Tamara Jones

The elected board education exists to work collaboratively as a body to hire, support, and evaluate the Superintendent; provide feedback on and approve a yearly budget; and to solicit and represent the values of the collective community.

Yes. In 2021, I was elected to serve as the at-large seat 7 for the Atlanta Board of Education. I serve on the Board's Policy Review Committee and Board Development Committee as well as the City's Joint Committee on Education, the Beltline Affordable Housing Advisory Board, and the WABE Advisory Council.

Yes. Prior to being elected, as a mom of three APS students I served for well over a decade as a Local School Council Chair, GO Team Chair, GO Team Secretary, Cluster Advisory Team member, APS District Executive Team member, APS SPLOST Oversight Committee, and the APS Excellent Schools Committee.

I have worked in architecture and urban planning for over 25 years. My work in community master planning has involved extensive public and stakeholder engagement for projects throughout the Atlanta metro area, from Campbellton Road to Crabapple. Comprehensive urban planning requires collaborating with multiple public and private entities to ensure that the critical dimensions of healthy communities are incorporated – including diverse life-cycle housing, equitable access to employment and services, transportation, recreation and wellness, and education. I have brought my understanding of these interconnected elements and my skill with engagement and collaboration to the school board in my first 22 months on the school board.

We all interact daily with people who are different from us in some way, but connection comes from continually learning from others. My experience attending public schools in 3 different states informed my view of the purpose of public education. Education is not just getting qualified for a job or becoming “more competitive”; it is the cultivation of human flourishing. If we accept that the purpose of education is the cultivation of human flourishing, we are all required to care deeply about equipping others with the knowledge, opportunities, and support to live a fulfilling life. Additionally, as a long-time APS parent and volunteer, I know how APS operates, how we got to where we are now, what needs to change, and how to do it with the tools available to me as a Board member.

The author / poet most on my mind at the moment is the great Maya Angelou, who I had the honor of learning from when she taught at Wake Forest. Some of her potent quotes that guide me in this work: “History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.” “We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”

Our biggest challenge is continuing to fail to teach two thirds of our 3rd-8th grade children to read proficiently. The right to read opens the door to knowledge acquisition in all subjects. The Literacy Policy Board Member Mitchell and I have championed is one step in the process of changing that by putting policy in place to support a literacy plan. We also must devote budgetary resources toward the plan. All children have the right to read, and literacy is one of the most important keys to unlocking the door to a life of self-determination.

Transparency, clear communication, and willingness to collaborate. The organization needs a culture shift from “command and control” to “trust and inspire”. Our district is structurally set up to take advantage of shared governance with a leader who is not afraid to allow GO Teams, Cluster Advisory Teams, and the District Executive Committee to serve as genuine advisory bodies. Families, students, staff and communities want to be an authentic part of decision making.

The work of the board is grounded in student outcomes, therefore these must be central to evaluating a superintendent. We adopted a framework in 2021, Student Outcome Focused Governance, that ties the work of the board to developing the conditions to bring about change in student outcome data. We have gotten started with monitoring both the annual goals and interim benchmarks in our monthly board meetings, and we must continue the work. I believe the goals are broad and need to be narrowed so the district can focus more deeply on a few high-impact levers, including literacy. It is also important that the guardrail around Culture and Climate be a measurable part of the superintendent's evaluation tool, so that our teachers and staff are able to work in an environment of respect and trust that is free of fear and intimidation.

The budget must be shifted to align with our goals and guardrails, and focus more narrowly on key initiatives with high impact such as literacy. We must continue to increase compensation for our teachers and staff and divert money from central office into schools so that teachers are not only paid well but are well supported and resourced in their classrooms. We can and must become more efficient in how we use the generous amount of money we collect in taxes. Steps need to be taken to flatten the layers at the central office and examine which investments and interventions are yielding results and which need to be retired.

While there are a lot of high goals for the district, not all can be top priorities (if everything is a priority, nothing is), so a keen ability to focus on the levers that will yield the most results and drive more funding into the school house is critical. We are beginning to see some changes in this interim phase, and I am excited for the progress to continue. Additionally, culture and climate and safety must always factor into financial decisions.

The district needs to recommit to its obligation to our students with special needs, thoroughly examine how IEPs and 504s are being served, and devote the resources and personnel to ensure that individual learning needs are being met. I would like to see us explore consulting with organizations who have demonstrated positive results with unique programs and approaches with differently-abled and neuro-divergent students.

One of the reasons I ran for this seat two years ago and was elected was because I believed it was necessary for the board to adopt a Literacy Policy that establishes criteria for permissible reading instruction methods, training, and materials. The board does not pick curriculum, but it can through a policy mandate that all children receive explicit structured literacy instruction aligned to scientific consensus of how young brains learn to read. I serve on the Policy Committee, and we will be adopting the policy developed in consultation with experts in the field on December 4th. After the adoption, the board will need to make budget choices in order to commit the funding to see it implemented.

Through our current work on the Literacy Policy we have re-engaged with the Atlanta Speech School as both a thought and implementation partner to bring about the change needed across the district. We are so fourtunate in the city that there are a number of willling partners who have expertise in language development, as well as philanthropic partners committed to literacy to support us as we work to turn the tide on illiteracy crisis that has impacted this city and its students for more than 20 years.

One key move is to make our elected school and cluster governance team live up to the original vision as true advisory bodies that participate in district level decision making. State law requires “local school councils” to be granted this authority, but the elected family and staff members currently on those bodies have expressed frustration about the legitimacy and power of their voice. As an At-Large Board Member, I find it helpful to attend all of the Cluster Advisory Team meetings across the district because it is a great way to get updated on the issues and needs of each cluster. There is opportunity to make these regular meetings more inclusive and involve more meaningful dialogue.

The Student Advisory Council is an important forum for the board to engage with students in our schools and incorporate it into decision-making.

The regional meetings added this year have been very productive, and I am looking forward to continuing to make refinements for Board engagement.

The monthly monitoring sessions around our Students Outcome Focused Governance work is a start to providing the desired transparent around student achievement data, but we can do more. Engagement with both the board and administation around the district is needed to rebuild trust and reopen dialogue across the city. Families want to engage, and it is up to the board to harness this energy to share what is happening in our district.

Equity means providing each child what they need so that they are able to reach their full potential - both in terms of academics and social opportunity - to ensure they are able to live choice-filled lives.

Equity is at the center of my work on the Atlanta Board of Education because all children deserve a future of opportunity. This is why the current focus on literacy is so critical. FAR too many children in APS are unable to read adequately, and overall proficiency has not meaningfully improved since my oldest child entered the system 17 years ago. Reading challenges affect a student’s performance in all subjects and negatively impact a child's self-esteem and mental health.

We must meet every single child where they are with tailored reading instruction no matter their age or grade and include and celebrate culturally relevant materials and materials. Literacy is a civil right, every child can learn to read, and we must both believe that they can and devote our focus and resources on fulfilling that right.