Photos courtesy of Vestavia Hills City Schools
The Vestavia Hills Board of Education is considering hiring longtime educators to serve as mentors for its new crop of administrators. From left are former Mountain Brook Superintendent and later Vestavia Hills Interim Superintendent Charles Mason and retiring Vestavia Hills High School Principal Tonya Rozell. Also, retiring Vestavia Hills High School Assistant Principal Jennifer Brown, already has been hired as a mentor for administrators and teachers.
The Vestavia Hills Board of Education on Monday is scheduled to consider whether to hire two more mentors for its new crop of administrators.
The school board is considering contracts for Charles Mason, a former Mountain Brook school superintendent who served as Vestavia Hills’ interim superintendent between Sheila Phillips and Todd Freeman from September 2017 to March 2018, and Tonya Rozell, who is retiring this summer as principal at Vestavia Hills High School.
The proposal is to pay both Mason and Rozell $100 per hour for mentoring work with Vestavia Hills principals. Rozell’s contract is for one year, and Mason’s contract is renewable for up to three years.
Mason served 16 years as superintendent in Mountain Brook from 1993 to 2009 and was named Alabama Superintendent of the Year in 2004.
Rozell became principal of Vestavia Hills High School in 2020. She previously served as principal of Liberty Park Middle School and as an assistant principal in Hoover City Schools. Rozell’s experience as an educator spans more than 30 years at schools in Vestavia Hills, Hoover, Mountain Brook, Shelby County and Birmingham.
Just last month, the school board agreed to hire Vestavia Hills High School Assistant Principal Jennifer Brown, who also is retiring this summer, as a mentor for administrators and instructional support personnel and teachers going through the process to be certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. However, Brown was hired at a salary of $37,000 a year for one year.
The school board in recent months has approved numerous principal changes:
- Blair Inabinet is moving from the principal job at Liberty Park Middle School to become principal at Vestavia Hills High School.
- Dori Hardee is moving from assistant principal at Liberty Park Middle School to become the principal there.
- Cindy Echols is moving from assistant principal at Vestavia Hills Elementary East to become the principal there.
- Susan McCall is moving from assistant principal at Vestavia Hills Elementary West to become the principal there.
- Kim Polson has moved from assistant principal at Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights to become the principal there.
- Lauren Dressback has moved from principal at Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights to become principal at the Vestavia Hills Alternative School.
- Tiffany Marron’s status at Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park has changed from interim principal to permanent principal.
Read more about the principal changes in a future print edition of the Vestavia Voice.
The Vestavia Hills Board of Education is scheduled to meet at the school system's central office at 1204 Montgomery Highway at 4 p.m.
