Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Troup County School System Superintendent Brian Shumate announced at a called Friday morning school board meeting that he was retiring effective June 2024.

Shumate has served as Troup County School System’s superintendent since July 1, 2019.

Shumate had previously served as the superintendent of the Medford School District in Medford, Oregon, for five years. Before that, Shumate spent 27 years with the Jefferson County Public School System in Louisville working as a teacher, coach, assistant principal, principal and assistant superintendent.

In his retirement announcement, Shumate said he has three grandkids that he doesn’t get to spend enough time with and noted his mother is aging. He said he misses all of the T-ball games, swim lessons and birthday parties.

“I need to be closer to home,” he said, noting Louisville, Kentucky is home.

“I’ve had a good run. I’ve been doing this for 37 years,” Shumate said. “I still like it.  I enjoy the grind.”

He said he would be happy to help with any transition to the new superintendent and will always be a call away.

“I want this I want this place to thrive,” Shumate said. “I will continue to watch you and will pull for you.”

Once June comes around, Shumate said he plans to retire from being a superintendent, but he plans to do something in and around education.

“You’ve been a great friend, a great leader and you’ve taken our system to heights that quite honestly we dreamed of when we were searching five years ago,” said Board Chair Brandon Brooks.

Shumate’s vision since day one has been based around the theme “A Place for Every Kid” and working to create a successful path for every student, regardless of background or interests.

“Your vision of a place for every kid has resonated in an incredible way with that theme,” Brooks said. “You’ve built an infrastructure, the curriculum. We are on a continued trajectory for success. I appreciate your leadership.”

Brooks said the board will review the right route to find the next superintendent.

“So the first step is to determine what the process looks like and there’s a lot of different ways that we could approach it,” Brooks said. “As far as outside counsel, that’s what we did on the previous search, and it was very successful, but again, we are we are mulling through the next steps now.”

Brooks also continued to express that he and the board will continue to stand by Shumate at this time and support his wishes.

“We’re thankful for Dr. Shumate and what he’s done, we stand with him and his decision, and we support him wholeheartedly,” Brooks said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do through the end of the year though.”