Feb. 8—With less than a month before the Cullman County School Superintendent is decided in the county’s Primary Election, Tuesday, March 5, The Times sat down with both candidates in the race to present a curated series of questions. On Wednesday, we shared our conversation with incumbent candidate, Dr. Shane Barnette.

Today, we share the interview with his challenger, Morris Williams. Some questions were also presented to Barnett while others were tailored to reflect Williams’ platform and messaging.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

CT: School choice is primed to be a big issue among Alabama lawmakers during the 2024 legislative session. Do you feel as though school choice negatively impacts public schools systems? Why or why not?

MW: It is hard for me to separate the two. As an educator, I think that school choice is going to be a big issue and could have a negative impact. As a conservative, I can understand the idea of the money following the kid. I don’t know for sure what the legislation is going to be — the last example I heard was $6,900 — but a certain amount of taxes would follow a student if they were to go to a private school or be homeschooled.

What happens is that we have a lot of stuff coming in from the Alabama Department of Education and the national forces pushing into public schools with things that they are trying to force us to do. For some people [who disagree with those things] this could be a game changer and they could decide to send their kids somewhere like Cullman Christian or St. Bernard. I think it is going to have an impact there. What we need to do in the school system is to try and overcome that. Competition is good in our system and hopefully it will keep us on an even keel. We’ve got to be responsive to what the community wants in this county. That has to be our focus.

In Cullman County, I think a lot of people care about their schools and people are connected to their schools. School choice isn’t going to have the same impact here that it would in South Alabama or some of the other districts where I think it will have a large impact. But again, I could be wrong. We will have to wait and see what the legislation looks like and what it all involves.

CT: A large part of your campaign has focused on the salary discrepancy between you and your opponent based on the most recently approved superintendent salary schedule. Teacher salaries are determined by a similar type of tiered, step schedule. Based on your 27 years of classroom experience and your Education Specialist degree, your salary is $85,604 which includes a $5,000 supplement for your National Board Certification and a $3,000 Scholars Bowl supplement. A first-year teacher currently makes about half of that, $44,226. Do you believe this type of system is fair for teachers and if so, how does it differ from that of superintendents?

MW: I’m not insulted that they will pay me less and I’m not bucking for a pay raise. I knew what the salary was when I signed up. The difference is the intent behind it.

When they came out of their meeting the board said, “We don’t want just anyone running for this position.” In years gone by, we’ve never had that. It’s always been a set pay. I’ve looked, now I may not have looked everywhere, but I haven’t seen where they have this kind of floating schedule in another county. It is a set salary for that position. In Winston County the salary is $126,000. In Lee County, I think it’s $200-and something thousand.

I know it had to change when we went to an appointed superintendent and the-then superintendent negotiated their salary. Shane, with zero experience — well he had administrative experience as assistant principal and also principal at West Point Intermediate School — started at $126,000. So it’s not necessarily the salary, as it is the distance.

I will put it this way, if was bagging groceries at Publix and decided to run for Senate, I wouldn’t have any experience and might not even have a college degree. But if I were elected then I would get whatever that office pays. So for the board to do that [approve a tiered-salary schedule] it changed it. It made such a disparity that I believe the intention was to do two things: to discourage people from voting and to give Shane a raise. If he gets elected he will go to $190,000 while a high school principal, who is the typical candidate for this position, with a doctorate would make $140,000.

So my big objection to it is the intention behind it. When they said they didn’t want just anyone running, what I think they meant was that they didn’t want anyone running. They are discouraging people from running, it’s called candidate filtering. Principals who might have ran would just say, “Well I can’t take a $20,000 pay cut.” That’s not what you need to do.

CT: I’d like to ask a follow-up question there if I may. In the same way that you would want a candidate running for sheriff to have a background in law enforcement, an ideal candidate for superintendent would not only be the most popular, but would also have a certain level of experience and qualifications. Do you think that rather than the salary schedule being used to deter potential candidates from running that the board’s intention was to ensure they were highly qualified?

