Legacy in education: Larry Anders reflects on the evolution of Hartselle City Schools

On May 27, 1975, Hartselle Mayor John D. Long signed a proclamation indicating that the “City Council of the City of Hartselle, Alabama has determined that it is desirable and in the public interest of the citizens of Hartselle that the public schools… be administered by a City Board of Education.” Hartselle formally withdrew from the Morgan County School System in order to form Hartselle City Schools.

Together with Richard “Dick” Stoner, Barry Halford, Elaine Duncan, and Elmo Kerr; Larry Anders served on the original Hartselle City Schools Committee and then as a member of its original school board.

Anders insists that he was the last member inducted onto that original school board and that much of the work was already underway or had already been completed by Stoner or by Halford. “If there was a five-star member of that original board, it would have been Dick Stoner,” Anders claims. “Barry Halford was right behind him. The two of them did a great deal of work to get the school system started.” The drive to withdraw from Morgan County Schools began with teacher pay.

Hartselle citizens wanted to attract and retain the best teachers, and they feared they were losing that battle to Decatur City Schools because Decatur paid more than Morgan County Schools, of which Hartselle was still a part. Initially, Hartselle’s City Council stepped up to supplement Hartselle’s teachers’ pay to match what they could make working in Decatur.

But the State came back and said that individual schools within a larger district could not offer different pay scales than other schools within that same district.

And so, the supplements offered by the city council had to be scrapped. Hartselle believed it was ready to make its own decisions for its community’s schools.

After numerous conversations with Morgan County Schools, Hartselle and its board of five felt ready to break away. But they needed school leaders.

Anders has fond memories of hiring superintendent Dr. Carlton Smith and assistant superintendent Dr. Brandon Sparkman. The school board hired Smith from a school district in Columbia, South Carolina. They believed he would be a perfect fit for the district they were Anders