New leader coming to Smiths Station High School amid principal changes in Lee County

It will be a homecoming of sorts for the new principal of Smiths Station High School.

When the leadership change is official July 1, Beulah High School principal Adam Johnson, a 1995 graduate of Central High School, will drive to work from the same home — because he never moved away from Smiths Station when he left SSHS in 2018 to become athletics director and assistant principal at Beulah.

“I’ll just be making a right on Backwater Road instead of a left,” he told the Ledger-Enquirer. “I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again and re-establishing those connections and relationships.”

Johnson will succeed Brad Cook as SSHS principal. Cook told the L-E he accepted Lee County superintendent Mike Howard’s transfer to become principal of the county’s new alternative school.

Howard didn’t answer the L-E’s questions about the rationale for the leadership changes and how many candidates applied and were interviewed. Instead, Howard wrote in an email, “We are very excited to have Dr. Cook serve as Principal of the Lee County Alternative School and share his expertise as we develop this program from scratch. We are also very excited to have Mr. Johnson serve as Principal of Smiths Station High School.”

Adam Johnson

In addition to AD, Johnson’s 15 years at SSHS included positions as a teacher and coach. He is finishing his second year as principal of Beulah.

SSHS is in Class 7A, Alabama’s largest classification for public schools. Beulah, about 18 miles away from Smiths Station, is in Class 3A.

Asked why he wants to change his principal position from Beulah to SSHS, Johnson said, “It’s just going back home. I started my career at Smiths Station. I was there for 15 years. … I was blessed to give my kids their diploma at Smiths Station. That’s where my wife is from, and I’m from the Phenix City area.”

Explaining his education leadership philosophy, Johnson said, “We keep it simple. We believe in doing it right and having a good time. We want to make sure we involve the community, bring the community into the school, establish a sense of pride.”

Johnson said the major priority during his first year as SSHS principal will be trying to make the transition as smooth as possible for the merger of approximately 500 students and 25 teachers from the Smiths Station Freshman Center into SSHS.

To make room for the growth in enrollment at the elementary schools, the freshman center will be used to educate sixth graders instead, and SSHS eventually will be expanded to better accommodate grades 9-12, Johnson said.

“Smiths is a great place,” he said. “There’s great people, great community involvement. I walked on campus in 2004, and I felt like I was walking into a gold mine, and I still feel that way. The potential is the sky’s the limit.”

Brad Cook

The virtual learning program at the Lee County Learning Center in Salem will be moved to the county’s high schools to make room for the new alternative school, Cook said.

Leaving SSHS for this new challenge is bittersweet, Cook said.

“I’ve spent four-and-a-half years now at Smiths Station High, and I was at the freshman center for several years before that, and I feel like we’ve really turned the high school around this past year,” he said. “Through all the trials and issues we’ve had to go through, with society being the way it is and COVID and just all the craziness, we’ve finally kind of got things balanced and running in the right direction.

“Our kids did outstanding on the ACT this last time, and our college and career readiness numbers are way through the roof. So this year was kind of the year we blew it out of the water.”

Cook, an educator for 23½ years, is looking forward to guiding students who were removed from their regular school and helping them get on a positive path toward graduation. The alternative school will have a capacity for around 60 students, he said.

“I hate to use the word rehabilitate, but it really is,” he said, “to get them refocused and on a better track in life.”

Cook grew up in Ozark, Alabama, although he moved around as part of a military family. He served in the U.S. Army for five years and achieved the rank of specialist. Then he finished his bachelor’s degree in secondary education English language arts at Auburn University in 2000 and became an English teacher at Opelika High School.

After earning his master’s degree in education administration at Auburn, Cook became assistant principal at Valley’s W.F. Burns Middle School in 2006. From 2008-10, he was assistant principal at SSHS. Then he left to be principal of Greenville (Ala.) High School.

But he stayed there for only one year because his connection with Smiths Station compelled him to return, Cook told the L-E in 2020.

“I was jumping at the chance to come back,” he said then.

So when the Smiths Station Freshman Center opened in 2011, Cook became the assistant principal. A year later, he was promoted to principal of the center. That’s also when he earned his doctorate in education administration from Auburn.