Randall Woodfin: Investing in the future
Randall Woodfin has stayed true to his Birmingham roots — as he puts it, “I’ve left twice, [and] I’ve come home twice.”
Born and raised in North Birmingham, Woodfin continues to live downtown and works as an attorney for the city of Birmingham. The only times he has left his home city were to attend Morehouse College, where he studied political science, and to participate in a campaign management program in Washington, D.C.
Here in Birmingham, he has worked with several community programs, including the Mayor’s Office Division of Youth Services and Weed and Seed. Woodfin is now a member of the Birmingham City Schools Board of Education.
Woodfin recently sat down with Iron City Ink to talk about the city he loves and the work he is investing in Birmingham’s children.
Q: How has Birmingham changed from when you were growing up to now?
A: We’ve had our spurts of so many different things. One, I think if you’re from Birmingham, you’re proud to be from Birmingham regardless of how you grew up. So I’m proud to be from Birmingham …
Seeing the revitalization in the city, I find it quite compelling. I’d like to see it in North Birmingham, where I grew up. I would like to see it in downtown Ensley; I would like to see it in East Lake; I would like to see it in some other areas where you have historic homes.
Q: What made you decide to come back?
A: When I left for the first time, it was for undergrad. I went to college — Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia — and it’s a pretty unique place in that our varsity sport is leadership. What football is at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa is what student government is at Morehouse …
It taught me a lot about leadership, but in addition to leadership, the second thing we pledge there — and that’s all students — is community service and this whole notion around giving back. So a lot of my classmates went to D.C. on Capitol Hill, a lot of them went to New York, Wall Street, a lot of them went into different graduate programs, but I was committed to coming back here. So I came home right away and got involved.
Q: Can you tell us more about your time in the Mayor’s Office Division of Youth Services and Weed and Seed?
A: In Birmingham, there are a lot of youth issues. Some of those issues spill from what’s not at home, what’s not in the community. Youth Services, in what I say, provided that bridge and/or closed that gap in offering things to youth, from different programs all the way up into summer jobs, to make sure we as a city were investing in our children, investing in our youth, keeping them off the streets and giving them a productive space for them to individually grow and collectively …
The Division of Youth Services, of all the different departments, is one that’s a critical need for the city because, in my opinion, there’s nothing more important than investing in the youngest generation, and that’s what the Department of Youth Services did …
Weed and Seed — that was pretty cool, too … Weed and Seed is a government program through the [U.S.] Justice Department that gives designated grants to different cities. At the time, it was designated for three areas of what they saw [as] either high crime or low investment … It was designed to weed out crime and seed in community efforts to rebuild those areas.
Q: And what about your decision to run for Birmingham City Schools Board of Education in 2009 and again in 2013?
A: I was unsuccessful in 2009. I was a young buck, and I had a notion of wanting to help. Did I know what I was doing? Absolutely not. Was my heart and mind in the right place? Yes … As a practicing lawyer, I’m not going to win every case. So it’s important that I treat my wins and I treat my losses the same way. But even in that, if I’m practicing the case, I actually learn more when I lose.
So losing in 2009 taught me a couple things. One: if there’s an opportunity in the legislative branch of government — school board, city council, county commission, state legislature, state senators, U.S. Congress — because it’s a team sport, because it’s a majority, you may want to work with other people because you don’t want to go there by yourself. In that space I created an idea in conjunction with some other people ... an organization called CARE (Citizens Are Responsible for Education).
Our notion was simple; it came from a good place: Recruit other people to run for the school board. Let’s see if we can get certified school board training prior to being elected, so if we were elected, we can jump the learning curve of understanding our role. So, Alabama Association of School Boards, we partnered with the BBA (Birmingham Business Alliance). They provided those classes, and anybody from the public could attend.
And it turned out, out of nine of us, five board members attended all those training classes prior to being board members. That was in board governance, policy, finance, ethics and just learning the role of being a board member. We find that to be beneficial.
And then from a coordinated effort, we ran a campaign for those candidates in 2013 and had a consistent message across the city: “As board members, you want people with full-time jobs so they don’t have time to micromanage. You want people who are big picture because the school system is only as strong as the lowest performing school, so you need people to think bigger in their own district. And the third thing, you need people who understand teamwork.”
