By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – The five candidates for a seat on Alabaster’s Board of Education shared ideas ranging from cutting down student-teacher ratios to planning more community outreach sessions during a night of interviews at City Hall on April 19.

Incumbent Linda Church, Alvin Jackson, Jamia Alexander-Williams, John Kilpatrick and former Alabaster School Board president Melanie Shores are seeking the BOE seat. The City Council will appoint someone to fill the seat during its April 25 meeting, and the candidate selected will serve on the School Board through 2021.

In advance of the April 25 meeting, City Council members held 30-minute interviews for each candidate on April 19, and sought their opinions on the School Board’s roles, the school system’s strengths and weaknesses and their willingness to be in the public spotlight.

Here’s what each candidate said during their interviews, presented in the order the candidates were interviewed:

Linda Church

Church, an original member of the BOE, touted the board’s willingness to work together, and praised the programs the school system has initiated since it formed. Church said she would like to see the city’s pre-kindergarten program greatly expand, and said she would like to institute more community education programs.

Church said she would like to work harder to lower student-teacher ratios in the classrooms.

“I’m just going to have to push harder for that. If we don’t do that, I think we are derelict of our duties,” Church said. “When I looked at those numbers, I thought ‘This is not where we need to be, and we need to push that button a little harder.’”

John Kilpatrick

Kilpatrick, a 1999 graduate of Thompson High School, said he owes much of his success to Alabaster, and said he is looking to give back to the city. He said he would like to continue “the improvement of accountability” for the school system’s leadership team, and said one of his primary strengths would lie in budgeting.

“With the new (high) school coming on board, I know enough about it to know that if we fail, we could feel it long into the future. We can make a lot of decisions today that we will pay for much later,” Kilpatrick said. “If I’m appointed, I would get to know the system and see where we stand and make sure we are taking the best path to get there.”

Alvin Jackson

Jackson said he has lived in Alabaster for the past 21 years, and has had multiple children go through the system. He said he would like to see the school system hold more community and neighborhood meetings, and said he is willing to put in “whatever (time) it takes to make a difference.”

He said more community outreach would help the school system to present an accurate perception to the city.

“The perception is that classroom teachers and coaches are at a different place. It is something that can easily be explained, and I think once people understand, all that chatter and talk in the background seems to go away,” Jackson said. “I am very detailed with what I do. Let’s base what we do on facts.”

Jamia Alexander-Williams

Alexander-Williams said she is heavily involved in nearly every Alabaster school, and praised the new programs and upcoming virtual classroom offerings in the school system. She said she would like to see the system increase its support for teachers, particularly with classroom supplies, and said she would bring “accountability” if she is appointed.

“People I talk to, they want more transparency. They want to feel that their opinions matter,” Alexander-Williams said. “It’s important for us to invest in what we have here. Let’s be sure we supply our teachers with what they need to be successful and move forward. If we support our teachers and our kids, it will come back to us.”

Melanie Shores

Shores, who was the School Board’s first president before stepping down in 2013 due to health concerns, said she would like to promote more business support of the schools, and said she would like to see more transparency in the school system.

“We need to just be honest with everything we do and leave no questions unanswered,” Shores said. “In all the decisions we make, there needs to be no grey area.”

Shores said she would like to move away from “teaching to the test” in classrooms.

“That one test, it does not define who you are. I don’t think a teacher’s effectiveness should be measured by students’ performance on a standardized test,” she said.