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Photo by Jon Anderson
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Michael Barber, the retired superintendent for Pell City Schools, interviews for the Hoover superintendent job with the Hoover Board of Education on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
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Michael Barber, the retired superintendent for Pell City Schools, interviews for the Hoover superintendent job with the Hoover Board of Education on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021.
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Photo by Jon Anderson
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Michael Barber, the retired superintendent for Pell City Schools, interviews for the Hoover superintendent job with the Hoover Board of Education on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021.
The Hoover Board of Education interviewed its first candidate for superintendent on Wednesday.
Michael Barber, the retired superintendent for Pell City Schools, spent about an hour and 15 minutes answering questions in an official interview at the Farr Administration Building, as well as meeting city leaders and Hoover City Schools staff in informal gatherings before and after the interview.
Barber, one of five finalists for the Hoover City Schools superintendent job, described himself as a “high-mileage” candidate because he has spent 30 years in education and 25 of those as an administrator, including 10 as assistant superintendent for Pell City and six years as superintendent there.
He retired in 2019 but couldn’t get education out of his blood.
Barber, now age 55, started volunteering to work with high school students at an Iron Workers Skills Institute and volunteering to work at a veterans home each week. He also has enjoyed doing consulting work for the Alabama Association of School Boards but still finds himself on the outside looking in, wishing he were back on the inside, he said.
“I enjoy kids,” he said. “I miss it. I miss the interaction. I miss the school day. I miss being in the schools. I miss the first day of school. I miss all of it. I think, stepping away from a calling, if that calling is still very strong in your life, you’ll find a way to get to that. … I miss the role of making a difference.”
Barber said he comes from a cotton mill community. His grandfather had just a third-grade education, and his grandmother made it through just the sixth grade, and he ended up becoming superintendent of the same system where his grandfather finished the third grade, he said.
“Public education is powerful. It changes everything. It’s opportunity that you have to take advantage of, and you have to guide children. We’re guides, and I miss that piece of it,” Barber said. “I miss the power that it has to change lives.”
He would love the opportunity to be a part of the great Hoover school system, he said.
One thing that makes him stand out as a candidate is his experience as a pastor, he said. He has been a Southern Baptist pastor for at least two decades. People who go into superintendent work often get a lot of training in law and finance, but they typically don’t get much training in counseling.
His doctorate is in pastoral leadership, and his experience as a pastor and counselor is valuable as a superintendent, he said. He knows how to be a shepherd — to take care of people and take them where they need to be, he said.
His leadership style is to get to know people, make friends with people, work together to accomplish the mission of the school district and build leadership in the people around him, he said.
PRIORITIES
Barber said if he were appointed superintendent for Hoover City Schools, one of his biggest priorities would be to increase the school district’s funding with a stable funding source, which means more property taxes instead of relying on fluctuating sales taxes.
He would push for legislation that would allow Hoover residents to raise property taxes beyond the current limit of 75 mills, he said. Hoover residents in Jefferson County already pay 72.6 mills in property taxes, so raising taxes another 2.4 mills would only raise about $4 million a year, Barber said.
Some people may not want to raise property taxes, but Hoover schools are competing with schools in Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills, Barber said. Mountain Brook residents voted in 2019 to raise their property taxes to 109 mills, and residents in Vestavia Hills pay 92.6 mills in property taxes.
If Hoover wants to remain competitive, it needs to increase funding, Barber said. “You can’t separate economics and education.”
Barber and others pushed to increase property taxes for St. Clair County and Pell City schools beyond 13.5 mills in 2018, but voters across the county defeated that effort. Barber said there was more than one way to skin a cat, and he was successful at getting legislation to establish a taxing district for Pell City that did not include the whole county.
Another priority he would have for Hoover City Schools would be to consider reducing the number of locally funded teacher units. Hoover now pays for 311 teachers completely out of local money with no contribution from the state. That can be costly, Barber said.
Hoover may need all of those positions, but some hard decisions may have to be made to keep the budget in line, he said. That could mean reassigning some teachers and staff as people retire or leave, but treating people with dignity and respect as changes are made, he said. It’s a matter of putting all the puzzle pieces in the right places, he said. The teacher unions would need to be part of those conversations as well, he said.
Barber noted that while he was assistant superintendent in Pell City, he worked with the superintendent there to help get Pell City Schools “unitary status,” which means the school district was released from a federal court case involving desegregation. They essentially had to prove that the school district did not discriminate against minorities in the various aspects of providing an education — something the Hoover Board of Education is trying to prove to the federal court right now.
That required taking a deep dive into every aspect of the school system and making sure things were fair and there was no undue burden on certain segments of the population, Barber said.
Going through that process and dealing with other issues involving race requires a lot of self-evaluation and willingness to look at things from other people’s perspectives, he said. As an administrator, he always found it helpful to build relationships with people from different backgrounds and listen carefully to them to help prevent and resolve problems, he said.
As an assistant superintendent, he inherited a civil rights complaint and dealt with it, but during his tenure as superintendent, the Pell City Board of Education did not have a single lawsuit, he said. He attributes that to the ability of staff members to handle problems with the proper attitude when first approached.
“Lawsuits many times begin with first contact, and first contact can be good a good thing” he said. “An administrator’s job is to diffuse. It is not to escalate an issue. We preached that and preached that.”
NEXT STEPS
The Hoover school board plans to interview its second superintendent finalist, Satsuma Superintendent Bart Reeves, today (Feb. 11) at 4 p.m. Other interviews are set with Bessemer Superintendent Autumm Jeter on Monday (Feb. 15), Haleyville Superintendent Holly Sutherland on Wednesday (Feb. 16) and Phenix City Superintendent Randy Wilkes on Thursday (Feb. 18).
All interviews are open to the public, and all interviews are being recorded and will be shared as online videos on the Hoover City Schools YouTube channel once the final interview is concluded, Bamman said.
The school board ideally would like to make a decision by March 1 and have a new superintendent in place by April 1, but if it takes a little longer to ensure the district is getting the best candidate, that will be OK, she said.
“We want to take time to get it right,” Bamman said. “It’s a big job and it’s important.”
