Photo by Jon Anderson
220510_Walter_Womack
Tarrant Elementary School Principal Walter Womack speaks to Simmons Middle School parent Kate Graham on May 10, 2022, shortly after being appointed as the new principal at Simmons by the Hoover Board of Education.
The Hoover school board on Tuesday night approved the hiring of a new principal for Simmons Middle School.
Superintendent Dee Fowler recommended Tarrant Elementary School Principal Walter Womack for the job.
Womack has been an administrator in the Tarrant school system for 17 years, including three years at Tarrant’s alternative school, three to four years at Tarrant Middle School and the past eight years at Tarrant Elementary, he said.
Before that, he served three years as a teacher in Jefferson County’s alternative school and two years as a teacher at Keith High School in Dallas County, he said.
Womack plans to finish the current school year at Tarrant Elementary and make the transition to Simmons this summer, but his exact start date has not yet been set.
Fowler said he’s very excited to get Womack hired at Simmons. “We need some stability in this school,” he said.
Womack will be the fifth person to serve as principal at Simmons since early 2019. Former Principal Brian Cain had to take a medical leave in January 2019, and Assistant Principal Kevin Erwin was named acting principal and then full-time principal that summer. After two years, Erwin swapped jobs with former Shades Mountain Elementary Principal Melissa Hadder, but Hadder stayed at Simmons less than a year, switching to Berry Middle School in February of this year.
That’s when retired Hoover City Schools administrator Charles Butler was brought in to serve as interim principal until Hadder’s replacement could be found. Also, Butler won’t be able to finish the rest of this school year because his wife just died, Fowler said. A plan for closing out this school year will be announced to faculty Thursday at the same time Womack is introduced to the faculty, Fowler said.
The superintendent said he asked Womack for a commitment to stay at least three to five years at Simmons, and Womack said he’ll stay as long as the Hoover school district will let him.
Womack said he decided to apply for the job at Simmons because he sees it as great opportunity to work for a great school district and education is his passion.
In other business Tuesday night, the Hoover school board amended its 2022 budget to more accurately reflect the beginning and expected ending fund balances for the year.
When the 2022 budget was passed, school officials expected to end fiscal 2021 and begin fiscal 2022 with about $106 million in the system’s reserves, but about $17 million in capital expenditures in 2021 were delayed due to the rising cost of building materials and labor shortages, Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay said.
Also, school officials were able to carry over about $370,000 in federal funds that were not spent in 2021, she said. All of this meant the school system ended fiscal 2021 and began fiscal 2022 with $119 million in the reserve fund, McCay said.
The Hoover school system also ended up receiving a little more than $4 million in unexpected money from the state in fiscal 2022 and about $281,000 in unexpected federal money, she said.
As of now, school officials expect to end fiscal 2022 with $116 million on Sept. 30, which is enough to cover about 8.6 months’ worth of expenses, she said. The state requires school systems to keep one month’s worth of expenses on hand, but McCay said she prefers to keep about five months’ worth of expenses in the Hoover school district’s reserves. The school district spends $12.5 million to $13.5 million a month, with the vast majority of that paying for personnel expenses, she said.
The school board also on Tuesday night elected Amy Tosney to serve a second one-year term as president of the board and Amy Mudano to serve a second one-year term as vice president. Traditionally, the board has rotated the presidency so that each member serves a term as president, but Mudano said she didn’t see a need to continue that and recommended Tosney to be president again. Tosney was just reappointed to serve a second five-year term on the school board last month by the Hoover City Council.
