Photo by Jon Anderson
Bryan Phillips, the chief information officer for Hoover City Schools, mingles with Kirsten McCorkle and other well-wishers at his retirement party at the Farr Administration Building in Hoover, Alabama, on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024.
Bryan Phillips, the Hoover school system’s chief information officer, is retiring after 22 years with the system and taking a job in the private sector.
Phillips’ last day in the office is Friday, Nov. 8, and his employment with Hoover City Schools officially will end Dec. 1, he said.
As the chief information officer for Hoover City Schools, Phillips is one of five members of the Hoover school superintendent’s top leadership team, with others being the chief financial officer, chief operating officer, chief learning officer and chief talent officer.
Phillips, who has been in this role or a similar role for 14 years, has overseen the school district’s computer and technology network, which includes all computers and technology used by faculty and staff and Chromebooks for more than 13,000 students.
He served as president of the Alabama Leaders in Educational Technology group from 2018 to 2022 and was instrumental in successfully pushing legislation that now provides $11 million in annual state funding for cybersecurity in Alabama’s public schools.
He is a past recipient of the Alabama Department of Education’s Marbury Technology Innovation Award and in 2015 received the Alabama Leaders in Educational Technology’s “Making it Happen” award, given to visionary educators and leaders who empower learners and solve tough problems in education.
Phillips oversaw the implementation of the Hoover school system’s program to put a Chromebook in the hands of every student, and having that system in place was a critical part of the school system’s ability to continue providing an education to students at home during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Hoover schools and students were able to shift into remote learning options pretty quickly. Hoover schools were out of operation only about three days, while some other school systems were shut down for months, Phillips said.
That quick turnaround helped Hoover students suffer less of the “COVID slide” in learning that affected students around the world, he said. He thanks the Hoover school board for agreeing to move forward and implement the one-to-one technology initiative.
“Hoover has always been on the cutting edge,” he said.
Phillips also served on Google’s “Think-Tank” for education issues and served on customer advisory boards for Google EDU, Dell, Aruba, Lightspeed and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, collaborating with industry experts to provide product development and improvement feedback and insights.
Phillips started his career in 1998 as a sixth grade teacher at what was formerly the K-12 Oak Grove High School in Jefferson County. In 2004, he came to the Hoover school system as a technology specialist, assisting teachers and students in using technology for their education. In 2006, he switched into the more technical role of network administrator, and in 2010, he became the chief technology officer, a position later renamed as chief information officer under former Superintendent Dee Fowler.
Phillips said he has always thought highly of the Hoover school system, enough that he moved to Hoover and put his son, Harrison, through the Hoover system. He had received several outside job offers in the past, but once Harrison graduated from Spain Park High School this past spring, that spurred him to pursue retirement from the state after 27 total years in education.
He initially had planned on retiring and taking some time to relax a bit while looking for something in the private sector, but after he announced his retirement, he was offered a job by ParentSquare, a company that supplies communications platforms for school systems, and decided to take it, he said. He starts as a regional sales director for ParentSquare next week, he said.
In that role, he will direct sales to school districts with 4,000 or fewer students in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Missouri.
Phillips said he appreciates the opportunity he had to work with so many outstanding people throughout his career in public education and said every person who works for school systems is an educator of sorts, whether they drive a school bus or play some other support role.
In a farewell email to school system employees, Phillips shared one final bit of advice: “Remember — if you get an email from a prince needing urgent help with his fortune, please, for my sanity, just hit delete!”
