New super to be picked Friday

The Escambia County (Ala.) School Board will hold a special meeting at 3 p.m. Friday, July 30, at the central office in Brewton to select the new superintendent for the county school system.

The six finalists are being interviewed this week at the Flomaton High School Auditorium. Two were interviewed Monday, two on Tuesday and the final two will be interviewed today (Thursday). One interview will be held at 6 p.m. and the second is scheduled for 8 p.m.

The interviews are open to the public, but no public comment will be allowed.

The six finalists are Gary Glass, principal at Monroe County High School; Michele M. McClung, director of teaching, learning and assessment for the Mobile County public schools; Sandra Reid, assistant superintendent with the Escambia County (Ala.) School System; Wade Shipman, former superintendent of the Tallassee City Board of Education; Dr. Barbarietta Turner, director of services for the Monroe County Board of Education; and Dr. Stephen 'Clay' Webber, principal for the Marshall County Board of Education.

The new superintendent will replace John Knott effective Aug. 31, who is retiring.

During last Thursday's school board meeting, the board approved a contract with Knott to serve as COVID-19 and health contractor for the school system from Oct. 1 through May 31. The contract calls for Knott to be paid $2,500 per month for October, November December and then $1,000 per month for the remainder of the contract.

Knott said he and staff members are still working on its back-to-school plan and dealing with updates associated with the rising cases of COVID-19 and the new Delta variance.

“I have regular meetings with the state and the Alabama Department of Public Health,” Knott said. “I've served on some of these committees and it helps to have those contacts.”

Knott said as of now there are no mask mandates, but does recommended that anyone who has not been vaccinated wear a mask.

“We will continue our protocol with daily cleaning,” Knott said. “We have purchased new equipment and we continue to stockpile masks and sanitizer.”

Knott said schools will continue to encourage hand washing and he is asking schools to provide social distancing to the greatest extent they can.

“We need to continue using common sense to help keep everybody safe,” he said.

Knott also said he will help with monitoring grant possibilities and current grants are used correctly and put to the best use to keep teachers, staff and students safe.

“Nobody wants to go back to where we were last year,” Knott said. “We will do everything in our power to keep everybody safe.”

At the beginning of last week's board meeting, he said he had considered not talking about an updated COVID-19 program but with the increase in cases in the past 30 days it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

“Every area is different,” Knott said. “Cases in our county have increased. In our back to school plan we have addressed these issues.”

He told the board there are currently no concerns with staff or students that he knows of, but he is making sure the school system covers all the bases.

Although COVID-19 vaccines are not required by employees of the school system, Knott said it's important to know which employees have been vaccinated and which have not.

“It's important to know where we are on that,” he said.