Hoover school board hires new chief school finance officer from Jackson County

The Hoover school board tonight hired a new chief school finance officer from Jackson County but did not eliminate any particular jobs for the next school year as expected.

However, the board plans to call another special meeting sometime next week, and some job cuts will be occurring at that time due to budget constraints, Superintendent Kathy Murphy said.

The board chose Tina Hancock, the chief school finance officer for the Jackson County Board of Education in northeast Alabama, to replace Cathy Antee as the Hoover school system’s top financial officer.

Hancock has been the lead finance person in Jackson County schools for five years and spent 14 years as a business education and technology teacher prior to that. She was certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in 2007, she said.

She has a bachelor’s degree from Jacksonville State University, where she majored in accounting and minored in computer information systems. Hancock went on to get her master’s degree from Alabama A&M in business education.

Hancock said she’s excited about coming to Hoover City Schools and thankful for the opportunity to do so. Superintendent Kathy Murphy and school board President Derrick Murphy still have to negotiate the details of her contract, which will come back to the board for final approval.

Hancock is not certain exactly when she will start with Hoover, but her current superintendent was aware she might be leaving and is willing to work with her in the transition, she said.

Hancock said she’s sure there will be some adjustments coming to Hoover because every system’s processes are a little bit different, but she is eager to get started working on the fiscal 2017 budget.

Until Hancock arrives, the board chose Michele McKay, Hoover’s accounting director, as interim chief school finance officer because Antee’s contract expires this Friday, May 20.

Hancock was one of three finalists interviewed by the Hoover school board. The others were Jefferson County Chief School Finance Officer Sheila Jones and former Birmingham Chief School Finance Officer Arthur Watts Jr.

Kathy Murphy has said the Hoover system likely will have to cut 15 to 20 jobs for the coming school year due to budget constraints. Those job cuts should save the system $1.2 million to $1.8 million, she said. About 14 of those positions are expected to come from the two high schools, she said.

Human Resources Director Mary Veal said she was not aware of any categories of jobs being eliminated or elimination of an entire program. There may be some cases where class sizes increase slightly due to a fewer number of personnel in a given job category, Veal said.

Some positions already have been cut in the current school year as people left jobs, 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 are expected to save the school district about $950,000 in the current fiscal year, she said.

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

“We’re trying to do it through attrition,” Veal said. “We did have more retirements than what we expected, so that has helped ease the pain of having to cut out individual positions.”

This article was updated at 10:14 a.m. on May 18 to clarify information about job cuts that already have occurred and others coming for the next school year.