Cheryl L.H. Atkinson won't find out until Monday whether she'll be DeKalb County's new school superintendent, but the office that awaits her if she's hired has already been cleared out.
Interim Superintendent Ramona Tyson finished moving the last of her things out of the district chief's Stone Mountain office early Friday. Tyson will resume her job as deputy chief superintendent.
Atkinson, 52, is the sole finalist for the superintendent's job in DeKalb, Georgia's third-largest school district, with 96,000 students.
"Job one for me will be the children, giving them the tools that they need to succeed, period," she said Friday in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But Atkinson, here to meet DeKalb officials and parents, hasn't quit her job yet as superintendent of Lorain City Schools in metro Cleveland. She also hasn't pulled her youngest son, a high school senior, out of school or started house hunting.
"We're taking this all one step at a time," she said.
While Atkinson has an apparent majority of support on the nine-member school board, two members, Nancy Jester and Don McChesney, sent an email to their constituents questioning her credentials to take on such a large school district and the much ballyhooed improvements she brought to her current district.
"I'm ready to face any questions and any challenges head on," Atkinson said. Her current school system of about 7,600 students was on "academic watch," the second lowest tier for Ohio public schools. But the district recently moved up to "continuous improvement."
"These steps aren't easy, but we are making gains and I believe we're on the path for continued academic success," she said, adding that the district implemented intensive tracking for student performance so teachers and parents can know, almost week to week, how the children are doing.
She also has been criticized for seeking the top job at one of Georgia's largest districts after coming from one less than a tenth the size of DeKalb.
"Well, I've spent years in my career in high level jobs at districts bigger than DeKalb," she said. "My last job [in Charlotte] I was the associate superintendent for school leadership at a district with 127,000 students.
"Anything that could possibly bubble up at a school system came across my desk," she said.
Atkinson said her variety of experience, including working as an elementary school teacher in North Carolina in addition to administrative roles, gives her the ability to understand both the big picture of a system as well as the small details that affect a child in a classroom.
She said she is aware of DeKalb's recent challenges, including having almost two dozen schools that didn't make adequate yearly performance, a rating that drove parents to move more than 1,300 students to different schools.
She said she's prepared to look at the system from "top to bottom," including all expenses and where resources can best be devoted. In Lorain, she said, when they had a tight budget and needed new textbooks, they instead bought electronic notebooks for the students so electronic textbooks could be downloaded at a huge cost savings.
Some DeKalb parents were critical of her selection because of a personal bankruptcy she and her husband went through about 13 years ago. Atkinson said she won't shy away from any questions parents have, and that the bankruptcy stemmed from her husband's construction business and never interfered with her work as an educator.
"Life happens and we dealt with it," she said. "I've moved on from that."
A meet-and-greet with DeKalb parents and teachers is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at the DeKalb school headquarters at 1701 Mountain Industrial Blvd., Stone Mountain.
The school board is slated to vote on whether to hire her at a special meeting at 10 a.m. Monday. Atkinson is being offered a three-year contract with a starting salary of $275,000.
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