Cheryl Atkinson, DeKalb County Schools' new superintendent, made her first appearance Tuesday night before a large group of parents and teachers, and promised to lead with a focus on the students.
Atkinson called it “a new day in DeKalb,” on her fourth day on the job in leading Georgia's third-largest school district.
“Victory is in the classroom,” she said. “It will take the entire community to ensure success.”
Formerly of Lorain, Ohio, Atkinson said she would call on the DeKalb community for guidance. The Tuesday night meeting was part of her 90-day "entry plan," a study of the school system's strengths and weaknesses. After the brief introduction, the audience of roughly 300 people was broken into smaller groups and led to several classrooms where facilitators sought ideas.
While Atkinson called on the community for ideas, the Tuesday participants noted that they represented a fraction of the parents and teachers in a school system with 99,000 students.
Atkinson will contact more people. She’ll meet with administrators, teachers, students, parents, government leaders and civic and business leaders. She plans to ride school buses. She'll review reports, studies, resumes and job descriptions. The school system will host a survey on its website.
The results of the research will be revealed in four months. Atkinson plans to present her findings to the school board in January, and the school system says she'll use the information to identify key staffers and potential new hires to form her leadership team.
In Tuesday night's input-seeking session, 20 parents and teachers in one room were asked what the school system should keep and change. The discussion quickly turned to the division between neighborhood schools and the popular high-performing schools accessible only by lottery.
“The lottery is good if you get picked,” one woman said. “If you don’t, there are few alternatives.”
A father of children at two neighborhood schools elicited positive responses when he said the school system should fix under-performing schools rather than use the elite schools as an “escape valve for people getting out of under-performing schools."
The discussion touched on the role of poverty and expectations on school performance. A high school senior complained about kids who didn't want to learn.
A teacher complained about teachers who didn't want to do extra work, such as studying for certification to teach gifted students. She said she found the training helpful and lamented that other teachers saw the work as "just something extra." Their attitude, the teacher said, was this: “I don’t get paid for it, I’m not going to do it.”
One woman asked for something simple: "Every child should go to a school that has working toilets and lightbulbs."
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