All right. If you're moving to Madison, Alabama, in 2026 and you're having a hard time making sense of the Madison City Schools rezoning map, this video is for you. And if you're moving to Madison in 2026 and you haven't heard of the rezoning, then the video is going to be mandatory watching. Okay, so who am I? Why should you listen to me? What am I talking about? I'm Cameron Walker. I'm the broker and owner of Cameron Walker Realty, located in Huntsville. My team and I help people relocate to Huntsville and Madison every day. As important as that in this video is that I'm a Madison dad. I have two kids in Madison City Schools, and we're navigating our third rezoning in the seven years since we moved back to Alabama and into Madison. So, uh, we're getting a little bit—we're getting pretty good at it, to be honest. So, um, there's been a lot of confusion around the rezoning. Uh, two kind of subsets of people. The people that are aware of it can't make sense of the maps that the city provided, or the school board did, I should say. And those that haven't even heard of it and are getting kind of blindsided by some of this. So, I'm just going to dive into it, tell you what's going on. Madison City Schools opened a new school, or will be opening a new school, 2026-2027 school year. It's called Russell Branch New Elementary School. It's going to be on the Limestone side of County Line Road, um, on the west side there. So, if you don't know, Madison actually straddles uh the Limestone County and the Madison County line. Now, we're talking about Madison City. So, if you're moving here from afar, that gets to be confusing for people because there's five different municipalities that have a mailing—uh, mailing address that's Madison, and only one of those is zoned for Madison City Schools, and you can't tell by the map. Okay? So, that's a whole other conversation. If you're moving here from Madison City Schools and you aren't aware of that, we need to have a one-on-one conversation so I can walk you through it. But, all right, about the rezoning. So you have a new school opening, and roughly 40 neighborhoods or so will be rezoned for that school. But that also opens up capacity at some of the other existing schools. So there's going to be a rebalancing of population amongst those schools as well. So there's 20 plus other neighborhoods that will be rezoning either for a new elementary, middle, or high school. Now the middle and high school may be less to do with population, may have more to do with the socioeconomic balancing that Madison's known for. It's a big part of why the schools rank so highly as they do on [suspicious link removed].com&sa=E&source=workflows, [suspicious link removed].org&sa=E&source=workflows, and U.S. News and World Report, but it's also, you know, caused a little bit of challenge for people because you might go to the same school for eight years and suddenly get transferred all the way across town [[suspicious link removed].by&sa=E&source=workflows]. And large, this is a good move for most people. It's going to be a brand new school. It's going to be um, state-of-the-art. It's going to cut down the commute for a lot of people, but there are challenges coming with it, too. And we're going to start with those. So, our first challenge we're going to talk about is knowing what neighborhoods are going to be rezoned, right? So, the city—or excuse me, the school board—put out this PDF map that's impossible to read. There's no street names on it. There's no neighborhood names. Um, you can't zoom in on it because it's a PDF. So, I took two months and went through every single street in there, figured out what uh neighborhood it was, and figured out where it's currently zoned for and where it would be zoned for in the future. And I created one giant list, put it all on a website, and then I made it easily searchable. So, every neighborhood has a little card on it um, with information like the schools that it's zoned for, the price point, commute times to any of the major employers, and rush hour. And they're all parseable by these things. So, you can search by um elementary school, middle school, high school, all combined. You can search by price point, or you can just search by the name of the neighborhood. In any event, this will allow you to kind of drill down and figure out what neighborhoods are going to be rezoned and which ones aren't. So, if you're moving here and you have a kid that's, say, going into third grade, if you move into a neighborhood that's going to be rezoned for a new elementary school in the spring, uh, you move here in the spring, you could end up with a kid that gets to be the new kid twice. So if you move here in March, and your kid just starts school, they make friends, they meet their teachers, they get used to the routine, they could be rezoned in August. And so that's part of why I made this resource was I know as a dad that would be a concern for me, right? So, um, but also there are grandfathering options. So depending on what grade you're going into and which level of school—elementary, middle, or high school—your kid may be grandfathered. So it may be a non-issue for you, right? How do you know if you're grandfathered? Well, on the same page, I have a tool. Select your school that you're going to, select what grade the kid's currently in, and then just click the green button, and it'll spit out and tell you if they have the option to be grandfathered or not. Now, once they're eligible for grandfathering, there's two other things we have to think about. Number one is if you stay in a school you're grandfathered for, you will not get public transportation. So, you're going to have to find some way of getting the kid to school, whether that be car ride, carpool, or if you have some after-school care that has its own busing system, but you're not going to have public transportation to and from school. Second thing is if you have, say, two kids in the same school, right? So, different grades, um, the second kid may not be grandfathered the way the first one is. There is no exemption for siblings. So unless they happen to be, like, say, in high school where 10th and 12th