending private schools, and another 9,000 were already homeschooled. Only about 3,000 transferred out of public schools, according to state data.

The CHOOSE Act's second year could have a larger effect. Lawmakers have discussed making the program universal despite tight Education Trust Fund budgets, which would open eligibility beyond the current income-tiered structure.

But the CHOOSE Act alone does not explain the scale of the post-COVID shortfall. The 25,755-student gap accumulated over five years. Birth rate declines, interstate migration, and a persistent post-pandemic shift toward homeschooling and private schooling all contributed. Alabama's natural population change turned negative in 2024, with deaths exceeding births by 2,200, a demographic headwind that enrollment data is only beginning to reflect.

The virtual school mirage

The three districts that appear to have staged the most impressive post-COVID recoveries are, on closer inspection, artifacts of virtual school enrollment that did not exist before the pandemic.

Limestone County^↗ grew from 11,030 to 16,633 students (50.8%), but nearly half of its current enrollment consists of Alabama Connections Academy students. Eufaula City^↗ surged from 5,367 to 8,619 (60.6%), with Alabama Virtual Academy accounting for roughly three-quarters of its headcount. Chickasaw City^↗ more than doubled, from 1,549 to 3,387 (118.7%), largely through Alabama Destinations Career Academy.

Remove these three districts and the recovery rate drops from 22.0% to 20.3%. The virtual enrollment these districts carry is real in the sense that students are receiving instruction, but it inflates the host district's numbers in ways that obscure the underlying trend. As Mackey told Alabama Daily News: "Virtual school is a good fit for some young people...but it's not for everybody."

The funding cliff behind the enrollment cliff

Enrollment decline does not just mean empty desks. Alabama's Foundation Program allocates teacher units based on student headcounts from the 20-day count following Labor Day. Fewer students means fewer units, which means fewer teachers funded by the state.

"Between 500-700 teacher jobs will disappear next year as we work on the next budget cycle." -- State Superintendent Eric Mackey, WBRC, Oct. 2025

More than half of Alabama's school districts faced teacher unit reductions in 2025-26. The cuts fell hardest on small and rural systems, particularly in the Black Belt. Selma City lost 10% of its teacher units (from 143 to 128). Sumter County dropped 9% (from 54 to 50). Linden City lost 9% (from 23 to 21). These are districts where state funding constitutes the overwhelming majority of operating budgets.

Recovery by district size

Medium-sized districts (5,000-10,000 students) have the lowest recovery rate at 16.0%, with only four of 25 returning to pre-COVID levels. Small districts (1,000-5,000) recovered at 19.8%, and large districts (10,000+) at 23.1%. The handful of micro districts under 1,000 students fared best at 33.3%, though the sample is small (three of nine).

Among the districts that did recover without virtual school inflation, several share a common profile: fast-growing suburban communities in the Tennessee Valley or the Auburn-Opelika corridor. Madison City^↗ gained 1,336 students (11.6%). Athens City^↗ added 1,101 (25.1%). These are places where new housing construction is pulling families from neighboring counties, not places where the pandemic's effects have been reversed.

Athens City has been building to keep pace. According to Superintendent Beth Patton, the district opened a new 260,000-square-foot high school in 2019, a new elementary campus in 2023, and expanded its intermediate school with eight classrooms and a gymnasium in 2025. A second new elementary school, Julian Newman Elementary, opened the same year with capacity for more than 700 students. The district is now searching for land to build yet another school. "We are excited about the future and believe the best is yet to come," Patton said.

What the next count will show

The 2026-27 school year will be the CHOOSE Act's second cycle. When income limits lift in 2027-28, the pull on public enrollment could accelerate. The 2,100 students who disappeared from rolls in 2025-26 without formal transfers represent a category that enrollment data cannot fully explain. Whether those families left the state, shifted to unreported homeschooling, or left the country, the seats they occupied will not be funded in 2026-27.

Alabama's four-year decline streak has now erased all of the 2016 enrollment spike and then some, pushing the state to its lowest K-12 headcount since before 2015. For superintendents in Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery, the question is no longer when recovery will arrive. It is how to operate school systems built for 25,000 more students than they serve.

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