gulf shores: Orange Beach, Gulf Shores appoint school boards

Tuesday, May 23, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter
On Monday morning, the Orange Beach City Council appointed a former teacher, an orthopedic surgeon, a one-time elementary school principal, a retired health care executive and the city's administrator as the first members of its recently created board of education.

Later Monday, in Gulf Shores, that city's council named a lawyer who works as a consultant for the Alabama Department of Education, a retired chief financial officer and three Parent-Teacher-Student Organization members: a chiropractor, a financial consultant and a real estate agent as the first members of its new school board.

The five-member bodies, which were authorized in February, will work to break the cities' campuses away from the Baldwin County Public Schools System, and later manage what local leaders hope will be the most well-funded schools in Alabama. The county school system has opposed the break.

The new school board members, who won't be paid, are appointed to staggered terms. The boards will work together because, while the cities have their own elementary schools, they share a middle and high school.

Elected leaders of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach together have studied the feasibility of breaking away from the county system for the past three years.

In Orange Beach, the council voted unanimously in a special morning meeting to appoint:

Jeff Moon, the city administrator since 2001, to a one-year term.

Missy Tyler -- who's taught in Trussville and Birmingham and volunteered at schools in Warsaw, Poland; Wellington, New Zealand; San Francisco and Orange Beach -- to a two-year term.

Rick Blevins, who's worked as a teacher, athletic coach and principal in the Selma area and now works as a surveyor in Pensacola, to a three-year term.

Dean Mason, an orthopedic surgeon, to a four-year term.