Huntsville City Schools
Huntsville City Schools is the school district serving Huntsville, Alabama. As of the 2016–17 school year, the system had 24,083 students and employed 1,697 teachers. The district oversees 36 schools: 21 PreK-elementary schools, 6 middle schools, 7 high schools, and 2 magnet schools. The school system finished the 2010 fiscal year with a debt of nearly $20 million the largest of any school system in Alabama by a significant margin. However, after Casey Wardynski was appointed superintendent, he worked to erase the school system's debt and bring the budget into surplus. History. In 2014  officials from the school district began monitoring social media activity from students. The officials stated that a phone call from the National Security Agency (NSA) prompted them to do so. In the 2013 fiscal year it paid Chris McRae, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to run this program. Failing schools. Statewide testing ranks the schools in Alabama. Those in the bottom six percent are listed as "failing." As of early 2018, three local schools were included in this category: Revitalization. Currently, a major overhaul of the cities school facilities and curriculum is occurring. In 2012 , a new digital curriculum was issued, giving all students laptops and increasing digital usage for teaching. This was done to take advantage of the growing use of computers and to help give students easy access to information and organization. In 2011, a $194 million five year capital plan was granted by the Alabama Board of Education to the Huntsville City School System. With this, the city plans to renovate and construct new facilities for many of its aging campuses. These include a new Blossomwood Elementary School, New Freshman Academy for Huntsville High School, construction of a new building and  campus for the combination of Lee High School and New Century Technological School, construction of a new Whitesburg Elementary, Virgil I. Grissom High School (the cities largest student body), and J. O. Johnson High School. Renovations and consolidations for many other of the cities schools is also planned.