It’s the middle of October and the weather in lower Alabama is finally starting to feel like it. Outside Fairhope High School on a crisp Friday morning, Jon Cardwell waves cars down the drop-off line and ushers sweater-clad students inside. 

He greets each student with a smile, a hug, a pointed question about this project or that test. 

He’s the resident dandy, and he doesn’t meet a stranger. 

Inside, students greet each other as they filter through books and papers. Parents drop off forgotten lunches as the last stragglers make their way to the building and announcements are read.

Fridays in the fall are already magical with the buzz of football hanging in the air. This day is destined for even more pageantry with the induction ceremony for the National Honor Society. Students to be tapped are more than not. Caldwell jokes about how long it took to sign the towering stack of certificates. 

A quick walk across a breezy courtyard gives way to food and fellowship for the football team in the field house. Cardwell says different pastors from the Fairhope area come each week to speak to the team, offer scripture and pray with the young men. 

Cardwell says the field house is an area that has shown its seams at the school’s growth since he has been here. 

“We used to be a school of 1,000 kids when this was built, now we’re at 1,600,” Cardwell said. “So, here you’ve got 100 boys that are trying to shower in five showers and get in and out of four toilets. We’ve been able to expand some, but you’re always going to struggle trying to find space or a classroom for everyone.”

Our next stop isn’t far away in the engineering department. Embodying the school’s sense of community and legacy is Cody Coleman, who took over teaching the class from his father, who originated it more than a decade ago. 

“They’re going over all kinds of different things like electronics and circuits, measuring devices,” Coleman said. “There’s construction stuff here, programming robots over here. This one is wiring, so they learn how to wire plugs and switches, stuff that you’d find in a house.”

The first half of the semester in engineering class is filled with technical knowledge which moves to design and construction in the second half. 

“They’ll use welders, torches, chop saws and basically build this (downhill racer),” Coleman said. “Most of these kids have never used 99 percent of these tools in here, so it’s good to get them involved. If you’ve never welded before, you don’t know if you’re good or not. Some kids find out they’re actually really good at it, and that’s a good job to go on to. Right there at Austal, they’re paying $30 an hour for a welder.”

Another brisk walk in the fall air leads us to the band room. Few students are here now, but the ones who are make good use of their time. Honing in a key change or wonky timing in a particular number. Getting tips from band director Wayne Fillingim also a Fairhope High grad. He’s got his saxophone out working with a student in his office. 

He has at least six different ensembles he leads as well as coordinating tree lighting performances, competitions and Christmas and Mardis Gras parade schedules.

“Currently, we have students that I know of in Southern Mississippi’s band,” Fillingim said. “We have two or three kids at Auburn. We have about 10 at South Alabama right now. Last year, we had three or four at Alabama, so we have kids that certainly get their scholarships from here. One of the saxophone players that graduated last year, his scholarships were around $10,000 a year. A lot of kids get their college paid for with this.”

As we leave, assistant principal John Helms says when he has a bad day he likes to come and listen to the band practice. 

We make stops in the mirrored dance studio and broadcast studio, currently without funding for a dedicated teacher, before making our way into the theater department. Students swirl around us in varying states of costume before teacher Katie Denton comes into view. 

She’s seated with her clipboard getting the actors ready for the current production of The Lottery, which they will perform at competition and hopefully move on to state. In the spring, she plans to do a school version of Les Miserables, which keeps the hefty subject matter while knocking an hour off the run time.

“We’ve done The Addams Family, Beauty and the Beast, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Young Frankenstein since I’ve been here,” Denton said. “It’s ambitious to do with high schoolers, but they do it well every single time. The kids are awesome.”

Around a few more corners is the Jubilee Room, where handicapped students of varying degrees of abilities congregate. A couple of students return from the band room as another sits doing word and letter exercises. Still more sit on the floor or look for unnamed objects on the far side of the room. 

When trying to describe a typical day, Dr. Angel Overton laughs and says she, Joann Baumhauer and Diane Davis are always at a sprint. One thing exceptional about Fairhope High is its level of involvement and interdepartmental cooperation with those of different abilities. 

“All of our kids get to go out other places,” Overton said. “We don’t just keep them in here. We have a very inclusive environment here where the general education teachers are very accepting of these kids coming in. Students love these kids. Last year, one of our students was voted homecoming queen and that was all student led - we had nothing to do with that. Stuff like that happens here on a regular basis.”

The National Honor Society induction ceremony is well underway, with the line of students being inducted wrapping through the gym, snaking through the hall and pooling large outside. 

Inside, the cafeteria staff is busy prepping for the ceremony’s reception for the students and their parents. This tacking on to the already daunting task of getting 700-plus students fed on a daily basis with near constant distractions from said students. 

We leave them be and roam the halls. There is a comforting calm in the empty corridors with science, foreign language, driver’s ed and even coding classes going on around us. At the nurse’s station, the main complaint is headaches, though three students passed out the day before. 

A social worker is also on staff, dealing with issues ranging from talk of suicide, domestic abuse and even homelessness. 

“It can be hard to tell, even for the teachers,” Helms said. “You can have someone who dresses well who maybe doesn’t know where he’s sleeping tonight or vice versa.”

No stranger to the dangers lurking in every school, Cardwell concedes he’s aware of drug issues within the community. A seemingly inevitable eventuality for most high schools, the proactive principal does everything he can to minimize vice on his campus and drops his friendly demeanor when the time comes to keep his kids in line. 

All that aside, Fairhope High’s biggest quandary continues to be growth. A total of 14 portables sit outside the main building. Transitions between classes can be stressful for administrators especially in inclement weather, and additional cameras have been added to the area to insure students don’t leave campus without prior knowledge and approval. 

These portables should be replaced soon with the new wing, which recently broke ground, but even the groundbreaking was significantly behind schedule. 

No time shows the stressors of growth more than the end of the school day, where 1,300 students leave campus in a spectacular 11 minutes in what Cardwell describes as “organized chaos.” Helms says the process has been improved with streamlining the buses and how they move between schools.

And that’s game. The Pirate football team would go on to beat Bryant that night 31-12. Come Monday morning, Hwy. 98 is still choking on school traffic in every which way. But you can put money Jon Cardwell is standing outside his school directing traffic with wave and a smile.