Gunn takes over as principal at Oak Mountain High

Just days after the retirement of Kristie Sayers, Oak Mountain has a new principal. The Shelby County Board of Education unanimously approved the hiring of Andrew Gunn to take over as principal of OMHS. 

Gunn has over 17 years experience in publication and has most recently worked as the principal at Helena Middle School. 

He thanked the board for the opportunity to serve in the Oak Mountain Community and thanked his wife for her support and encouragement.

“I will work hard every day to do best for students and their best interest,” Gunn said. “I also want to thank those in the Helena community for the last four years. They are some of the finest people I know and I appreciate every moment there and look forward to what we can do at OMHS.”

For his superintendent's report, Dr. Lewis Brooks showed a video of the opening days of school.

In her Instruction report Dr. Lynn Carroll thanked the board for their support in beginning the new school year. She gave an update on a new program that will soon be implemented: PowerSchool. 

There have been a few hiccups in getting it up and running, but it should all be worked out soon, she said. PowerSchool will be where the operations of schools are managed, and also feature a parent portal where they can check their students’ grades. 

“It's going to be a great program when we get it fully implemented,” Carroll said. 

John Gwin reviewed the finances for the school board and said the current unreserved general balance is $36,543,400.80, which is about 2.1 months of reserve. He said that number will go down since all the property tax money is in, but it is still above the target of where the balance should be.

Gwin said the local tax revenue comparison fee is on trend of meeting the projections on property tax, ad valorem tax, car tag tax, sales tax and alcohol beverage tax.

Items the board approved during the meeting were:

• To renew the ATBE General liability, errors and omissions liability fund agreement for one year
• Approving job descriptions for a mental health service employee and a secondary school coordinator 
• Approving the revision of employee contract days (due to Juneteenth being made a national holiday)
• Approving personnel actions
• The board also approved a bid for more repairs needed at Oak Mountain Middle School as a result of the tornado in March. 

“The state allowed us to move immediately and address certain items in regards to building security and any repairs to prevent further damage, but this is for other things that weren’t an immediate need in which we had to follow the state process for bids. A bid was approved to Williford Orman Construction for $871,230, a majority of which will address soft spots in the roof and HVAC needs.

During the architect and construction report, Barbara Snyder gave an update on several projects. 

• Repairs continue at Oak Mountain Middle and Heardmont Park and those should be completed in mid-October
• Meeting with the architect and engineer to determine the next steps for Montevallo Middle School 
• Helena Middle School canopy covers to provide ADA access to the gym is currently underway
• Paving package is almost complete and will have an extensive punch list addressed before final inspection. 

After covering all of the meeting items, Dr. Brooks recognized those who had come to the meeting as a result of a letter that went out earlier in the day stating Shelby County students would be required to wear masks beginning Aug. 31 until Oct. 1. 

Brooks said at the beginning of the year, they said they wanted to have as normal of a school year as possible and every attempt has been made to do that but added that nothing they have dealt with in the last 18 months or even the last two months has been normal.

“I have spent hours on Zoom calls and Google Meets with health officials and state leaders to talk about our approach to opening schools,” he said. “What has taken place over the last few days has been quite alarming. We put out info today saying we had 252 cases. I realize that 252 is 1% of our faculties and students… and maybe it doesn't seem significant. But what is concerning is...the pattern we are seeing in rising cases.” 

Last Wednesday, Brooks received a letter from state health officer Scott Harris indicating they had to comply with the Alabama Department of Public Health toolkit. 

“If we have students who test positive they will be sent home and keep all the other students at school and if they develop symptoms, they will be sent home and let the parents make the determination to get them tested,” he said. “When I got the letter that we had to start sending kids home who were in close contact, that alarmed me.” 

Last school year upwards of 85,000 students were sent home, some multiple times, Brooks said. They had to be quarantined and never got sick. Numbers of positive cases in Shelby County Schools has already surpassed 250.

Brooks said the temporary mask mandate was put into place so that many kids would not have to be sent home. 

“I understand that it upsets you,” he said. “It's frustrating for us as a school. We are very concerned about the last 18 months and the amount of learning loss that has taken place. I will tell you, today’s decision was a very difficult decision that didn't just take place today, but from conversations taking place over the last week as we started to see numbers rise. While today’s decision and conversation we had about this I realize it is very unpopular, but the greatest thing we are concerned about is if cases continue to rise and we have faculty and staff that can't come to work because they are sick, we have no recourse but to shut down, and that's not what we want to get to. Our goal as a school system is to keep our doors open.” 

Several individuals in attendance spoke out against the mask mandate before the meeting was adjourned, twice. Brooks stayed after the meeting and continued having individual conversations with parents. 

The next meeting will be Sept. 16 at noon at the Shelby County Instructional Services Center in Alabaster.