Albertville Chamber hosts educational breakfast

This article, written by Mary Bailey, appeared in The Sand Mountain Reporter.

The Albertville Chamber of Commerce accompanied by the Albertville City School System held the 2025 Educational Alliance Breakfast Friday morning at Lifepoint Church in Albertville.

Miguel Corona with the Albertville City Schools Foundation opened the breakfast by briefly speaking of the foundation.

“I am honored to serve as the president of the school foundation here in Albertville. You probably know who we are and what we do but in case you don’t, I just want to share a couple of things with y’all,” Corona said. “We are a non-profit organization that is meant to provide financial and material support to both our students and teachers. Some things we do, as the school year starts, for our fresh out of college teachers we always give those teachers a $500 gift card. We also provide meals, so you might see us throughout the school year go to every school and just provide meals to feed the staff and all employees. We have our Ready to Learn program and our Teacher Grants, that’s our big thing. We want to make sure that we can provide all the essentials to our teachers. I believe last year we gave over $100,000 with our partnerships, which is great we were able to award all our teachers. We always like to give back, one thing we do is the Hall of Fame, and we have Spring Fling coming up. If you are looking for ways to support us, next time you renew your tag, if you can support us by getting an Albertville City tag, that puts about $40 into our program. And if you are a business and want to make a donation, it is a tax write-off.”

Chief Academic Officer Julie Ann McCulley, then took the stage to recognize the “Teacher and Educators of the Year.”

Teachers recognized:

• Jaime Bryant – Albertville Kindergarten/Pre-K Teacher of the Year
• Magan Canady – Albertville Primary School Teacher of the Year, 2024-2025 Elementary Educator of the Year
• Audra Sanders – Albertville Elementary School Teacher of the Year
• Haley Tarvin – Albertville Intermediate School Teacher of the Year
• Daniel Williams – Albertville Middle School Teacher of the Year
• Paige Smith – Albertville High School Teacher of the Year, 2024-2025 Secondary Educator of the Year
• Sherry Little – Albertville Innovation Academy Teacher of the Year

A discussion panel made up of Dr. Bart Reeves, Superintendent of Albertville City Schools, Todd Watkins, Assistant Superintendent, Tyler Reeves, AIA Principal, and Julie Ann McCulley, Chief Academic Officer, then took the stage to for a short panel discussion about Albertville City Schools and its future.

The questions were moderated by Stan Witherow, President of the Albertville Chamber of Commerce.

“We are extremely thankful that you are here this morning to join us,” said Witherow before the panel discussion. “Some people may not understand why the chamber would host an event like this. It’s extremely important for the future of business in our community if you have a strong educational system. And we are blessed with that, so what better partnership can you have with Albertville City Schools and the Chamber of Commerce.”

Dr. Bart Reeves opened the discussion.

“I want to thank everyone for coming out this morning and spending part of your day with us. We certainly appreciate you being here and supporting Albertville City Schools. I also want to recognize the board and thank the board for coming out. This is a wonderful board to work with every day, they want to do what’s best for the kids. I appreciate them daily.”

Dr. Reeves spoke on the Albertville City Schools receiving a $3.5 million-dollar mental health grant.

“That’s roughly $700,000 a year over the next five years. Getting $3.5 million dollars for our system, that’s amazing. We are going to put a mental health coordinator in every school. Folks, mental health is real. The challenges that come from it are real. I’m excited about everything this grant is going to do for our school system.”

Todd Watkins spoke about significant updates and projects coming up.

“Speaking about the grants, I just wanted to say that we received an Aviation Welding Grant which is going to add the fourth component to welding. I know the city and mayor y’all put a lot of work in at the airport. We are trying to get that Aviation component lifted up and that’s going to help our kids,” Watkins said.

“Going back to the capacity, we are doing a capacity study with a consultant to just put the numbers out and show where our schools are at. Just an example, we created a brand-new high school, and it was literally like creating Sardis. That’s about the number comparison. We created this new high school, and we still have a 7A high school, so you can see that the capacity is phenomenal. Currently some of the projects we have going on are the girl’s and boy’s locker rooms at the high school. We have a gym that is being built over at AES because we have two schools trying to use one facility. We just expanded and remodeled the playground at AIS. If you have been at the football field, you have probably seen some construction going on. We are ripping the turf up at the football field and it’s being replaced.”

Julie Ann McCulley spoke on the latest state report card.

“We have received a couple of grants this year that has helped us have four auxiliary aides at AKPK and four additional aides helping at the 1st and 2nd grade. We also have two dyslexic specific interventionists, that was also a grant. Something new this year is we now have a math coach in every grade, which is great asset for our math department. We also have literacy coaches throughout our buildings. A vision for Albertville City Schools is to increase collaboration among teachers.”

Tyler Reeves spoke on the new Albertville Innovation Academy.

“It has been really better than we could have ever imagined. When you are creating a school from scratch and you are also sharing a campus with another school you are moving teachers, you are hiring teachers, and you don’t even know how many kids you have in the beginning. The kids have really, really loved it. That is what has stood out to me from day one, happy kids. We feature 90-minute block schedules and feature multiple career tech pathways. A student that will thrive and do well is a student that is really focused on their career tech pathway and their skill. Our virtual students who thrive are the ones who are really self-motivated to get their diploma in a different type of setting.”