New Hoover schools Superintendent Dee Fowler wants return to normalcy

The Hoover school system is going through a leadership change, but new Superintendent Dee Fowler said he hopes that as students begin school on Aug. 10, it will feel like a return to normalcy.

Gone will be the requirement to wear masks to school, and schools no longer will be doing contact tracing and quarantining of students who had close contact with people who tested positive for COVID-19, unless health authorities require it, Fowler said.

There will be no health-related restrictions on seating, and there won’t be partitions between students’ desks unless parents request them for their children, according to the school system’s “reopening plan.”

Everyone once again will eat in the cafeteria, after-school care will be offered, and academic and extra-curricular field trips will be allowed, but parents will be able to opt out of field trips for their children without any penalties if they have concerns.

The goal is to make the school year seem as normal as possible for students, Fowler said. “We want them excited to be here.”

But that doesn’t mean school officials aren’t paying attention to the latest news of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has included an uptick in COVID-19 cases in July after months of steady decline.

School officials will continue to keep an eye on the situation and make any adjustments as needed, Fowler said in early July.

He’s not a doctor or scientist, so he will listen to the health experts, use common sense, listen to parents’ concerns and needs, and keep the health and safety of students foremost in mind in every decision, he said.

School officials continue to take measures to counter a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. All heating, ventilation and air conditioning unit evaporator coils have been cleaned, disinfected and sanitized, and the district is changing all filters to MERV-13 filters, as recommended by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers.

Buses will operate at as full capacity as possible, but hand sanitizer will be available, and bus windows will be open when possible, according to the reopening plan.

Virtual school won’t be available at the elementary level because parents of only 11 elementary students requested it, Assistant Superintendent Ron Dodson said. However, it will still be available at middle and high schools.

A few dozen middle school students requested virtual school for the coming year, but only about a dozen high school students requested full-time virtual school, Dodson said. Close to 400 high school students are doing a combination of hybrid and in-person learning, which is about the same as before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he said.

One of the biggest priorities school officials have for the coming school year is to help students catch up from learning loss that occurred when students were not physically in school because of the pandemic, Dodson said.

“The thing we missed the most this year was face-to-face instruction — human beings teaching human beings,” Dodson said.

Online curriculum does help a lot of students, but it doesn’t work as well for others and sometimes leaves them falling behind, he said.

This summer, the school district offered summer school for middle school students for the first time in several years and had 80 to 90 students there, Dodson said. There also were 320 students from across the school district at a summer literacy camp for students in kindergarten through third grade, he said. That camp, which was held at Gwin Elementary, would have been held regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic because of the Alabama Literacy Initiative to get all students reading on grade level by third grade, but it was even more important because of learning losses due to the pandemic, he said.

Additional teachers were added for summer school at the high school level this year to give students more individual attention, he said.

Hoover schools also are hiring about 40 intervention teachers across the district to work with students individually or in small groups to address learning loss, Dodson said. Those positions are being funded with federal pandemic recovery money and are only guaranteed for one year but possibly could be extended for a second year, he said.

ENROLLMENT

One of the big questions remaining for the coming school year is how many students will actually enroll in Hoover schools. Last year, “COVID just threw everything sideways,” said Bob Lawry, Hoover’s director of student services.

Enrollment in Hoover schools dropped last year by 434 students, or 3%, to 13,427 students across the district, records show. The biggest decline was at Green Valley Elementary, which lost 101 students, or 21% of the school’s prior year enrollment. The next biggest drop was at Deer Valley Elementary, which lost 93 students, or 11% of its prior year enrollment.

Brock’s Gap Intermediate School and Bumpus Middle School were the only Hoover public schools that saw an enrollment jump last year, likely due to new home construction in western Hoover.

Lawry said he’s really not sure what to expect this year but believes enrollment probably will be similar to last year. School officials are particularly uncertain this year because the Alabama Department of Education over the summer has been changing the software program that schools use to track enrollment, and withdrawals that normally show up in the system when a student moves to another system were not yet known.

CONSTRUCTION

One big change for this school year is the opening of a 14-classroom addition at Berry Middle School. A final inspection was scheduled to take place July 22, and teachers were expected to begin moving into the new three-story wing immediately after that, Principal Chris Robbins said.

Nine of the classrooms are scheduled to be used this year as regular classrooms, while three will be science labs, Robbins said. The other two will be used as teacher workrooms and conference rooms for now but can be converted into classrooms to accommodate future growth if needed, he said.

“It’s going to allow us to spread out a little more than we have in past years,” Robbins said.

Some teachers who have been sharing classrooms now will have their own, and some classes now will be able to move to a more ideal location in the school, he said. Also, the new wing fulfills a dream of having a dedicated space for a science, technology, engineering and math lab and gives students a way to move more efficiently from place to place within the school, Robbins said.

Other construction projects scheduled for completion over the summer included window replacements at Green Valley, Shades Mountain and Bluff Park elementary schools, a roofing project at Green Valley and replacement of an air conditioning chiller and cooling tower at Simmons Middle School, said Matt Wilson, the school system’s operations coordinator.

Projects stretching into the fall included a roofing project at the operations center and renovations of the old Bluff Park Elementary School, Wilson said.

NEW LEADERS

Fowler came on board as Hoover’s new superintendent on July 1, replacing Kathy Murphy, who took a job as president of Gadsden State Community College in January.

Fowler has more than 40 years experience in public education in Alabama, including 23 years as a teacher and administrator in Madison County Schools and 18 years as a central office administrator for Madison City Schools (including 10 years as superintendent).

He then served about a year as deputy state superintendent and chief of staff for the Alabama Department of Education before retiring in January 2018 and since has worked as a consultant, motivational speaker and interim superintendent for Morgan County Schools.

“I’m very excited to be in Hoover,” Fowler said. He has always paid attention to the Hoover school system and knows the great traditions it has, he said.

Since arriving on the job, he has been busy meeting people, getting updates on critical matters and “trying to acclimate myself to the Hoover way,” he said.

The main thing he wants to do is continue the great traditions Hoover has in academics, athletics and the arts and grow those traditions, he said. He has no particular changes in mind and instead wants to take time to listen and learn from faculty, staff and parents, he said. “I’m still in the learning phase. I need to digest it.”

He has some critical positions to fill with the recent departure of Assistant Superintendent Tera Simmons, who went to work under Murphy as executive vice president at Gadsden State, and the upcoming departure of Assistant Superintendent Ron Dodson, who is retiring Sept. 1.

Fowler said he’ll take time to evaluate Hoover’s organizational structure to figure out the best way to move forward with personnel. The central office staff is stocked with excellent educators, he said.

The school board on July 27 approved longtime Bumpus Middle School Assistant Principal Donna Burke as the new principal at the school. She replaces Tamala Maddox, who resigned at the end of June to take a job as the middle school principal for the I3 Academy charter school in Birmingham.

The school board also on July 27 approved two principals swapping jobs. Simmons Middle School Principal Kevin Erwin is moving to Shades Mountain Elementary School, and Shades Mountain Principal Melissa Hadder will take Erwin’s place at Simmons.

Personnel Director Mary Veal said Hoover, like many systems across the state, had a lot of retirements this spring, losing 43 or 44 people with more than 760 years in education combined. Twenty-nine of them had at least 25 years in education, Veal said.