MW: The qualifications for superintendent are set in the Alabama State Code. At 18-years-old you can run for school board with just a high school education. For this position, you have to have a degree in administration set by state law, five years experience in education and you have to get a letter signed by the Alabama School Board Superintendent which says you are a qualified candidate. To be superintendent, you have higher qualifications than are required to be president, already set up in the statutes. A regular classroom teacher without an administration degree can’t run for superintendent.

The best way I can put it is that you’re filtering the candidates. If you go with that logic, what would happen is this, the current superintendent would have their heir-apparent and put them in a position where they are gaining the experience so they can pass the mantle on.

I can understand wanting experience, and they pass it off as “well we don’t just want a popularity contest,” but there’s more to it. You already have a higher standard in the laws of this state. Someone like Nick Saban can’t run for superintendent. If he could and it was based on popularity, he would win against me or Dr. Barnette — it would be no contest.

CT: You have also spoken at length about the importance of fiscal responsibility, which at times means having to make tough and unpopular choices. Students attending one of the district’s three feeder schools — Welti, Parkside and Harmony — will ultimately transfer to another school by at least the ninth grade. From a fiscal perspective, would it be more conservative to have these students attend their final school from the beginning and lose the expenses of maintaining three additional campuses?

MW: You’re talking about hard decisions. You’ve got to look at all of the resources and all the different parts of that. Harmony is a feeder school for West Point. Well, West Point is already land-locked and they are busting at the seams. Is there room at West Point for those kids and where would those kids go? You run into a problem there. They just had to add on to the cafeteria, and they’ve needed that for a long time because of overcrowding issues. So if you take the kids from Harmony and send them there you are just going to exacerbate an existing problem.

We’ve got a lot situations in the county where I think things just haven’t kept up. I’m not blaming anybody for that, but we’re experiencing a huge amount of growth here lately. There’s going to have to be decisions that have to made in the future, but you have to look at the fiscal side of it. I’m not taking anything off the table.

Now, I’m not for shutting down schools, I don’t think anybody is, but you have to look at all the options to see what you can do and what you have to do. It has to be based on what is good for the students and what is good for the district fiscally. I’m not going to say I’m for shutting down any schools. I do have some ideas for things we could do which I’m not going to talk about now. They may come to nothing, but any decision I would make would take into consideration and input from people within the communities affected by it and the wellbeing of the students. It’s going to be for the good of the students.

CT: You mentioned that over the years several schools haven’t exactly kept up with things. Those who prefer appointed superintendents over elected ones have said a major benefit is their ability to make and execute long-term goals. Only one Cullman County superintendent has been re-elected to the position since 1991. If you are elected, how would you plan for the future of our students while also satisfying the immediate concerns of voters to ensure re-election in order to see those plans through?

MW: Well, every decision that is made should be done in accordance with what is good for the students. The last decision that I’m going to make is about any political stuff. I’m not a politician. I’m not running for this position because I’ve got some grand plan. We have a strategic plan. I’ve looked at it and there is very little in there that I would have any issue with. This will sound very weird and very strange, but when I say I’m not a politician, I mean it 100 percent. I’m running because I want to take the politics out. People may say that that’s crazy, but I don’t have any political aspirations. There are decisions that are made that I think are made in light of political things. I’m not in that. I want to take care of our immediate needs as best as I can. I’m not going to go in and take an axe to everything that was good in the strategic plan and do away with it. If it’s fiscally sound, it makes sense and it’s good for students, why would you change it?

I don’t know how long I would be in this office. I’m not guaranteed tomorrow. If you have the right mindset, you leave a plan in place and people will follow that through, I don’t have to be the superintendent. If I’ve done what I’m supposed to do then I’m not concerned about re-election.

