No more rhetoric, time to serve 'all students,' Hoover superintendent says

The time for rhetoric is past, Hoover schools Superintendent Kathy Murphy told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce Thursday.

The Hoover school system is getting serious about meeting the needs of all students with the Riverchase Career Connection Center scheduled to open in August of next year, Murphy told the crowd at the Hoover Country Club.

The school system is investing nearly $18 million in the purchase and renovation of the former Riverchase Middle School. School leaders are redesigning it as a skilled trades center to help both students on their way to college and those who want to enter directly into the workforce, Murphy said.

There is a misconception that all high school students are going to go to college and come back with a degree in their hands, the superintendent said.

But, “regardless of what your mom said, I don’t think all students have to go to college,” she said. “There are lots of people out there gainfully employed and making good, decent money, and they’ve never stepped on a college campus.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that only 69 percent of the nation’s high school graduates go to college, Murphy said. Hoover’s percentage is higher than that, but the question is still whether those students not going to college are prepared for the workforce, she said.

 “It sounded good to say we’re serving all students and we’re all about all students and that we’re meeting all students’ needs, but that’s been a lot of rhetoric, and I’m not sure as your superintendent I can substantiate that with proof,” Murphy said.

Test results indicate that while 93 percent of students from Hoover City Schools graduate high school within four years, only 84 percent of them are deemed ready for college or a career, she said.

It’s her opinion that they all ought to be ready for college or a career. Parents expect that with them going to school 180 days per year for 12 years, she said.

The new Riverchase Career Connection Center will offer instruction in five areas: building sciences (carpentry, electrical, welding, and heating and air conditioning); culinary arts and hospitality (cooking, serving and event planning); cyber innovation (computer programming, networking, coding and cyber security); health sciences (nursing, pharmacy and home health care) and fire and emergency services.

The Cyber Innovation Academy will be a re-creation of the information technology academies that were shut down at Hoover and Spain Park for this school year, Murphy said. Those academies were closed because they weren’t preparing students well enough and needed to be retooled with a different focus, she said.

The Culinary Arts and Hospitality Academy will be an expansion of the family and consumer science program (commonly known as home economics), Murphy said. While the former focused more on cooking at home, this academy will be geared more to equip students for commercial cooking, she said.

The Health Sciences Academy will include a simulated emergency room, operating room and the back half of an ambulance built into the learning space to give students hands-on training.

The Fire and Emergency Services Academy will be done in collaboration with the Hoover Fire Department and Shelton State Community College and will include a fire truck bay with a real fire truck.

“This is going to be state-of-the-art,” Murphy said.

Currently, Hoover students can earn career certifications for Microsoft office, engineering, accounting and financial services, CPR, patient care technician, food service and building sciences.

The building sciences certifications are currently offered through a partnership with the Academy of Craft Training in Birmingham. Hoover is not competing with that program, but it can take only 50 of Hoover’s students, and there is a greater demand, Murphy said.

The Riverchase Career Connection Center will allow Hoover to offer certifications in carpentry, electrical work, welding, cooking, food service management, information technology, home health care, pharmacy, and fire and emergency medical services (the latter with eight additional units from Shelton State Community College), Murphy said.

“We’re going to stop talking about it, and we’re going to start working like we mean ‘all students,’” she said. “We’re embracing the passions of our students, and then we’re supporting them in discovering their purpose, and then we’re preparing them for their professions. That’s what I believe great school districts and what great educators do, and you should expect nothing less than that.”