Trussville City Council establishes process it will use to appoint upcoming BOE member

By Chris Yow
Editor

TRUSSVILLE — The Trussville City Council met in a special-called meeting Friday morning to discuss the process in which it will use to appoint a person to the city’s board of education.

Gayle Glenn is resigning from the board, and current Board President Sid McNeal will take the remaining one year of her term. The person appointed will serve five years on the board.

Council liaison to the school board Jef Freeman proposed to the council a process where the current 12 candidates are reduced to a smaller pool to be interviewed in a public meeting. Each council member will select their top five candidates from the pool of 12 applicants and will turn that into Mayor Buddy Choat’s office. From there, the council will interview the remaining candidates in a public meeting.

The council will then submit three questions each, and from those questions the council will select 10 questions total, though follow up questions will be allowed, to ask each candidate.

Councilman Alan Taylor said this process is unique in that it will be public.

“The hardest thing in this process that you don’t have to deal with in the business world is this whole process is done in public,” he said. “It’s hard to interview people in public, and it’s hard deliberating personnel matters in public, but that’s the way it is.”

Freeman said he hoped to have the successful candidate chosen by the final council meeting in April so they may be able to attend the first board of education meeting in May.

“Our city is built around the greatness of our schools,” Freeman said. “We’ve got to continue to recognize that, and we’re sitting in a very pivotal position to continue making our schools better.”

The council meets Tuesday night and hope to have the finalists chosen by that time.