The St. Clair County school system has a new hopeful for the office of superintendent. Justin Burns announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination at a Young Republicans meeting August 5. He is already enthusiastic about the encouragement he has received from members of the community. 

“This amount of support is amazing,” he said. He thanked the future voters for all the donations and emails and promised to answer the emails in, “a timely manner.” 

Justin Burns has spent his career in education. He taught at Odenville and Ragland before deciding to get his degree in School Administration. He served as vice principal at Moody Junior High School before taking the position of principal at Leeds Elementary where he has been since 2015. 

“My parents moved to St. Clair County almost 30 years ago. We have watched it grow to 90,000 residents,” said Burns. “My wife, Brandi, and I met in the halls of Moody Middle School.” The couple have three sons. 

Burns describes his mission in three objectives. The first is to support the educators, administrators, and other school employees. He plans to learn the individual needs of each community in St. Clair county and personally work with the community to help meet those needs. He promises to be “passionate” about bringing those communities together. 

Mike Howard, also a Republican, is the current superintendent. He took office January 1, 2019 after a landslide victory. Howard beat his opponent with 67% of the votes. He will be running for reelection. 

Like Burns, Howard has also devoted his career to education. He was also a principal when he ran for superintendent having served two years at St. Clair County High School in Odenville and Howard was a teacher before going into administration. He and his wife, Melanie have a son and a daughter. 

The superintendent recently made news for his decision to close down the schools’ Facebook pages and replace them with a “one stop app.” The app is downloadable from the St. Clair County Board of Education website. It has all the information about all the schools in the county. It also includes sports and other activities. 

The Republican primaries are May 24, 2022. The general election is November 3, 2022. So far, no Democrats are in the running.