West Union principal selected as new county school superintendent

The Union County School Board has hired West Union Principal Russell Taylor as county superintendent of education.

He will assume that role Jan. 1 but will serve as deputy superintendent beginning July 1.

Current superintendent Ken Basil has been working on contract this year as the new four-year term for county officials began, but announced plans to retire this past December.

The office of county school superintendent had been elective for many years but the state legislature changed the law to allow boards of trustees to appoint superintendents starting this year instead. The city school superintendent has always been an appointive position.

Taylor is a 1990 graduate of W. P. Daniel High School. He went back and worked at New Albany for two years, then for six years at North Pontotoc where he was in administration four years. He was assistant principal at Nettleton two years, and was principal and athletic director, then superintendent there. He has been at West Union six years.

“I’m Union County homegrown,” he said. “I went to school here all my life.”

That may be why community values are important to him.

“The biggest challenge to me is keeping a tradition of success we have had for our students and also to continue to grow a culture that is already growing here,” he said.

“Our schools are a source of pride for our community and maintaining that while adjusting to the challenges that come along with new technology is a challenge, too,” he said. “I really believe that education at its heart is a people business.”

“The first challenge is going to be helping our kids transition back after unprecedented times during this closure,” Taylor continued. “We’ve got to take care of their safety. We’ve got to take care of their basic needs and also educate them when we come back. Right now that’s one that we’re trying to adjust to.”

Taylor is eager to see classes resume but not at the cost of well-being.

“The last thing you want to do is make a mistake that could affect the safety of anyone,” he said. “So you do this with a safety-first approach.”

“You know the kids also have families with basic needs that the schools now help with,” he said.

While the county schools do not have the full technology the city schools have, and county students may be more likely to lack good high-speed internet access, Taylor thinks Union County students are doing well with distance learning.

“You know, I believe that nothing will ever replace a qualified teacher in the classroom. That’s the best-case scenario, but we’re doing our best during this time to provide for them so gaps do not occur,” he said. “It’s a challenge we haven’t faced in my 26 years.”

“One of our biggest challenges is equity in classes,” he said. “We had a bunch of teachers that went to work very, very hard to provide packets. We had some real good feedback from parents on that but we understand that we are going to have to continue providing those things if there are any further closures.”

The county district does have teachers who are doing virtual learning with students. “We’ve had a lot of teachers doing Zoom meetings with students taking care of those basic needs,” he said. “I would say everyone is working very hard and we’re just continuously trying to improve that as we go along.”

Once classes resume, the schools will still face one challenge that was already there.

“We’ve had growth in industries and success in our schools and they have created growth for the county,” he said. That means in some cases the size of the student population has outgrown their school size. Some of the county school buildings date back to 1962 and maintenance is always a factor.

Of course, everything comes back to money.

“You talk about goals and one of my goals is planning ahead,” he said. “We’re going to try to create a five-year plan of going forward. Now I’m not talking about hiring some kind of big firm coming in. I think this is something we can do ourselves. One of those main issues is we have facility issues coming with growth. We have to plan ahead because we have existing building while we’re trying to grow that we have to keep up to our standards.”

“Things have moved so quickly that keeping up with this has been a challenge,” he said. “People are working very hard and you know this changes every day so I am very proud of what everybody does but we have to keep working to stay on top of it.

“The goals are to continue the culture and plan for the challenges that we have ahead, particularly in the areas of instruction and higher learning, and also facilities,” he said. “I do feel like facilities is something we have to plan for due to our growth.”

Taylor said school district administration is working now to find a new principal for West Union Attendance Center.