Hoover school board OKs $230,000 salary for new superintendent

The Hoover Board of Education on Tuesday night approved a roughly three-year contract with incoming Superintendent Kevin Maddox, agreeing to pay him $230,000 a year for his services.

Maddox, who has been an assistant superintendent for the Homewood Board of Education since 2012, officially began as Hoover’s superintendent retroactively by one day. His new term officially began Monday, according to the contract.

He already had relinquished his duties in Homewood and has been working in the Hoover school system’s central office alongside outgoing Superintendent Dee Fowler, getting an introduction to the job.

Fowler has been Hoover’s superintendent a little more than two years and is retiring a second time and moving to a new home in Fairhope to be closer to family.

Hoover school board member Craig Kelley said the board decided to put all of Maddox’s compensation into his salary and not to provide any additional car allowance or housing allowance.

Maddox will automatically get any future pay increases authorized by the Legislature for public school teachers. For example, if the Legislature were to pass a 2% pay increase for teachers next year, Maddox in turn would get a 2% pay increase without any further action of the Hoover school board.

He is eligible for 15 days of paid vacation per year, and any unused vacation time can be carried over from year to year, up to a maximum of 30 days. Maddox’s contract goes through June 30, 2026, and can be extended.

School board member Amy Tosney said she is excited to begin working with Maddox. "You have a lot of excited energy for education in you, and I'm excited to partner with you," she told him during the board meeting.

In other business Tuesday, the Hoover school board approved a $231 million budget for fiscal 2024, which is a 3% decline from the $238 million budget approved for 2023 a year ago. Most of the decrease is due to less money going to capital projects in fiscal 2024, with the capital budget decreasing from $34.2 million in fiscal 2023 to an anticipated $13.6 million in fiscal 2024.

The school system plans to spend $177 million out of its general fund in fiscal 2024, which is $13.9 million (or 8 percent) more than the original 2023 budget. Most of the $13.9 million increase (about $9.4 million) can be attributed to the increased cost of salaries and benefits, Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay said.

Expenditures per student are projected to be $15,737, which is an increase of $1,355 per student from fiscal 2023, McCay said.

The school district as of Sept. 3 employed 1,861 people, including 1,116 certified employees such as teachers, administrators, counselors and librarians, and 745 non-certified employees, such as secretaries, custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.

The number of employees is down by 22.5 positions, mostly because the district lost federal funding for intervention teachers hired the past couple of years to help students make up learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic, McCay said. Those teachers did not lose their jobs; they were offered positions to help fill other vacancies, she said.

See more about the 2024 budget here.

The Hoover school board also on Tuesday:

• Agreed to pay $2.9 million for construction of new men’s and women’s restrooms at the Hoover and Spain Park high school baseball and softball fields, plus about $120,000 for a separate attached changing area for softball players at Hoover High to give them comparable accommodations to other spring sport athletes at the two high schools, Fowler said. The contract for the restrooms was reduced by $389,106 from the original bid after negotiations, he said.
• Approved a reduction in cost of $8,538 for roof replacement and repairs at South Shades Crest Elementary School because contingency funds that were in the contract were not needed.
• Approved contracts for 52 more TEAMS teachers, which are highly qualified math and science teachers who are paid a higher salary by the state in an effort to retain and recruit math and science teachers and improve student achievement in those areas. TEAMS teachers are paid about $18,000 more than typical teachers on the state salary matrix, said Chris Robbins, Hoover’s chief learning officer. Hoover now has 105 TEAMS teachers, he said.
• Named the board room at the Farr Administration Building after Charles Hickman, one of the first Hoover school board members who in more recent years wrote a book on the history of the school system.
• Acknowleged Sept. 10-16 as National Suicide Prevention Week and Sept. 15-Oct. 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month.
• Congratulated Shades Mountain Elementary School science, technology, engineering, arts and math teacher Marjie Keeney for receiving the 2023 Drummond Co. Heart of Education Award.
• Congratulated a group of last year’s fifth graders from Shades Mountain Elementary School for being named winners in the 2023 Governor’s App Challenge for creating an application designed to increase people’s happiness coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Congratulated the Hoover High School Air Force Junior ROTC program for having a team place third the unarmed color guard drill in the Air Force Junior ROTC Open Drill Nationals in March. Team members were Commander 2nd Lt. MaKayla Steele, 2nd Lt. Bessie Rodriguez Claros, 1st Lt. Blake Pyatt and Capt. Lucas Petersen.