Stacy Royster, who has been the technology director for Opelika City Schools since 2013, will be moving up to a new position as program coordinator for Statewide Student Information System Implementation.
The Alabama State Board of Education has approved Stacy Royster’s new position as the program coordinator for Statewide Student Information System Implementation at the meeting.
Royster has been the technology director for Opelika City Schools since 2013 and was approached about this new position because she was one of the pilots for the new student information system for the state.
Over the past three years she has been learning about and testing the program while also helping teach other districts how to use it.
“I’ve been passionate about teaching people information, whether I’m teaching students or teaching adults,” Royster said.
The new program manages all information including student data, enrollment, grades, discipline, attendance and more.
Royster said the state decided it needed somebody to be in charge of this new program at the state level.
In Royster’s new position, she will help different districts in Alabama with policies and will help train them how to implement the program.
“I like giving people a clear understanding of how things work so they can make informed decisions that’s going to benefit their district,” Royster said. “I’m very much excited and looking forward to that.”
Royster said the state had outgrown the old information system, and the new system was supposed to be implemented last year but COVID-19 pushed it back.
At the Opelika Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, Superintendent Mark Neighbors and other board members said they were sad to see Royster leave OCS, but are thankful for what she has done for the school district.
“We’re happy for her,” Neighbors said. “She’s an excellent math teacher and she’s learned the instructional side of technology. She has earned it and I’m so proud of her.”
The board said without Royster, OCS would have struggled during the pandemic when switching to remote classes.
By the time COVID hit, the teachers were prepared for how to switch to virtual learning as Royster had started training the teachers a few years prior on the different technology and how to incorporate it in the classroom.
Royster grew up in Chambers County and graduated from Auburn University in 2000 with a bachelor’s and later a master’s degree in secondary mathematics education.
“I was one of those people that growing up always knew I wanted to be a teacher. There wasn’t ever anything else,” she said.
Right after she graduated college, Royster took a job with Opelika City Schools to be the high school math teacher, and she said she fell in love with the school district.
In 2013, she became the technology director of OCS and has been in that position for eight years.
During her career she has won several big awards including Teacher of the Year and the International Society for Technology in Education Making it Happen Award.
As the technology director, Royster implemented the one-to-one device initiative at OCS and also updated the school system to the latest wireless technology.
“I’ve been blessed because the group of people that I work with also want to do great things for students,” Royster said. “It wasn’t just me who did this for our district. It was just me being a facilitator of the great people in this district who wanted to do better.”
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Stacy Royster, who has been the technology director for Opelika City Schools since 2013, will be moving up to a new position as program coordinator for Statewide Student Information System Implementation.
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