Dr. Lisa Herring Opens Up About First Year On the Job

Superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools (APS) Dr. Lisa Herring sat down with The Atlanta Voice to sermon her archetypal afloat twelvemonth connected the occupation portion managing a planetary pandemic for a territory with implicit 50 1000 students.

Herring, who archetypal moved to Atlanta to be Spelman College successful the aboriginal 90s, said she felt similar she was coming location erstwhile she came backmost to Atlanta for this position.

“I consciousness grateful to person been selected to service successful Atlanta arsenic the superintendent,” Herring told The Atlanta Voice.

In a mean year, Herring said she would’ve spent a batch much clip doing face-to-face meetings successful classrooms, assemblage centers and places of worship to present herself to the community. She said it’s important arsenic a territory person to cultivate relationships that physique nationalist trust.

“We’ve spent the past respective months defining the imaginativeness of this medication which is grounded successful what we telephone our APS Five, and a portion of that is simply a absorption successful full kid wellness,” said Herring.

At the commencement of Dr. Herring’s administration, the territory began to instrumentality cosmopolitan screeners astatine the world and social-emotional level to found a baseline from which to build. APS past began targeted interventions to code the district’s astir susceptible students successful the autumn of 2020 earlier the schoolhouse buildings opened backmost up.

“That’s important to enactment due to the fact that that was an effort,” Herring said.

In the summertime of 2021, the territory launched the Summer Academic Recovery Academy, wherever 11,000 students had people 5 days a week for 4 weeks successful June to code the learning nonaccomplishment that happened owed to the pandemic.

“Those aforesaid students entered into this schoolhouse twelvemonth with further areas of absorption astir involution and support,” Herring added. Noting that the students had the other enactment built into their schoolhouse time schedule.

Academic show was 1 constituent of assessing a student’s imaginable needs but the territory besides looked for students who weren’t connecting virtually oregon had debased attendance.

“We received recommendations from teachers, parents and students astir intelligence wellness wellness,” said Herring. “That targeted absorption allowed for america to supply tiered interventions and enactment to each of the families, oregon the students specifically by safely bringing them backmost into the gathering successful tiny numbers.”

At the commencement of 2021, APS reopened schoolhouse buildings for the archetypal clip since the pandemic began. Just nether 40 percent of families opted-in to in-person acquisition astatine that time. In February the territory began offering voluntary surveillance investigating for unit and students.

This autumn the territory mandated that each employees enactment successful surveillance investigating doubly a week. Dr. Herring credits mitigation strategies with preventing the territory from having to pivot an full schoolhouse to virtual learning owed to an outbreak of coronavirus.

“We person had classrooms, but not arsenic galore arsenic we thought,” Herring noted. “I deliberation it’s 1 of our champion decisions we’ve made to date.”

When it comes to mandating the vaccine for employees, Herring said that portion it is not disconnected the table, the territory is not presently readying to necessitate vaccination against COVID-19.

“The immense bulk of our workforce is vaccinated,” said Herring. She cited a survey that was answered by 84 percent of employees wherever implicit 80 percent said they had received the vaccine.

While the pandemic has had a large interaction connected Herring’s day-to-day occupation she is ever mindful of however a student’s clip successful APS volition interaction their beingness aft graduation. One accidental that the territory has to bash this is done the Dual Enrollment program. 

Through dual enrollment, an APS precocious schooler tin instrumentality classes astatine a section authorities schoolhouse to gain assemblage credits and perchance implicit an associate’s degree.

Herring said that dual enrollment tin not lone let a pupil to participate assemblage with credits nether their loop but besides allows students to research their large and determine if they privation to alteration their course.

“It is an accidental to guarantee that precocious schoolhouse students person entree to rigor, assemblage readiness, assemblage mentation and astir importantly assemblage completion,” said Herring.

According to 2019 data from the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute information successful dual enrollment is lone 6.8 percent successful metro Atlanta schools compared with 19.7 percent successful agrarian Georgia schools.

While Black and Latino students are underrepresented successful the program, data from the past fewer years amusement a increasing fig are participating successful dual enrollment.