2 New Principals Hired In Vestavia City Schools

VESTAVIA HILLS, AL — Two new principals in the VEstavia school system were recently hired, as the Vestavia Hills Board of Education made the announcement at its May 24 meeting.

The board named Danielle Tinker as the new principal of Vestavia Hills Elementary Cahaba Heights and David Howard as principal of the Vestavia Hills High School Freshman Campus.

Tinker has served as assistant principal at Vestavia Hills Elementary Liberty Park since 2019. While at VHELP, Tinker worked with school leaders to identify core values for students to learn throughout the year and partnered with the system’s personnel team to increase student teacher placement and minority recruitment from local universities.

Tinker served as assistant principal of Erwin Intermediate School in Jefferson County from 2012 to 2019. She holds a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham as well as master’s and educational specialist degrees in instructional leadership from Samford University.

“Cahaba Heights is an amazing school doing spectacular things, especially in character education and development, and you can just feel the atmosphere of kindness from students and staff the moment you walk in the door,” Tinker said.

Howard’s appointment to the principal’s position at the Freshman Campus comes after a year of serving as one of the school’s two assistant principals. He and assistant principal Jennifer Brown co-led the campus during its inaugural year and established a focus on leadership development of ninth graders to prepare them for high school life.

Howard, who served as an assistant principal at Vestavia Hills High School since 2016, previously worked as the school system’s director of administrative services and as a science teacher at Louis Pizitz Middle School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in science from the University of Alabama as well as a master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Montevallo.

“I’ve loved being here in Vestavia Hills and working with thousands of students, faculty and staff members since 1997, and I feel extremely honored to get to continue at the Freshman Campus next year with the amazing team that started it all,” Howard said.