graders would be exempted, um, you're—you're going to have a challenge with that, too. So those are kind of the drawbacks, right? Uh, your kid potentially being the new kid twice [[suspicious link removed].it&sa=E&source=workflows]. It's a forced rezoning. Um, grandfathering can be a little difficult to ascertain. The maps are atrocious. And then even if you are grandfathered and you do figure out where you're going to school, where it's rezoned, um, you still have to concern yourself with the um commute, you know, transportation. And then if you have a sibling in another grade, that could be a challenge, too. So, all right, that's the downsides. What's the upside? Well, the upside is uh Russell Branch is a brand new state-of-the-art school. So, Madison's opened several new schools over the last couple of years. They've all gone really well. Um, the facilities are amazing, and uh this will be no different. So, I'm sure there'll be some rough edges as it opens. That's just part of anything opening. Doesn't matter if it's a restaurant or a school, that's going to happen. But having those state-of-the-art facilities in there are going to be phenomenal for the students. For me personally, the biggest draw is actually where it is in town. So, I live on the uh East Limestone side of Madison over west of County Line Road, right where this school's going in. Matter of fact, it's going in less than a mile from my neighborhood. Um, but over the last seven years, while my kids have been in and out of uh elementary school, I've had to drive over to Mill Creek. I'm never on Mill Road where Mill Creek is unless I'm going to Mill Creek. It is out of my way. No matter where I'm going, it is not a shortcut for me to get anywhere. It is not a pass through. I'm literally only there if I'm going to the school. Now, we've loved the school. Had a great experience. Don't get me wrong. Not complaining about that. But boy, what if I could have picked it up, moved it a couple miles to the west where it's much easier for me—on my way to the highway, on my way to the store. I mean, even going to Mill Creek, I was passing another elementary school in Madison City Schools to get there. So, this is going to be a huge boon for people on this side of town because they're going to be able to drop their kids off, pick them up, um, go to after-school events and sporting events and clubs without having to go around the world to get there, right? So, this can be a huge time saver over here. And I've jokingly told people like we're going to see the Madison economy shoot up for all the parents that are going to get their time and productivity numbers back from not having to drive over to Mill Creek all the time. And I mean, even for the kids, the bus ride will be shorter. I mean, my kid gets up like she's a farmer because she has to get on the bus so early. Like now, you know, they'll be able to sleep in a little bit later. Me as a parent, I could sleep in a little bit later and not have to walk them down to the bus so early. Um, so really just a lot of good things going on with the new school. Um, it's right inside the Russell Branch neighborhood, which is a huge neighborhood, so there's going to be a lot of people that can walk to school. There's some other neighborhoods in the surrounding area. I need to see the sidewalks and everything come in first before we'll know if they're really truly walkable. But there are a lot of neighborhoods within walking distance. So, it's just a matter of did they put the sidewalks in and make it convenient for the kids. Um, getting in and out is going to be pretty easy. There's a roundabout to get into the area. That's a huge improvement over all the traffic lights you see everywhere. So, and there'll be uh ways in and out both front and back. So, I'm really excited to see this thing come in. I think a lot of people are going to benefit from it. And uh, I think overall it's a net positive for the city. Of course, it's just there's always that rezoning can be a little bit of a challenge and particularly if you're moving here from somewhere else and you don't know what you're looking at. So, I know a lot of you are going to be looking at uh houses for sale, right? Well, how do you know if a house for sale is in the neighborhood that's being rezoned? Cool deal. I got you a tool. So, I created an Android app, created a Siri shortcut for iOS, or if you're looking on your browser, I have a Chrome extension you can get off my website or from the Chrome store. And basically, you just share an address from either from the app or the website that you're on. Just like if you were going to text it to somebody, you use Zillow's share feature, [suspicious link removed].com&sa=E&source=workflows's, whoever's, right? Uh, any real estate website. You're looking through the listing at the house for sale and you say, "Hey, want to know if this is zoned for—which school this is zoned for or will be next year." You just click share. You send it to my tool and it'll immediately tell you if that school's, you know, being rezoned, what school it's being rezoned for, and then if you want additional information, there's a button you can click and get all that, too. So, uh, really cool tool. Um, having a lot of people using it already, which I'm excited about. It's the first time I've ever built something like that, so I'm pretty stoked. Um, but it's—it's—it's working phenomenally well. So, uh, that's another way like if you're used to being on Zillow, [suspicious link removed].com&sa=E&source=workflows [[suspicious link removed].com&sa=E&source=workflows], [suspicious link removed].com&sa=E&source=workflows [[suspicious link removed].com&sa=E&source=workflows], some random, you know, real estate website, it'll work for all of them. So, yeah. Um, obviously, I'd love to help you if you're looking to buy a house here. So, you can reach out to me and my team. We'd be glad to assist you. Um, our contact information is always in the description below. It's always, you know, have a QR code up on screen. So, if you're watching this on TV, you can just point your phone at it, click the little white box that pops up, that'll take you to my website.