By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Incumbent Alabaster Board of Education member Linda Church will serve five more years on the board after the City Council voted during an April 25 meeting to reappoint her to another term.

Council members Sophie Martin, Stacy Rakestraw, Tommy Ryals, Bob Hicks and Rick Walters voted in favor of the reappointment. Council President Scott Brakefield and council member Russell Bedsole were absent from the meeting.

Church, an original member of the city’s School Board, was vying for reappointment as fellow candidates John Kilpatrick, Alvin Jackson, Jamia Alexander-Williams and Melanie Shores also were seeking the seat.

As a result of her reappointment, Church will serve on the School Board through 2021.

Church is the last of the original School Board members to come up for reappointment, as the City Council has already reappointed fellow original BOE members Adam Moseley through June 2017, School Board member Ty Quarles through June 2018 and School Board member John Myrick through June 2019.

Derek Henderson, who was appointed to fill the vacancy left by former BOE president Shores in 2013, was reappointed last year to a term ending in 2020.

The April 25 reappointment came about a week after City Council members held a series of 30-minute interviews for each of the candidates, during which council members sought the candidates’ opinions on the School Board’s roles, the school system’s strengths and weaknesses and their willingness to be in the public spotlight.

During her interview, Church touted the School Board’s willingness to work together, and praised the programs the Alabaster School System has enacted since it formed.

For the future, Church said she would like to see the city’s pre-kindergarten program expand significantly, and said she would like to institute more community education programs.

Once the city’s new high school opens, Church said she would like the school system to provide community outreach space in the current Thompson Intermediate School building, which will also contain the ACS central office.

Church said during her interview she plans to work harder to lower student-teacher ratios in the classrooms.