Q: What made you interested in being part of the Board of Education?
A: When I came back [to Birmingham] in 2003, what I realized was I didn’t see a lot of intentionality around our youngest generation. And I think locally, state level and at a federal level, we get a space where people want to be elected officials out of some form of either selfish interest, selfish gain or they’re doing something just because …
Being a school board member now, what I realize: In the board governance role, you know, there’s policy and then there’s a community half. But we have to be big picture and figure out a way to get all the resources — human capital and financial capital — on board to make our school system better, because there’s so many challenges for the city …
The real rub is my love for the city of Birmingham. I believe and I know the main reason I ran is because I love Birmingham.
Q: What are you most proud of from your time on the board so far?
A: The biggest thing, believe it or not, is you don’t read about us. We’re not in the papers; we’re not on TV. We’re boring and functional, and I know that sounds silly until you think about it.
When you look at a successful school system, you can’t name the school board members. You don’t know who they are. When you look at a successful school system, they’re not necessarily on the TV or in the news, so you don’t even know what they’re doing. So one of the things “out of sight, out of mind” to me equates that the business of educating children is going on. So being intentional, being boring and extremely functional and professional is a safe space for any board …
Number two, we’ve hired a new superintendent who we believe has the passion, has the vision, has the communication skills and the wherewithal to move about the different stakeholder groups — students, employees, parents, other community stakeholders.
And she has not been here a year yet, but I have full confidence that if anything is to be a constant, Dr. Kelley Castlin-Gacutan should remain superintendent as long as possible to make a significant, tangible change in our system as it relates to the education performance of our individual students, our individual classrooms, our individual schools [and] our school system as a whole.
The third thing would be the financial operational piece. Is it where we want it to be? No. Is it better? Absolutely. We’re not bleeding money … We’ve gotten better with our operational costs, but we still have a ways to go just from a strategic standpoint of how we allocate our resources.
Q: What are some challenges in the school system you would like to take on?
A: We took on the challenge of [adding] the pre-K [classes into schools]. We thought that was a pretty big thing to take on because what we find is with all the community issues, family issues at home, when children come into our system at age 5 and 6 … it’s possible that they haven’t had the opportunity to be on what I call a good foundational setting of at bare minimum being at grade level.
So the concept of words, concept of numbers, being in some sort of structured program prior to entering our school system puts us on par with our children not being at grade level by first, second, third, all the way up to 12th grade. We’re constantly playing catch up. In addition to our kids only being in school 180 days a year, I think you and I both know those days only equal six months, so we’re not spending enough time with our children. We thought it was important to figure out a way to expand our pre-K program to decrease the number of students not at grade level and close the achievement gap …
Here’s another challenge we found, and this was at the high school level. You as a parent or a supporter or a graduate of high school would attend a football game on Friday night and then at halftime, you would see less than 40, 45 people on the field at the band performance. And that’s because we didn’t have music programs [in] K-8 …
The third challenge that we’ve been able to overcome, [was] we’re decreasing our student population. We saw a space where we were losing a thousand students a year. You only lose students for one of two reasons, or both. One: the intangible, the perception that your schools are not safe and so safety is the No. 1 concern. Two: academic performance. When you lose a thousand students a year, you’re going to lose millions in funding a year. But we’ve been able to stabilize our student population. I will tell any parent, I will tell any potential parent, I will tell anybody who hasn’t stepped in any of our schools in quite some time, their perception may not match the reality on the ground, which is our schools are safe.
Q: What do you hope your long-term impact on Birmingham will be?
A: That I’ve made a significant, legitimate, tangible — like you can touch it, you can feel it, you can see it — change in the quality of life of people. So if you finish our school system, what that looks like [is] you actually are college and career ready. For every high school graduation I attend — and since I’ve been a board member I intentionally want to attend all of them, shake our students’ hands, that’s probably a highlight of my job to see our students matriculate through our system — and the thing I’ve now processed in my mind is they have two hands.
I think we should be putting something in both of their hands. I think we’ve been putting a diploma in their hand. Let’s get to a space where we can put some sort of certification or certificate in their hand, and in that way if they choose not to go to college, they can go straight to the workforce. As a school system, as a city, we should be more intentional about that.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: I want to continue being involved here in the city. At what level, I am still trying to figure out. I do know I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.