Steve Bendall: Vestavia Hills Board of Education’s newest member

Steve Bendall was recently chosen as the newest member of the Vestavia Hills Board of Education.

Bendall has lived in Vestavia Hills for more than 40 years with his wife, Sheila, and daughters, Emily, an incoming freshman at Auburn University, and Elizabeth, a rising junior at Vestavia Hills High School. His hobbies include watching Auburn football, supporting his daughters in their extracurricular activities and announcing Rebel football games for the past 18 seasons.

“Anything Vestavia, we’re at [it],” he said. That list includes volleyball, cheerleading, choir, Leadership Vestavia and other clubs.

Vestavia Voice recently sat down with Steve Bendall to talk about his plans for his five-year term on the BOE.

Q: What’s it like to be the announcer for the VHHS Rebels for close to two decades?

A: It’s a lot of fun. We’ve had a lot of fun with it. We’ve basically been given free rein to develop things at will, so for several years we’ve had a stat man who’s a Vestavia graduate like myself. And then my new commentator with me is also a Vestavia graduate, so it’s old Vestavia guys who know all the kids on the field because we all have kids their ages, and we’ve watched them grow up in Little League and cheering and everything else …

It’s very time consuming — more time consuming than people realize — and we go to away games and home games. By the time you put it all together, it’s a five- to six-hour night, depending on how far we have to travel. But it’s just a lot of fun. It’s good being out there and representing Vestavia High School.

Q: Why did you decide to apply for the BOE?

A: It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do … I grew up here; I graduated from Vestavia. I was raised that you get active in your community, and that’s something that I’ve always been.

I’ve got over 30 years of volunteering experience around Vestavia, from Little League football coaching and board member to Little League basketball coaching and board member, softball head coach and board member, long-range planning committee, parks and rec president ...

It’s just something that’s in my blood. Thankfully my wife is very understanding. She handles most of the girls’ school stuff and everything and allows me time to do this type of stuff. It’s just — our school system is tops. I want to be part of continuing it and growing it to be even that much better, hopefully.

Q: What are the Vestavia Hills school system’s strengths?

A: Academics, athletics, arts, facilities, IT. It’s a whole combination; it’s the perfect storm. For other communities and around the country, I think Vestavia is a good representative school system in Alabama. We’re not what the rest of the country thinks of as Alabama, so we’re a shining example …

Now, especially, the potential of our young people is just off the charts.

Q: Are there any issues you want to focus on during your term?

A: I wouldn’t say any issues. I want people to know, as I’ve been on other boards I’ve served in the city, that I’m approachable. You can talk to me. There’s nothing that we can’t talk about, and I just think communication is a vital key.

With social media and the internet and everything else, it’s so easy for people to go off, just hear one tidbit and go off. And before you know it, it’s gone off in a viral direction, in the wrong direction. All you have to do is just simply ask somebody, and the majority of the time you’ll get an answer that will quell some of that.

So I want people to know that I’m approachable. If there’s a question, I’ll answer the question if I can and hopefully keep the waters calm, as everybody else tries to do.

Q: From your experience as a parent, are there things in the school system you’d like to improve upon or change?

A: I’d like to see facilities continue to improve, and especially with Berry coming online. I want Berry to be a state-of-the-art school. It’s very important with the re-alignment of schools right now that the academics match up at Liberty Park and Berry, feeding the incoming students into the high school. So there needs to be equality or parity there. 

So that’s something that’s important to me because the [students] who we’re feeding into the high school are the ones who are going to continue to propel Vestavia forward …

I want people, when they hear the name Vestavia High School or Vestavia school system, that there’s a respect and a fear: fear us in competition, and I want them to respect us in competition and academics and everything else.

Q: What will be your approach as the school system goes through re-alignment and facility changes to accommodate student growth?

A: It’s already begun, so the decision’s been made. I’m on board with the decision that’s been made.

We have to, as board members, listen to what the citizens have to say and gather as much information as you can going forward and, again, communicate it well so that that can dispel rumors or false innuendos out there. That and looking down the road at possibly another high school at Liberty Park.

Vestavia’s just growing and growing and growing. So that’s something, going forward, that I see during my five years coming up on the board that’s going to have to be looked at, moving forward and trying to figure out where the money’s going to come from for something like that.

Q: What are you looking forward to during your term on the BOE?

A: Continuing a presence around Vestavia schools, because, as I said, our girls  — one’s stepping out, and the other’s getting toward the end  — but just a presence around the schools and all the activities, whether it’s academic or getting to know the teachers and the principals …

Everybody’s been very welcoming. We are a family. As corny as that sounds, we are a family and, to me, we need to get away from the thought of Liberty Park, old Vestavia, Cahaba Heights. We’re all Vestavia. All our kids are Vestavia. So something I’d like to do is continue working, bridging the gap so that we’re just from Vestavia. 

Q: When your term ends, what do you want Vestavia Hills City Schools to look like?

A: I would like the parents to feel and be content with the fact that the younger schools, feeder schools for the high school, are all equal and the best that they can be, whether it’s facilities, academics, faculty, athletics or the arts.

I hope that the test scores are that much higher. Having a daughter who’s just gone through it and [another who] is going through it, test scores are a very big thing when you’re in high school.

I want every child to get everything they can, and the parents to feel that they’ve gotten everything they can or more than they can to prepare them for [grades] K-5 to 6-9, 6-9 to 10-12. And then obviously make sure that our young people are well prepared to take the tests that are needed for college entrance or prepare them for the future, whether they go to college or straight into a career …

I’m looking forward to just pushing Vestavia academically, and again in athletics and IT, administration and personnel, faculty the arts. I just want to see it all mushroombeyond belief.