Hoover school board calls special meeting for Tuesday night; job cuts likely

The Hoover school board has called a special meeting for 5:30 p.m. tonight, in part to further discuss the appointment of a new chief school finance officer.

School board President Derrick Murphy said as of this morning, he didn’t anticipate the board interviewing any more candidates, but the board will have public discussion about what it wants to do.

So far, the board has interviewed three finalists: Jefferson County Chief School Finance Officer Sheila Jones and former Birmingham Chief School Finance Officer Arthur Watts Jr. on April 25 and Jackson County Chief School Finance Officer Tina Hancock on May 9.

Read more about the interviews with Jones and Watts here and the interview with Hancock here.

Regardless of whether the board chooses a permanent replacement for Cathy Antee tonight, the board will need to appoint someone to serve in an interim capacity until a permanent chief school finance officer can come on board, Murphy said.

Antee’s contract is scheduled to expire on Friday, May 20, and even if a permanent replacement is appointed tonight, that person likely would need to provide adequate severance notice to their current employer, Murphy said.

The school board agenda also includes other personnel actions, and there usually are many at this time of year. Superintendent Kathy Murphy said in April there likely would be 15-20 positions cut for the next school year due to budget constraints, but exact positions being eliminated have not been announced.

The job cuts for next year should save the school system $1.2 million to $1.8 million, Murphy said. About 14 of the positions are expected to come from the two high schools, she said. School officials have been trying to identify the less popular electives to help reduce staffing levels, she said. 

Other jobs already have been cut as employees left, including an assistant principal, a counselor, some maintenance staff, a maintenance supervisor, district interventionist, tech support job and a child nutrition job, Kathy Murphy said. Those cuts should save about $950,000 in the current school year, she said.

Where possible, school officials are making job cuts in conjunction with retirements and job reassignments, the superintendent said.

This article was updated at 10:24 a.m. to clarify that some job cuts already have occurred as people left the system and to clarify information about job cuts for the coming school year.