MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Once estimated to cost around $62 million, the Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences may now cost as much as $80 million, according to Rob Pearson, chair of the school’s fund-raising foundation.
Pushed for by Gov. Kay Ivey since early 2023, the science and health care-focused, public residential school in Demopolis is proposed to combat Alabama’s shortage of health care workers. After receiving a $26.4 million pledge from Bloomberg Philanthropies in January, state lawmakers allocated an additional $15 million toward the project in May.
“Our architects are working on a plan and a design of the dorm building,” Pearson said Monday, speaking at a meeting of theAlabama School of Healthcare Sciences Board of Trustees in Montgomery. “We’re going to build a 400-person dorm; right now, it looks like a five-story building in Demopolis, which would be two stories higher than any other building in Demopolis.”
The initial projected cost of the project of $62 million came from the Alabama Department of Finance back in March of 2023. In May, Pearson estimated the cost of the project would be $65 million, which at that point, still left the project with $24 million left to come up with to fund the project in its entirety.
The new projected cost of around $80 million, Pearson told Alabama Daily News, was due to “increased construction costs, plus updated construction requirements for a 400-student residential building.”
Were Pearson’s latest estimation to be accurate, that would now leave the project around $39 million short, which he said he hopes to make up with an aggressive fundraising campaign, as well as additional funding from the state.
Pearson told the board that he and State Superintendent Eric Mackey, who sits on the board, had recently met with State Budget Officer Doryan Carlton of the Alabama Department of Finance to discuss the possibility of lawmakers allocating additional funds to the project in next year’s budget.
“We’ve got some goals we’d like to achieve, and might need some additional help from the state to get those achieved,” Pearson told ADN, though did not disclose how much they were hoping to receive from the state.
“Obviously with fundraising, we’re going to do as much as we can do on our end, but the state has invested in this project and we want them to continue investing. We know getting in the regular (Education Trust Fund budget) is important, but if there’s some money left over in the supplemental fund, we’d like to be a part of that too.”
Person’s initial projection of the project’s groundbreaking occurring in October of this year was amended as well, with Pearson telling the board he now expects shovels to hit the ground sometime in May or June of 2025. However, the school is still expected to accept its first class of students in the fall of 2026, with Mackey playing an integral role in generating interest in the school among students from across the state.
“A lot of people keep thinking about recruiting in the Black Belt, and obviously we will recruit in the Black Belt, but we also want people as far away as Jackson and Lauderdale counties to come and see what’s offered,” Mackey told ADN. “I think that will start to gel by the summer, certainly by the beginning of the next school year.”
The school will offer a varied curriculum in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as health care-based courses, and operate in partnership with Whitfield Regional Hospital. That curriculum is still being developed, though a curriculum draft will first be unveiled on Dec. 12, something that Mackey said would be crucial in attracting students.
“Developing the curriculum and choosing the pathways is going to be very important, because essentially, all the recruitment is going to be done in middle schools, and you’re telling people (to) send your child off at age 14 to a boarding school,” he told ADN. “You’re going to have to have a pretty robust package to get people to do that.”
Ivey first proposed the project in her 2023 State of the State address, though state lawmakers were initially reluctant to fund the project. After commissioning of a $500,000 feasibility study on the project, however, which ultimately supported the project’s construction in Demopolis, lawmakers appropriated the initial $15 million.