Hi, Chuck!
05/16
Chuck Ledbetter accepts Pike Road Schools job
- DOTHAN EAGLE Jim Cook Updated
Dothan City Schools Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter is headed north.
The Pike Road Schools Board of Education voted unanimously Monday night to hire Ledbetter as the system’s new superintendent. Ledbetter will resign from his position as Dothan City Schools superintendent on June 1 and take up his new duties shortly thereafter.
Ledbetter said Monday that the Pike Road job was a good fit for him professionally and personally. Ledbetter looks forward to guiding the new system as it develops.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be in on the beginning of a school system,” he said.
The Pike Road system was established in 2015, after splitting off from the Montgomery City Schools.
Moving to the Pike Road area puts Ledbetter closer to family.
“We’re going to be about an hour away from one daughter and a grandchild, an hour away from my parents and an hour away from another daughter and grandchild,” he said.
Ledbetter became Dothan City Schools superintendent in 2015 after serving as superintendent of the Dublin City Schools in Dublin, Georgia. Ledbetter succeeded Tim Wilder, who was terminated by the Dothan City School Board after allegations of sexual harassment involving Wilder and an employee arose.
During Ledbetter’s tenure, he has reformed the system’s one-to-one initiative, replacing iPads with Chromebooks. Ledbetter said the Chromebooks are less expensive and its easier for the system’s IT staff to control content and usage of the devices.
Ledbetter recently won approval for a plan that would establish career academies at the city’s two high schools. The plan also allows elementary school parents to send their children outside of their zoned school to Kelly Springs Elementary, which will be themed as an International Baccalaureate school, or Girard Elementary School, which will be themed as a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics school.
Dothan City School Board Chairman Harry Wayne Parrish said he was sad to see Ledbetter go, but understood that Pike Road presented a great opportunity for him. Parrish said the city school board will meet next Monday to discuss the system’s next steps for finding a new superintendent.
“We’ve gotten pretty good at picking them, now we just have to find out how to keep them,” he said.
