Superintendent Tim Melton leaves big shoes to fill

Sometimes, when people reach a certain level of prominence or what they see as prominence, they think they are too good to do menial tasks.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

You probably know the kind of people I am talking about. I think all of us have known a few of them over the years.

Outgoing Williamsburg Superintendent Tim Melton certainly isn’t one of those people.

Let me share a portion of a letter to the editor that ran in the News Journal in August 2018. The letter was from the project manager on the Williamsburg Independent School renovation project, Debra Strehl. At the time, Melton was school principal.

“Mr. Tim Melton is the first and only principal that I have seen (over 30 years), that will roll up his sleeves and work side by side with his janitorial staff. He has painted, moved furniture, stripped floors, patched cracks, etc. These things were not a part of our contract. He was not alone. There was an entire staff of people from every part of the school that never took a Christmas break. These are the hardest working group of people I’ve ever seen,” Strehl wrote in the letter to the editor.

By the time COVID-19 rolled around, Melton was superintendent.

During the early days of pandemic after in-person classes got cancelled, there were multiple times that I tried calling Melton in the morning, but couldn’t reach him. As it turned out, he was busy helping the cafeteria staff make sack lunches to send to students.

This is just the kind of guy Tim Melton is. In addition to being intelligent, he is also a hard worker willing to do whatever it takes to help make his school district successful.

This is one of the traits that is going to make Melton very hard to replace after he leaves Williamsburg at the end of the month to take a position in another school district.

From a journalistic perspective, Melton has always been good about returning phone calls, answering e-mails and doing anything he could to help me out. It has been much appreciated.

Whoever Melton’s successor is as superintendent, they will certainly have some very big shoes to fill, but I know Melton would like nothing better than to see them surpass the fine job that he has done in Williamsburg.

I would wish Melton luck in his new position, but something tells me that he won’t need it.

The district’s superintendent search committee held a public forum last Wednesday to get public input about the qualities that they would like to see in their next superintendent, but no one from the public showed up.

Look for the district to appoint an interim superintendent when Melton leaves when his contract expires at the end of June and to take its time searching for the right person to replace Melton.

If recent history is any indication, there’s a good chance that the district’s next superintendent will be someone already connected to the district.

In 2015, one year before Superintendent Denny Byrd retired, the school district hired Amon Couch as principal. Then, Couch was hired as superintendent when Byrd retired in 2016.

Melton was then brought in as the school principal.

When Couch retired in 2019, Melton was selected to replace him as superintendent and Marc Taylor was hired as principal.

Only time will tell if history will repeat itself with someone already associated with the school district hired as the next superintendent.