I’m here because someone had to run for this office. We put too much effort into getting it back on the ballot: 59 percent of the county voted for an elected superintendent and they deserved to have a choice. If I had not run, no-one else was going to run. I talked to people who had talked about running and told them I would back out if they were going to run because it needed to be a two-person race.

My view is that you do what is best for kids and don’t worry about the political ramifications for me, personally. You worry about ramifications years down the road, yes, and you do the best that you can. That’s when you bring in all these people and you have your team. You don’t just have yes-men who say, “Oh yes sir. You want to do this? OK, we’ll do it.” I don’t want to do that. I want to have every decision made with the best interest of the students in mind and really nothing else.

CT: You’ve said one of the major pillars of your campaign is the importance of transparency and have discussed the Alabama Open Records and Open Meetings Acts, or “Sunshine Laws.” The National Freedom of Information Coalition has consistently ranked Alabama at or near the bottom for its access to public records and information. Do you feel as though the current administration has violated these laws in anyway; and, if elected what measures would you take to ensure the public proper access to public information even if it is not required or enforced by our state laws?

MW: I’m not going to level any accusation because I’m not a lawyer. I know the basics of the Sunshine Law because I was on the VAW (Vinemont Anon West Point) [water] board for seven years. All I know is that there are things you can discuss in executive session and things you cannot. You also have to have your meetings open to the public where anyone can come in. Like I said, I’m not a lawyer so I’m not accusing anybody of anything. Some people will say that it’s not that big of a deal but my big issue, which I’ve talked about, is that I will push as much as I can to have the meetings moved to a time when people can attend like 5:30 or 6 p.m. That’s what we did at VAW. If you have a meeting at 3 p.m. then people that have jobs and want to come would have to take off work to come and see what’s going on. I saw the minutes for one meeting. I believe the work session began 3 p.m. and the meeting concluded and adjourned at 3:26 p.m. I don’t know how you do that. When we had meeting at VAW, we might have eight or nine things on the agenda and not every meeting lasted two hours, but we had several meetings which lasted an hour or two. That’s for a small water system with four directors and a chairman. I don’t know that anything has been violated, but I think we’ve got to have transparency. I was at meeting last night where a parent said she had called to find out an answer about some curriculum or something particular that was being taught. She said that someone told her they would transfer her to someone else, but after they did she never heard back from anyone. Maybe it just got lost in the shuffle somehow but I think people have to believe in you. Everything is open. You shouldn’t have to file a Freedom of Information Act form to get answers. You shouldn’t have to ask more than once for public information. It should be readily available to people. That’s what I would strive for. I want everything to as open and above board as possible.

To give you an example that we experienced: We have a Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence program. Well, there are two Blue Ribbon Schools programs. There’s the National Blue Ribbon Schools which is from the U.S. Department of Education. That program started in 1982. Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence is a private 501©(3) corporation. At Holly Pond High School we started going through this about five or six years ago. I’m sitting there with some other teachers and we are wondering why the U.S. Department of Education was doing this, what it was all about and how it all worked. Nobody told us it was the 501©(3) out of South Carolina. I called the Alabama Department of Education months ago out of curiosity and spoke with the lady who was over the Blue Ribbon program. I asked her how much it cost to do Blue Ribbon and she asked if I was talking about the business of the U.S. Department of Education. She said it didn’t cost anything to participate in BRS, that it was all data. You just pull data and present your portfolio to see if you meet the criteria. She said the only cost would be if you sent people to Washington D.C. to receive your award; you’d have to pay for their hotel rooms. She said she had principals calling her about BRSE to ask what they get for their participation, that they spent thousands of dollars and had nothing to show for it.

My point on transparency is that we didn’t know. Nobody told us. One of the teachers went to a website and said, “Look at this. It’s not the USDE, it’s a business.” Nobody clarified that for us. That may be a small point to people but that’s a lack of transparency. If you don’t even tell people what it’s about, where’s the transparency?

Patrick Camp can be reached at 256-734-2131 ext. 238