Adams County Supervisors wanted a change on the Natchez-Adams School Board, and they should more than get their wish with their recent appointment of Phillip West to the board.

West has served Natchez and Adams County in a number of capacities through the decades. He’s a vocal community leader, one that often polarizes sides, but rarely backs down from his position and is never afraid to speak his mind.

Decades ago, West was one of the people who brought forth a lawsuit that resulted in the consolidation of the area’s public school system — a consolidation that wound up being an utter nightmare for the parents, students and administrators involved in cramming schools together.

Rightly or wrongly, West takes much public blame for the result — a dysfunctional public school district.

He could not have imagined the future effect on the district when the lawsuit was first filed.

The court order forcing the school district to reorganize and merge, among other moves, North Natchez and South Natchez high schools together effectively ripped the soul out of the school district.

Today, as a result, nearly any parents with the means to do so have either moved away from Natchez or are scratching and clawing to pay for private or parochial school tuition.

Many continue to blame the lawsuit in which West was involved in the 1980s as the source of the problem.

Through his history, he’s been fiery, hardheaded and sometimes downright belligerent.

Perhaps that’s what the school board ultimately needs now. What we have certainly isn’t working.

Undoing the past is impossible, but West has a potential — and a responsibility — to redeem the district.

To do so, he must set aside issues of race and focus on the children of the district. The very first step necessary may be removing the current school district’s top administrators, who have proven to be ill-equipped to communicate to the public and have cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in one wrongful termination lawsuit with several more pending.