Photo courtesy of Aimee Rainey
Aimee Rainey, the assistant superintendent for Vestavia Hills City Schools, receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from Lisa Beckham with the Alabama Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Aimee Rainey, the assistant superintendent for Vestavia Hills City Schools who is retiring July 1, recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alabama Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
The award is given periodically to an educator who has demonstrated outstanding collaboration and leadership in a widespread way, said Lisa Beckham, an assistant professor at the Orlean Beeson School of Education at Samford University who serves as the awards committee chairwoman for AASCD.
“We have so many outstanding educators here in Alabama,” Beckham said. “We look for people who have branched out beyond just their local school district.”
Rainey has 26 years of service in education and has been a presenter at conferences at the state, regional and national level, as well as had articles published in education journals, Beckham said. “She embodies that spirit of collaboration and leadership.”
One of the two people who nominated Rainey for the Lifetime Achievement Award said in a nomination letter that Rainey has visionary leadership and has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to curriculum and instruction that has had a deep and wide-ranging impact on education in Alabama and beyond.
“She’s a servant leader who combines vision with action, consistently advancing curriculum and professional learning in meaningful and lasting ways, and she is also kind and firm,” a nominator wrote. “She gets the job done in a very kind way.”
Rainey thanked the association for the award and said she has learned so much from all the people with whom she has had the pleasure of working.
Rainey began her career as a speech-language pathologist in Washington County Schools in 1999. After four years in that role, she served one year as a high school science teacher, then spent two years as an elementary school assistant principal and four years as an elementary principal in Mobile County Public Schools.
In 2010, she was hired as a middle school principal for Florence City Schools. She served seven years in that role and one year as an elementary principal in Florence before being hired as director of student services in Vestavia Hills City Schools in 2018. She did that job for one year before being promoted to assistant superintendent. She has been assistant superintendent for seven years.
