Cullman County Schools Superintendent Shane Barnette has just completed his first year on the job.
My biggest thing is I don’t want there to be any excuse why a kid cannot graduate high school. I want to work toward getting everybody through a program and having them ready, when they graduate a Cullman County school, they can go into a career or they can continue their education, whichever one they decide to do. We want to fully support that, and make that dream possible for them.”Shane Barnette
CULLMAN – As Cullman County Board of Education (CCBOE) Superintendent Shane Barnette finished up his first year in the post, he sat down with The Tribune to talk about his experience and what’s ahead for him and the system.
“It’s been an exciting year,” said Barnette, “at times overwhelming, when you look back at the things we’ve accomplished and the things we’ve done. I’m really excited about the direction our district’s going as a whole. We’ve always had some excellent teachers and administrators in our district, but I feel like we’re getting more on the same page now, going more in the same direction with great things on the horizon. I’m really excited and blessed to be part of this district.”
There seemed to be a large number of teachers retiring this year. Is that normal?
“It’s much higher this year. We had a retirement incentive this year. Part of that is purely financial reasons. Where most districts have no or few local units (personnel that the local system has to pay for, instead of the state foundation), CCBOE has to pay out of our General Fund for a large number of additional teachers. As their degrees and years of experience go up, that puts a big burden on our budget. This year, we did an incentive for people who are considering retirement. We set aside so much money that, if the teachers met the criteria, they could retire and get a one-time incentive payment. Then we could hire teachers with lower degrees and fewer years’ experience, and we could save quite a bit of money.”
How about your first annual evaluation (the superintendent’s “report card”)?
(Barnette’s first evaluation was good, with overall averages of four and above on a five-point scale in every category, from board members principals, and administrators.)
“It shows that we have a good working relationship together; and I hope they know, and I feel like they do, that I support them and I’m there to help them get rid of roadblocks, to help them do the best job they can do.
“We’ve done a lot. Some of our high numbers are in technology. We’ve spent a lot of money on devices this year, and we’ve also spent a lot of money doing teacher training for how to implement those devices in the classroom. That’s something I’m proud of, because we’ve done a lot of work on that.
“I think I’m blessed and Cullman County Schools is blessed to have a board that, not only do they come to a board meeting or come to me and they’re supporting their individual communities, but at the same time we come together and we get to discuss what’s best for our district as a whole.
“We go back and forth between number 13 and 14 on the size of our district in Alabama. To have a district this big and to have a board that’s all on the same page and get along with each other, who think of what’s best for kids and don’t play games; we’re blessed to have that.”
After a year of experience on the job, with feedback from the system, what will you be able to do better next year?
“One of the things that I’ve worked really hard on this year is being available to people. It’s hard to be available to people, to everybody that comes up, because of my agenda. My schedule’s incredibly busy. We’re going to set up more community meetings this (next) year, get out in the community and let them give me a little more feedback than what they’re giving now.
“I feel like the central office staff has been out in the classrooms more this year than we ever have before. Coming into this fall, we’re going to be out there even more to make sure that we’re supporting those teachers to do the absolute best job they can do. We as a school system are only as good as that teacher is. We’ve got to do our best to support them and help them get better.
“We still have some more technology that we’re going to be rolling out. We’re really close in some grades to being one to one (each student having a device), but this year we’re going to do one to one a little differently. Where a lot of systems just give the kid a device and they take it home, we want to train the teachers to use the devices to improve instruction. If the kids can’t learn better, there’s no point in giving them the device; because it’s not about the device, it’s about the learning.”
What successes this last year are now part of the long-term “Barnette Plan?”
“One of the things I’m very proud of is me and my staff being very supportive to the classroom teachers and local administrations. We want to get back to the basics. One of the things that I truly believe in is whatever we do, I want to do it with excellence. If we can’t do it top-notch, don’t do it.
“We’ve been looking at a lot of our facilities, and we got $5.2 million this last year to do some repairs on buildings and things like that, which has gone a long way. We’re going to keep doing that and getting those things up. Here’s the way I look at it: we can buy all the technology in the world, but if the building’s leaking, that’s kind of ridiculous. So we want to fix those things as we roll out technology.
“We do the Fast Track to Industry and Fast Track to Academics, and we started the Fine Arts Academy in partnership with Wallace (State Community College). Some of those partnerships we’ve just continued to advance; going forward, we’re going to look at more virtual classes. We’re real excited about that.”
What will students and parents see this coming year that might make them say “Wow”?
“We’ve had a small component of virtual school; we’re going to make that bigger and spread it out more, so more people can be involved in virtual school. And there’s some things we want to do with our credit recovery; we realize there’s more and more obstacles to graduating as the years go on, whether that be kids having to get jobs or families that are struggling financially. We’re trying to create opportunities for people to make sure they can finish high school.
“My biggest thing is I don’t want there to be any excuse why a kid cannot graduate high school. I want to work toward getting everybody through a program and having them ready, when they graduate a Cullman County school, they can go into a career or they can continue their education, whichever one they decide to do. We want to fully support that, and make that dream possible for them.”
The final word
“I think, more than anything, our district is going to be working on getting on the same page. One thing that people have said, even from the state department, for a long time is that we’re a district of individual schools doing their own thing. I want us more on the same page. We’ve been doing that already and will continue into the fall, so if a student transfers, he won’t have to learn a whole new procedure. We want them (local schools) to keep their identity, because we know that’s the heartbeat of the local community; at the same time, our curriculum and things like that need to be the same district-wide. We’re working on that.
“I’m from Cullman County, and I’m excited and I’m proud about our Cullman County school system. The students that are graduating from Cullman County are going on to do wonderful things. We had our graduation the other day, and we graduated over 700 kids; and I’m blown away by the millions and millions of dollars in scholarship offers that our students have gotten. That just shows you the excellent job that’s going on in the classroom, and I’m glad to be part of it. I love my job, and I look forward to doing it for several more years.”
Copyright 2017 Humble Roots, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
