Miles School has a deal to purchase Birmingham-Southern School’s 192-acre campus for an undisclosed quantity.
Trustees for Miles, a personal, traditionally Black establishment in Fairfield, Alabama, voted unanimously to approve the acquisition settlement.
The deal follows a letter of intent Miles submitted to Birmingham-Southern shortly after the school shuttered in Might.
Phrases of the settlement weren’t disclosed.
For Miles, the Birmingham-Southern campus acquisition “will permit tutorial applications, analysis, and innovation to thrive in a collaborative setting with native and world partnerships,” the school mentioned within the announcement.
“This chance is a big subsequent step in our imaginative and prescient to raise our faculty, campus, and neighborhood,” Miles President Bobbie Knight mentioned in an announcement.
Birmingham-Southern President Daniel Coleman famous in an announcement that the sale is “for the bodily property — acreage and buildings — however not the School itself.”
The land and buildings owned by Birmingham-Southern amounted to $2.2 million and $147.4 million respectively on its steadiness sheet as of Might 2023, based on the school’s newest financials. Different property enhancements had been valued at $20.3 million.
Simply 5 miles away from one another, Birmingham-Southern and Miles each have histories extending again greater than a century. Birmingham-Southern’s fall headcount stood at 975 in 2022, down 24% from 5 years prior. Miles’ fall enrollment additionally dropped at roughly the identical price throughout that interval, falling to 1,258 in 2022.
Birmingham-Southern shuttered in late Might amid long-running monetary woes. After Alabama lawmakers handed a regulation that regarded prefer it may hold the school afloat, Birmingham-Southern’s utility for a $30 million mortgage was denied by the state’s treasurer, Younger Boozer. The school’s trustees voted unanimously to shut the school following Boozer’s contentious choice.
Birmingham-Southern continues to exist as a company entity throughout the wind-down course of. Based on Coleman, that features “wrapping up a spread of enterprise issues.”
Left for Birmingham-Southern to do is figure with the Alabama lawyer common’s workplace, as soon as the campus sale closes, to create a plan for the way forward for the school’s endowment. Any plan would require court docket approval, and your complete course of may take months and even years to finish, Coleman mentioned.
Knight and Coleman will “work collectively to place the legacy of Birmingham Southern and the way forward for Miles School,” the universities mentioned.
The Birmingham-Southern campus stays closed within the meantime till additional discover, based on the discharge.
