Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Cole Trahan
Daily News

On Thursday, the Troup County School Board unanimously approved the extension of Superintendent Dr. Brian Shumate’s contract by two years. The amendment extending the contract becomes effective July 1, 2021, and will continue through June 30, 2024.

According to the agreement, the amended contract has the same material terms as the previous one, except that it adds a monthly contribution to a retirement plan. The new contributions will be $1,000 per month starting July 1, 2021, and $1,500 per month beginning July 1, 2022.

Shumate said he felt honored.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot of good work, I think, in two years, and I’m very excited to be here for another couple of years.”

Shumate said it takes a lot of support from others for him to be successful at his job.

“The original contract does provide for a two-year extension every time he gets a satisfactory review,” explained Board Chair Cathy Hunt. “So that was automatically going to happen, anyway. We just needed to formalize it by putting the language in a new contract.”

Hunt said she was thrilled that Shumate chose the school board just as the school board chose him.

“I think he’s really changed the culture in the system,” she said, “and I think we’re moving forward. And I trust him to be a hard worker and a guiding light for us to make the improvements that we need.”

Before becoming TCSS’s superintendent in February 2019, Shumate had previously served as the superintendent of the Medford School District in Medford, Oregon. Before that, he had spent 27 years working in various roles for the Jefferson County Public School System in Louisville, Kentucky.