'Fit' for the job: Trussville Board of Education names Patrick Martin new superintendent

Just over a month after being named Trussville’s new superintendent of schools, Patrick Martin is still getting to know the community. 

Most recently an assistant superintendent for Vestavia Hills City Schools, Martin has spent the last decade working in Jefferson County, and he has an appreciation for what Trussville schools have accomplished over the last 18 years. 

“I've learned a lot from Todd Freeman, my superintendent in Vestavia, and so there are some things that I feel like I can bring,” Martin said. “I want to take Trussville from the very successful system that it is now and just continue to improve upon that.”

Martin was unanimously appointed by the Trussville Board of Education on March 23 following a four-month process to replace Dr. Patti Neill, who resigned under controversial circumstances last fall. In Martin, the Trussville BOE believes they have found the right person to lead the city’s school system into the future.

“We are thrilled to have Dr. Martin on our team! As you know, our community leaders, stakeholders (parents, community members, faculty, administrators) and board members have participated in surveys and open forums to discuss the qualities Trussville is looking for in our next Superintendent,” said board Vice President Kim DeShazo in a written statement. 

“We said from the start that we want to find the candidate that is the best ‘fit’ for Trussville, and we believe we have found that in Dr. Martin. Patrick has the experience, humility, character and energy to help Trussville City Schools reach its highest potential,” DeShazo added. “We look forward to his leadership for many years to come.”  

“Dr. Martin possesses the qualities that make him the ideal person to lead the TCS into the mid-21st century,” board member Steve Ward said. “I look forward to working with Dr. Martin to continue providing the best possible learning environment for students and teachers.” 

Martin comes into the position with 24 years of experience in education, 19 of those years in administration. During his teaching career, Martin taught history and social sciences and also was involved in coaching in school systems in central Illinois. After completing a master’s degree in education, Martin served as a high school principal for several years, until he was approached about the vacant superintendent position. 

“Four years into that position, our superintendent left, and the board president and vice president came to me and asked if I'd be interested in being the superintendent,” Martin said. “So, I served as the superintendent in that system and then another system, all of those positions in central Illinois.”

Martin moved to the Birmingham area after his wife, Taren, accepted a position as an assistant coach with the UAB women’s basketball program in 2012. Since relocating to Birmingham, Martin has held several administrative positions, including a four-year stint as superintendent of schools for Gardendale as the city sought to organize a school system.

For the last five years, Martin has served as assistant superintendent of operations and services for Vestavia Hills City Schools. In his new position in Trussville, he takes over following the tumultuous departure of Neill, who resigned following a controversy surrounding written threats made by a HTHS student that went unreported to the school board, local police and, ultimately, parents for more than a year.

Initially, Martin wasn’t interested in the Trussville position, but not out of any concern regarding the recent controversy, he said. Instead, Martin said he didn’t want to subject his family to what was bound to be a very public process, especially his children, who were flourishing at Vestavia Hills. 

“My reason for not going in initially was strictly family-based,” Martin said. "When you go through a public interview, you don't do that in isolation; your entire family goes through that public interview with you, and that was concerning to me."

Despite his hesitancy, Martin remained on the radar screen of many within Trussville’s education community. Martin officially threw his hat in the ring after a conversation with his wife.

“My wife came outside and asked me who was on the phone, and I said, ‘That was from Trussville City Schools.’ She and I had had several in-depth conversations about it,” Martin said. “Her comment to me was, ‘God’s just not going to let you out of this one, is he?’

“That to me was what I needed as an endorsement from my entire family. My wife, my four children, all of us, to make that move.”

As Martin transitions into the superintendent role, the top priority on the minds of many parents, faculty and other stakeholders is school safety. He says he will continue to build on the enhancements of interim Superintendent Frank Costanzo and the relationships he has developed with Mayor Buddy Choat and the Trussville Police Department. Moreover, Martin said, his role at Vestavia has prepared him for the challenge.

"I was the conduit with our Vestavia Hills Police Department,” said Martin. “So, I worked with all of our SROs, our sergeant and our two police captains to make sure that the city school system was safe and secure for our students and faculty."

Academically, Martin said he intends to continue the progress that Trussville City Schools has made over the years, becoming a system that consistently ranks among the top school systems not only in Alabama, but in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report and Niche.com. In his first few months on the job, Martin said he intends to learn about what the system is doing right while evaluating areas for improvement.

“I think I want to come in and do a lot of listening,” he said. “Obviously, there is a lot that is being done right, so I want to talk with those key contributors to that process and see what has been working, but also talk with them a little bit about some tweaks that we can make to continue to improve the system.”

Even though Martin has only begun transitioning into his new role in April, he said he and his family already have fallen in love with Trussville and plan to move to the community as soon as possible. 

“It’s just a really nice community. The more we drove around it as we were researching it, we realized it was a place that we wanted to live,” he said. “Our plan is to bring our family to Trussville and be part of that community.”