Summary:
The city of Bay Minette, Alabama, is served by five public schools within the highly-rated Baldwin County district, encompassing one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools that collectively educate roughly 2,863 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
For parents, the standout success story is Delta Elementary School, which, despite being the smallest school, is the only one with a strong upward trajectory—jumping from the 42nd to the 66th percentile in state rankings. Its students consistently outperform state averages, particularly in English and Science, and it also has the lowest poverty rate (47.81% free/reduced lunch) and the highest per-student spending ($14,716). In stark contrast, Baldwin County High School is in crisis, plummeting from the 84th to the 41st percentile in just two years. With only 15.87% of 11th graders proficient in math, a 20.6% chronic absenteeism rate (nearly double the district average), and a graduation rate of 86.5% (below state and district), the school is struggling across every metric. The two city-limit elementaries, Bay Minette Elementary School and Pine Grove Elementary School, also lag significantly, with math proficiency rates often in the teens and poverty rates above 65%. Bay Minette Middle School shows mixed results—struggling in math but excelling in 8th-grade science (60.21% proficient, above the state's 54.12%).
A critical district-wide red flag is the "5th Grade Wall": all three elementary schools saw math proficiency crash in 5th grade, with even Delta dropping from 52.5% to 13.79%—a systemic curriculum issue. Additionally, while Delta spends the most and performs best, Bay Minette Elementary spends the second-most ($12,500) yet still underperforms, proving that funding alone isn't the answer. The district is clearly moving in two directions: Delta is climbing while the high school is plummeting, suggesting that improvement efforts are not reaching the upper grades, where attendance and engagement are the biggest hurdles.
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