Hoover schools PR director Jason Gaston named 2018-19 Employee of the Year
The Hoover school system today honored Jason Gaston, the district’s media and public relations coordinator, as the 2018-19 Hoover City Schools Employee of the Year.
The recognition took place at the Hoover Area Chamber’s November luncheon at the Hoover Country Club.
When he’s not fielding calls from the media, Gaston might be busy updating the school system’s website, writing a story, producing a video, sending out a message on the rapid notification system, creating a slideshow for a school board meeting, answering a public records request, helping plan or manage a meeting or event, or advising school district leaders on communication strategies.
He is literally a one-man department. One of his colleagues who nominated him for Employee of the Year said he works tirelessly and does the jobs of five people.
”He is on call day and night, holidays and weekends, because we never know when things might happen,” that employee said in a recommendation letter. “He never appears discombobulated despite whatever circumstances may arise.”
Superintendent Kathy Murphy said Gaston’s passion to represent Hoover and the community in a positive and respectful way is evident in all he does.
“Jason is constantly pulled in multiple directions and always gives those around him the attention they deserve,” Murphy said.
Gaston started his professional career as a broadcast journalist, working with five TV stations in Alabama and Tennessee.
While in college at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee, Gaston worked internships with WMC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Memphis, and WVTM-13, the NBC station in Birmingham.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mass communications and broadcasting, he worked about 1½ years as a morning anchor and daytime reporter with WBBJ, the ABC affiliate in Jackson, Tennessee, then five years as a general assignment reporter and education beat reporter with WAFF, the NBC station in Huntsville, and two years as a general assignment reporter with ABC 33/40 in the Birmingham-Hoover market.
He shifted careers and came to work for Hoover City Schools in September 2007. Gaston said he made the career change because he was looking for a new challenge and felt he needed a realignment of his skill set.
He got a good look at the world of school public relations when he served as the education beat reporter in Huntsville, he said.
The skills he used as a TV broadcaster — dealing with diverse groups of people, managing deadlines, writing, public speaking and the ability to switch gears at a moment’s notice — have served him well with Hoover City Schools, he said.
The favorite part of his job is sharing stories that otherwise would go untold, he said. Not only does the school system have stories to share; every student has a story, he said.
Sometimes, his job is to work with mainstream media outlets to share a story broadly, but today’s media professionals also are pulled in many directions and have limited time and resources and can’t always tell every story that deserves to be told, Gaston said.
He is able to use his skills to tell some of those stories via the school district’s website and social media channels.
One of the challenges he faces is that there are so many good stories to be told that he can’t get to all of them himself, he said. So he also spends time training representatives from each school how to best share information via the media and their individual school websites and social media platforms.
Gaston said when he first came into this job, he viewed it primarily as a promotion role, making sure people know all the good things happening in the school district. But as time has moved on, he realized it involves a lot more, such as managing the bad things that happen, engaging stakeholders, analyzing data and helping the various departments in the school system with their communication needs.
Gaston said he is especially grateful to Murphy for allowing him to be part of critical, high-level conversations regarding important decisions and topics because it helps him better communicate those decisions and the reasons behind them.
He very much enjoys his work, he said. “It is more fulfilling than anything I’ve ever done careerwise.”
Gaston also has a master’s degree in strategic communication from Troy University. He is an active member and past president of the Alabama School Public Relations Association and just finished a three-year term on the executive board of the National School Public Relations Association. He previously served about four years on the Hoover YMCA board of directors and is in the 2018-19 class of Leadership Hoover.
Gaston, 42, lives in Homewood and enjoys mentoring other school public relations professionals and traveling to national parks.
Other finalists for the 2018-19 Hoover City Schools Employee of the Year Award were Chris Carr, a maintenance worker in the operations department, and Rex Ricchetti, a bookkeeper at Rocky Ridge Elementary School.