Alan Miller may not have considered teaching at first, but he ended up loving education so much, he now works to educate other educators.

Miller is the current head of the counselor, leadership and special education department at Auburn University at Montgomery, and the final candidate to interview for the position of superintendent of Limestone County Schools. He’s previously worked as a superintendent of Haleyville City Schools and an elementary principal, student coordinator and director of student services for Eufaula City Schools.

Before all of that, however, he had his sights on a military career. Miller told the Limestone County Board of Education he spent five years in the Army, but while teaching conversational English in Korea, he realized education might be a better fit.

“Looking back, I think that was the best choice I could have made,” Miller said. “It really opened my eyes.”

Working at each level in a district gave him an opportunity to examine each facet of its operation, and after a few years spent teaching others how best to be administrators, Miller is ready to do the same.

“Leadership matters,” he said. “That’s where I see the course of my career. If you look at what differentiates a system that struggles and one that excels, it’s leadership.”

He said when it comes to what LCS will accomplish in the coming years, “I can provide the leadership that will be conducive to your success.”

The right roles

Miller said a major criticism he received as superintendent in Haleyville was having too many of his recommendations unanimously approved by board members. He told LCBOE members what people didn’t realize is he won’t present something unless he knows he’s got the support to get it passed.

“The way I look at it, if there’s an issue that comes before this board, I’m going to talk to different people for input,” he said. “If I don’t feel like I have a consensus … I’m not going to make a recommendation.”

He called pushing for an issue without support one of his biggest professional disappointments. It was a drug-testing policy that he said board members were against, but he pushed for it anyway. Miller said he realized “for every policy, there is a window to introduce it,” and for that particular policy, the window was closed.

There are also issues that shouldn’t go before a board at all. Miller said it’s important for the board and superintendent to understand their place, because too often, a misunderstanding can be a district’s downfall.

“In my experience, it’s the superintendent who generally loses sight of it,” he said, describing the board as the voice, vision and link to the community while the superintendent is the educational professional who provides technical expertise and executes the board’s vision.

Up to date

Miller said the bulk of his facility experience is in maintenance. When he arrived to Haleyville in 2012, administration was making do, more than it was making new, and Miller described the measures he took to bring the district into modern times.

“We took the district and modernized its (information technology), its financial procedures and processes to increase accountability, its instructional programming, its career and technical programs,” he said. “Everything was an experience in bringing something up to date, expanding it and how best to position the district.”

This included looking at the buildings in the district to see what small repairs could be made for a huge impact. Miller said a few teachers were dealing with windows that had been cracked for 40 years, so “we fixed little cracked windows.”

As for courses, Miller said some students were learning how to work for companies that no longer existed in the area.

“In the 70s, 80s and even early 90s, our county had a lot of trailer manufacturers, so our students spent decades drawing and designing plans for trailers. By the time I got there in 2012, that was completely obsolete,” he said. “We weren’t making trailers, and drawing a house plan for a trailer was not preparing them to go get a job in 2013.”

He said the district instead starting offering robotics courses, an electric car competition and a variety of new clubs and teams. Miller told board members that student success requires three things: knowing there’s people in the school who care about them, seeing the relevance of what they do in school and seeing the pathway to success.

So if three or four kids wanted to join a teacher and start a new club or team, Miller would say, “Let’s start it.”

When it came to employee success, Miller said personal experience showed him it was important for a superintendent to not just be aware of someone’s work but to acknowledge it and validate it. He shared how he used to leave sticky notes with supportive messages for the teachers and others who worked there whenever he visited their school.

He wasn’t sure how much it mattered until he visited a teacher’s classroom and realized she had kept and reposted about 15 of the notes on a filing cabinet near her desk.

“It was really powerful,” he said. “It makes such a difference, every opportunity we can use to recognize someone who’s doing an amazing job in the classroom.”

What’s next

Miller was the final candidate to be interviewed for the position of superintendent of Limestone County Schools. The Limestone County Board of Education will next meet 6 p.m. tomorrow at Creekside Elementary School.

Those who wish to provide feedback on a candidate can visit https://bit.ly/LCBOEmembers for links to contact board members.