Hartselle schools: The early years
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles marking the 50th Anniversary of Hartselle City Schools
Hartselle City Schools broke from Morgan County Schools in 1975. With the Hartselle City Council and Mayor John D. Long, the Hartselle Schools Committee put the structures in place for Hartselle to begin funding its own schools to educate its own children and grow its own community.
The Hartselle Schools Committee transferred leadership to the first Hartselle City School Board and its appointed members Barry Halford, Dick Stoner, Larry Anders, Elmo Kerr and Elaine Duncan. The members’ terms were staggered according to the original city resolution on file with Hartselle City Schools.
Under the leadership of superintendent Dr. Carlton Smith and his assistant superintendent Dr. Brandon Sparkman, Hartselle hired its first employees.
Among them were Jan Casey, Lucy Parker, Maxine Sanford, Wanda Woodruff, Pat Roberts and John Hayes.
Dr. Carlton Smith passed away in June 2020, but the profile written about him when he was inducted into the Hartselle Educator Hall of Fame in 2017 reveals that he considered his time at the helm of a new system to be “the highlight of [his] career” and that Hartselle was “the most child-oriented community [he] had ever seen.” Smith and his team of profession-als were ready to get to work, and they needed a place to get started.
HCS’s first central office was in the basement of the old post office on Sparkman Street across from the current public library. The office space was far from luxurious, and “the newest tech” came in the form of a multi-line telephone system.
No school system was on the cutting edge of technology at the time, but Decatur City Schools was fortunate enough to have a computer center. Hartselle contracted payroll and accounts payable services with them. Financial director John Hayes carried documents to Decatur for processing and brought back checks and receipts. There was no automatic transfer.
When asked about those early days, Pat Roberts said she does not remember them as being difficult. She remembers employees being excited about being at the founda-tion of something so good for the community.
Maxine Sanford offers a similar take. “I was hired in October 1976 because of my clerical experience, but I didn’t know anything about how a school system should work. However, I was energized by the infectious enthusiasm of the original board members and their commitment to their vision to provide the best educational opportunities to Hartselle’s children,” she said.
Though many of today’s school system challenges look a bit different, the schools are new or have received facelifts of one sort or another and the teachers’ names and faces have changed, one constant remains: the Hartselle community saw education as the key to its future in 1975, and it continues to support its schools and teachers and learners today. It remains a child-oriented community.
