Why I want families to choose Huntsville City Schools: the remarks I planned to give at my swearing-in as your District 3 representative, November 10, 2026
I was sworn in last night, and I didn't get the chance to give my remarks. So I'm sharing them here. This is what I want us working toward.
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Alaina, you followed me through every move the Army handed us and never once asked me to slow down.
Kinsey, Mary, and Lyla, every single vote I cast on this board, I will cast with your classrooms in mind.
Andrea Alvarez, thank you for your service to our community and your dedication to our schools.
April Hodges, thank you for helping me successfully navigate the political environment over the past twelve months.
To the families of District 3, thank you for trusting me with this seat. I will not forget that this seat belongs to you and that I am here to represent you.
Somewhere right now, a family is sitting at a kitchen table with a laptop open.
They have a job offer in their hands. They have a list of houses on the screen. And right now, they are typing in the name of a school system.
I know that family. Twenty-two years in the Army meant a lot of orders, a lot of moves, and a lot of late nights at that exact same table.
And every single time, our first question was the same: What are the schools like?
I want us to make a promise to that family.
I want them to type in Huntsville City Schools and stop looking.
I want people to choose Huntsville because of its schools.
I want a soldier who just got orders to Redstone to look up our schools, turn to their spouse, and say, "Good news. We're going to love it there."
I want an engineer with three job offers from across the country to choose Huntsville because of where her kids will get to go to school.
I want the nurse, the welder, the teacher, and the entrepreneur to look at this city and say, "That is where our future belongs." And when somebody asks why, I want the first thing out of their mouth to be, "The schools."
Some people will look at our challenges and tell us to temper our expectations. They'll look at state report cards, or consent orders, or national trends, and tell us to accept limits.
I don't accept those limits. And I know Huntsville City doesn't either.
Look at what we are working with. Look at our teachers, in the building before sunrise and grading long after the last bus leaves. Look at our administrators running complex operations with heart and focus. Look at our parents who show up every day. Look at our students, who raised our graduation rate from 89 percent to nearly 95 percent and academic growth from 93 percent to 100 percent in just three years.
Nobody handed us that. Our leaders, our teachers, our families, and our kids built that.
And if we can do that, we can do anything.
We are two points away from earning an overall A on the state report card. We can close that gap and make Huntsville City Schools an A district.
And NOW is the time.
We can do the work, earn unitary status, and close that consent order with pride and excellence.
And NOW is the time.
We can build a public school system so strong, so vibrant, and so relentless in its pursuit of excellence that no one has to look anywhere else.
And NOW is the time.
To every child in Huntsville City Schools, from Jemison in the north to Farley in the south, from Hampton Cove in the east to the Williams campus in the west, and every school in between: we are going to set the conditions for excellence and then expect big things from you.
And NOW is the time.
To my colleagues on this board: I am here to work, I am here to listen, and I am here to help move Huntsville City Schools forward and build on the legacy of the board members who have preceded me.
Huntsville City Schools has the ingredients to be the number one school system in Alabama and stand among the best in the nation. Nobody is going to hand us that. We are going to earn it.
And NOW is the time.
So let's choose it.
Let's choose to be the answer before anyone finishes asking the question.
Let's choose to push the limits of what great public schools can be, what they can produce, and what they can earn.
A family is sitting at a kitchen table right now, typing. Let's give them a reason to choose us.
NOW is the time.