Hoover schools superintendent urges board to think about replacing him

Hoover schools Superintendent Dee Fowler told the Hoover school board this morning he is in no hurry to leave his post but advised the school board it may want to get the ball rolling on a superintendent search.

Fowler, who came out of retirement to take the Hoover superintendent job in the summer of 2021, said he has a year left on his three-year contract with the Hoover Board of Education and said “a year goes by quickly.”

“I don’t want to blindside you,” Fowler said during a board retreat at the office of the school system's law firm. “I want you to be very well-prepared for what you want your process to look like.”

The Hoover school board in late 2020 hired the Alabama Association of School Boards to conduct its last search for a superintendent but eliminated all five finalists chosen by the AASB and hired Fowler, who did not apply for the job, instead.

Fowler said the board certainly has the option to use the AASB again or another search firm but noted that some sitting superintendents are reluctant to put their name up for consideration if they will be identified publicly as a candidate.

School board member Craig Kelley said the AASB does a fine job but noted that the group has conducted so many searches that it has helped put a lot of sitting superintendents in their current jobs and doesn’t like to poach a good candidate that was chosen as a result of one of its previous searches.

Some school boards choose to work through their attorney to vet and filter potential candidates, which can be done more discreetly, Fowler said. The main requirement from the state is that the job be posted; it’s up to the board how it wants to conduct its search, Fowler said. There is no requirement for public interviews or any interviews at all, he said.

Fowler noted that as a former president of the School Superintendents of Alabama and former assistant superintendent for the Alabama Department of Education, he knows many of the in-state people who would be candidates. He is certainly not trying to pick the next superintendent, but he would be willing to assist in the process if the board wanted him to do so, he said.

Also, Fowler said the board may want to bring someone in to work alongside him for a while to provide for a smoother transition, but he said some superintendent candidates may not be interested in an arrangement like that if they are not guaranteed the permanent job.

Regardless of what the board decides, Fowler said he will work with them to make it a smooth transition.

“I’m not going to just run out. I will shepherd you or the new person however you want me to. I have too much respect for you as a board and I have too much love for the community to do that,” Fowler said. “I want to make this as seamless as possible.”

School board President Amy Tosney said she would rather not have someone serve as an interim superintendent. She would rather move straight into a new leader.

Fowler asked board members to begin thinking about how they want to proceed and what criteria they want to set for their next superintendent.

The school board then went into an executive session to discuss pending litigation, including litigation related to buildings and the school district’s efforts to get released from a decades-old desegregation lawsuit.

Prior to going into executive session, Fowler told the board that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund will have a group visiting all Hoover schools next week, particularly taking a look at the state of facilities that have a larger concentration of minority or students from low-income families as compared to other schools.

“We feel we’re in good shape there,” Fowler said. “I think that we have done things that are right for our children.”

Fowler noted that some of Hoover’s older schools that previously were part of the Jefferson County school system may not have some of the “glitzy things” that some of the newer schools have, but they are still clean and safe.

He noted that the bathrooms at Simmons Middle School, one of Hoover’s older schools, were renovated this past summer.

“We’re not doing this to get a checkmark or tick mark. We’re doing this for children,” Fowler said. “We want to do what’s right, and I think it will be recognized that we are doing what’s right for children.”

Fowler said he has been trying to arrange a visit by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for two years, but the COVID-19 pandemic had a lot to do with why the group has not come yet.

“We’re hoping that this will be the start of some positive movement,” he said.

Editor's note: This story was updated on July 7 to correct the year in which Superintendent Dee Fowler began his job with Hoover (2021) and the year the school board chose the Alabama Association of School Boards to assist with a superintendent search (2020).