photo by: Ashley Golledge

Superintendent Anthony Lewis addresses the audience at the Adult Learning Center and Diploma Completion Program ceremony at 2920 Haskell Ave. on Thursday, June 3, 2021.

Updated: 3:25 p.m. Friday.

Lawrence Superintendent Anthony Lewis has not been selected to lead the Montgomery, Alabama, school district.

In a special meeting on Friday, the board of Montgomery Public Schools voted unanimously to select Melvin Brown, superintendent at Reynoldsburg City Schools in Ohio, as the district’s next superintendent. Lewis was one of four remaining finalists for the position.

photo by: Reynoldsburg City Schools

Melvin Brown

Ahead of the vote, Montgomery school board president Clare Weil thanked the Alabama Association of School Boards for providing the board an “impressive” pool of candidates.

“When you look at this pool that they presented, they set us up for success because every candidate was an excellent choice,” Weil said. “Of course we now have to narrow it to one.”

Lewis previously told the Journal-World that he was happy in Lawrence, but that the Montgomery position represented an opportunity for him to return home and be closer to family. Lewis is originally from nearby Talladega, Alabama, and lived for nearly 20 years in Montgomery while attending college and later working as a teacher and principal in the Montgomery school district. He later was an assistant superintendent in the Kansas City, Missouri, public school district.

On Friday, Lewis said Montgomery was the only job he would have considered leaving Lawrence for, and that when the recruiter kept calling, he thought he owed it to his family to apply. Regarding the board’s decision, he said his mother was excited about him potentially coming home, and so he was disappointed for her and his other family members.

But Lewis said there is still a lot of work to do in the Lawrence district, and he is committed to the district and had no plans to apply elsewhere, including a recently open position in Selma.

“I’m here,” Lewis said. “And so the short answer to that is I’m committed to Lawrence. I’m not looking anywhere else, don’t plan on looking anywhere else at all.”

Lewis said that having grown up the son of a single mother in Alabama, it was a true honor for him to be a finalist for the position in Montgomery, which he described as both the cradle of the confederacy and the civil rights movement. While he said a lot of people in the community have been understanding and supportive of his choice to apply, he was disappointed in some of the negative comments he’s seen and heard. He said it’s shown him that he and other community leaders can improve how Lawrence navigates conflict.

“We have a tremendous amount of work to do in that regard, in terms of just civility,” Lewis said. “When people disagree or they don’t agree with a decision, how we respond to that is something that I want to make sure I’m a part of the solution here in Lawrence.”

Lewis’ application for the Montgomery position came as the Lawrence school board was working to address a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall. The board recently approved $5.8 million in budget cuts and will continue its discussion about another $600,000 in cuts on Monday.

Lewis said it will be a tremendous amount of work to implement the budget reductions, and that the district would continue to move forward in that task. He said he was also energized to work on the other front of the issue, increasing revenue and attracting families to the district. That includes the district’s plans to begin phasing in a public Montessori program at New York Elementary next school year.

“It will be the first for Lawrence, the first for the state of Kansas,” Lewis said. He said opening a Montessori school — which some pay thousands per year to attend — that is free and public in a low-socioeconomic school was an exciting prospect.

Lewis began serving as superintendent of Lawrence Public Schools in July 2018. The Lawrence school board voted as part of its meeting on July 12, 2021, to extend Lewis’ contract with the district through the 2023-2024 school year.

photo by: Montgomery Public Schools

Members of the Montgomery school board meet Friday, April 8, 2022, to select the district’s new superintendent.