New ATL schools superintendent to try to improve literacy

Now that Atlanta Public Schools has finalized the selection of a new leader, the real work can begin.

The Atlanta Board of Education on Monday unanimously approved a three-year contract for its new superintendent, Bryan Johnson, formerly chief strategy officer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The contract goes into effect Aug. 5.

Johnson has a reputation as a changemaker. During his tenure as superintendent of Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee from 2017 to 2021, the district moved from 130th to second in state performance.

In Atlanta, he faces the challenge of raising literacy rates, overcoming a perception of inequality between schools in different neighborhoods and skepticism from others that APS chose another leader from outside the region.

“We are in a critical situation and we don’t have room for someone to learn how to take care of our communities and our babies,” Wykeshia Howe said during a brief public comment period before the board’s vote Monday. Howe ran in 2021 for the APS Board of Trustees’ District 1 seat against current board member Katie Howard. She lives in southeast Atlanta and is the mother of eight children, two of whom are APS graduates.

The new schools superintendent heard directly from Atlantans during a series of six town hall meetings as part of the state’s superintendent selection period. Capital B attended three stops on Johnson’s listening tour, at Therrell High School and Booker T. Washington High School in southwest Atlanta last week and at Carver Early College in southeast Atlanta on June 25.

Residents at the events were particularly concerned about the district’s literacy rates.
Last year, about 57% of APS elementary students were reading at or above grade level, according to the Georgia College and Career Ready Performance Index. The district included $11.8 million in its fiscal 2025 budget for literacy initiatives to address the problem, including providing literacy coaches to students in its 55 elementary schools.

Resource allocation is also a major concern, a point that southeast Atlanta resident Kimberly Brooks raised at the June meeting at Carver Early College. Brooks said she has been an advocate for her community, The Villages at Carver apartment complex, for more than 10 years.

Brooks explained to Johnson that historically, there has been a funding imbalance between schools in north Atlanta and those in the south. That inequality, she explained, translates into different outcomes for students based on where they live. She hopes Johnson can address that problem.

“I don’t see any responsibility,” Brooks said. “The North doesn’t know what’s going on in the South.”

Residents could get clarity on how Johnson plans to address the issues they have raised in his 100-day plan, which he is expected to submit to the board before his inauguration in August. The plan will detail his course of action as the fourth superintendent in the past decade to lead the state’s largest urban school district, with some 50,000 students at 87 learning sites.

Responding to residents’ concerns about his connection to Atlanta, Johnson said Monday that he plans to enroll his child, a seventh-grader, in an APS school.

District 7 board member Alfred “Shivy” Brooks said Johnson’s willingness to bring his child into the district reflects well on both the new schools chief and APS.

“The superintendent has a kid who’s going to be in the district,” Brooks said. “We all have a vested interest in this game. This is not about politics. This is about making sure kids in the city of Atlanta get good results.”

Some parents, however, need further convincing.

Residents who attended a meeting at Booker T. Washington on July 3 expressed concern that the 14-day community engagement period between Johnson’s announcement and his contract approval seemed too short for stakeholders to get to know him.

“Why did you all have this selection period and not have enough time for us to meet, greet and express how we feel?” Howe asked.

School board President Erika Mitchell said the quick turnaround was largely due to the state-mandated vetting period before the start of the new school year. But she assured community members that this wouldn’t be the last chance they’d have to meet the new superintendent.

“Does that mean we’ll stop trading after 14 days? No,” Mitchell said. “Trading will continue, but we had to meet the state’s requirements, so we got it up and running as quickly as possible.”

At the Booker T. Washington town hall meeting, Johnson told Howe he knew he had to set realistic goals given his rapid transition to the job. But the ultimate goal, he said, is to engage with the community as he learns about the city and his new job.

“The goal will be to work with the school to figure out how we can inspire others,” he said. “There’s an opportunity there and we need to seize it.”