New USJ principal is returning to where it all started

Alphus Shipman is coming home, sort of.

The new U.S. Jones Elementary School principal started his teaching career fresh out of the University of Alabama as a coach at John Essex High School. Shipman and his family lived in Demopolis for seven years before he left for another coaching job, one in his hometown of Dothan.

After the Demopolis City Board of Education approved Shipman Monday, he told members he moved around the state to take football coaching jobs.

But while in Tuscaloosa, he attended the Future Instructional Leaders Academy which piqued his interest in school administration.

“That kind of stirred my passion for being a school administrator,” he said.

He earned a degree in administration from UA, and Shipman is three classes short of earning his Education Specialist degree.

“I found out I had the same passion for being an instructional leader as I did in coaching,” he said.

After 22 years in education, he comes from being assistant principal at Westlawn Middle School and is looking forward to putting his own stamp on USJ.

“I am a people person,” Shipman said. “I am relentless about building a relationship with faculty, staff and kids.”

His first step, he continued, “will be to build a relationship with those teachers, because they are doing a great job moving U.S. Jones forward.”

Shipman and his wife have three children. Their older son, Marquavius, teaches in Greene County; the second son, A.J., is a red shirt freshman at Delta State, and their daughter, Jennifer, 16, hopes she will be able to play volleyball for Demopolis High School.