Photos by Jon Anderson
Rachael Taylor, left, and Rex Blair interview with the Hoover City Council for a spot on the Hoover Board of Education on Thursday, April 13, 2023.
Picking a new school superintendent, teacher retention, the COVID-19 pandemic, educational equity and handling unpopular decisions all were topics of discussion as the Hoover City Council interviewed school board applicants Thursday night.
The City Council interviewed only two of the remaining three candidates to replace Amy Mudano on the Hoover Board of Education.
The council spent about 25 minutes with Bluff Park resident Rachael Taylor and 40 minutes with Greystone resident Rex Blair. The third candidate, Dennis Quirk of Ross Bridge, was out of town and unavailable for today’s interviews, said Steve McClinton, chairman of the council’s Education Committee.
Councilwoman Khristi Driver asked Taylor and Blair what qualities they would seek in Hoover’s next school superintendent.
Taylor said she would look for someone who would work collaboratively with the school board and be open-minded without a pre-set agenda. She also would want a superintendent who had experience in schools and who was serious about teacher retention.
Blair said he would look for someone with strength of character and who would focus on keeping Hoover on the prosperous path but quickly identify areas for improvements. It’s important to take time to assess the status of things, but it’s also important to identify needs and be decisive, he said. The school system doesn’t need a micromanager, but it needs someone who can confidently deal with issues, he said. He also would talk with current Superintendent Dee Fowler, who has a year left on his contract, about what has made him successful and draw on that knowledge, he said.
McClinton asked the candidates how they would work to retain and recruit talented employees.
Taylor said it starts with showcasing all the positive aspects of the system and includes giving them a positive and peaceful environment in which to work. Teachers need to know that their superintendent and board have their backs and to know that their concerns are genuinely heard, she said.
Blair said he dealt with staffing shortages in the health care industry during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and learned a lot from that. Money is frequently a good motivator, but you can’t always throw more money out due to financial limitations, he said. So you have to focus on giving employees a positive work atmosphere and stressing to current and prospective employees the benefits they get from working in Hoover schools, he said.
Council President John Lyda asked each candidate how they would rate the performance of the current school board regarding their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taylor gave the current board a B+. She said the school board did a great job with its end goal of making sure students were safe and still able to learn in the best way possible. Having a virtual home-school instruction option was great, particularly for students with medical conditions, she said.
Parents got very “ignited” about the decisions made by the school board, but “how are you going to navigate something that’s once in a lifetime?” Taylor said. She doesn’t know that she would have done anything differently, but she wouldn’t give an A because that would have been perfection, she said.
Blair said he attended one of the school board’s open forums regarding mask requirements for students and left a little frustrated because he felt some board members were not clear on where they stood. However, the more he thought about it, the more he thought the board acted fairly because they set an end date for mask requirements and relied on data to drive decisions, he said.
Initially, he would have given the school board a C for its handling of the situation, but in hindsight, he would give them an A, he said.
Councilman Derrick Murphy, the only current council member who served on the school board, asked the candidates how they would define “equity in education.”
Taylor, perhaps misunderstanding the question as being a financial question, quickly said “equity is the amount of money you’ve made on the side of something. It’s the interest you accrue on something.”
Blair interpreted the question differently, saying equity in education is being fair or impartial, but there are different ideas about what is fair, he said. What’s important to him is to make sure that all kids in the school system have the same opportunity to be successful, he said.
He believes the opportunity is there for all kids to take the same classes, but perhaps some students are not ready for certain advanced classes and may need some additional help to get ready, he said.
Councilman Curt Posey asked the candidates if they would do anything to help the school system get released from federal supervision in a decades-old desegregation case in which equity is a key issue.
The school district has been working on this for almost 10 years and doesn’t appear to be getting anywhere with the effort, while the Vestavia Hills Board of Education got released from the federal case within months of trying, Posey said.
Taylor, an attorney, said she thought the Hoover school system could readily show it has made a good faith effort to provide an equitable education to all students as it relates to things such as school facilities, programs, transportation, faculty and extracurricular activities. The school district definitely could move forward and seek a summary judgment from the federal judge overseeing the case, she said.
Blair said he’s never gotten a clear understanding of how the school system’s effort to get released from the desegregation case got stifled. “I’d like to know why,” he said.
The school board needs to have some honest conversations about whether Hoover is indeed providing an equitable education to all students and whether it can prove that, Blair said. If the district gets told by the federal courts that it isn’t doing so, then it needs to get proactive and do something about it, he said.
“I don’t like to have things hanging over my head,” Blair said. “To me, It almost feels like a little bit of a black eye. … We need to figure out what’s our timeline to prove our point and move forward and take whatever action we need to to make that happen.”
Murphy also asked the school board candidates how they would support unpopular decisions that may anger parents but is deemed best for students.
Taylor said it’s important to be respectful to all parties, explain your point of view and give credit to others’ points of view to help de-escalate the situation.
As the founder and director of a women’s kickball league in Bluff Park, she has had a chance to deal with 120 mostly middle-aged women who are all very opinionated about how the league should operate, she said. She navigated that by making sure everyone was heard and forming a committee to help her make decisions, she said.
Blair said board members have to have a thick skin and realize that when people get harsh with you about a decision you’ve made that it’s not necessarily an attack on you as a person; it’s more about the decision that was made.
It’s OK if not everyone agrees you, he said. And you want them to feel comfortable in expressing that to you because if they keep complaints bottled up, that creates resentment and anger that can be 10 times worse than the initial frustration, he said.
The complete interviews with Taylor and Blair can be seen on the city of Hoover’s website, along with all three candidates’ written answers to 16 questions provided by the public, particularly the Hoover Parent Teacher Council.
Also, see bio information of all three candidates here.
McClinton said he expects the City Council to make a decision at its 6 p.m. meeting Monday.
