Paul W Bryant High School

Paul W Bryant High School, a high-enrollment high school in Cottondale, Alabama, run under Tuscaloosa City, serves 1,134 students, covering grades 9 through 12. Enrollment runs roughly 66% bigger than the state mean of about 682.

Tuscaloosa City comprises 19 schools with combined enrollment of 11,230 students; Paul W Bryant High School is among them.

On the student-mix side, Paul W Bryant High School records that 86% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority; the rest reads as 7% Hispanic, 5% White. That is meaningfully more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 31%.

Looking at school resources, Paul W Bryant High School records 54 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 21.0:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 17.2:1, putting Paul W Bryant High School higher than the state norm the norm. An estimated 65% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. That share is above Tuscaloosa County's rate of about 54%.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Paul W Bryant High School falls in the UNDERPERFORMING tier of the BeatsExpectations residual. Given its student profile, a typical campus would land near 36.9%; this one comes in at 8.9%, -28.0 points off the demographic line.

Around the school, community-level numbers for Tuscaloosa County indicate median household income runs about $66,231, roughly 32% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 11%. In all, Tuscaloosa County runs 58 public schools (combined enrollment of about 30,508 students), of which Paul W Bryant High School is one.

Nearest neighbor: Eastwood Middle School, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Paul W Bryant High School. On composite proficiency, Paul W Bryant High School comes 9th of 9 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 37.2%.

The school occupies a metropolitan site.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count fell 3%: 1,169 students in 2018 compared to 1,134 in 2025.

On allk12, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Parents, students, alumni, and staff are welcome to weigh in.