Dr. Bryan Johnson, the newly appointed superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, has outlined his priorities for his first 100 days in office.
Johnson was sworn in Aug. 5 as the new Atlanta superintendent. His first official assignment was to create and submit to the school board his 100-day plan. The plan focuses on “four critical areas to lay a strong foundation” for excellence as he begins his tenure leading the state’s largest urban school district with approximately 50,000 students.
The areas are: 1.) Academic acceleration to ensure academic and personal success of all students; 2.) Equity, to include striving for a fair and just educational system for all students regardless of their backgrounds and providing high-quality education in all neighborhoods; 3.) Ongoing engagement with students, parents, teachers, staff and the wider community; 4.) Accountability, transparency and operational efficiency to help build confidence in the community.
“With this 100-day plan, I get the privilege of, in particular over this early phase, gaining even more context about Atlanta and gaining more context specifically about the school system [and] unpacking historical elements and components,” Johnson told Rough Draft in a phone interview while driving between schools. His 100-day plan includes visiting all 87 campuses in the Atlanta district.
Johnson said the community town hall meetings held in July after before he officially took over the superintendent post impressed on him the importance of building trust with parents, teachers and all stakeholders.
“Trust allows people to believe and know that the intent. People don’t have to agree with the decision, but they have to know that you’re making the decision out of the best place and from the best place and you want to do that by building and gaining trust,” he said.
“You can’t do that with a whole lot of words, you do that with a lot of action,” Johnson said. “We want to listen to people, and we want people to know that we hear them and we’re responding to them. And, you know, we can move forward.”
The Atlanta school board introduced Johnson as the sole finalist for the job in June; the board approved hiring him in July to a three-year contract. The search for a new superintendent began a year ago after the board chose not to renew Dr. Lisa Herring’s contract. Herring served from July 1, 2020, until August 2023.
Johnson’s background includes working in public education for close to 20 years, from teacher to principal to the superintendent of Hamilton County Schools from 2017 to 2021. He was named the 2021 Superintendent of the Year by the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents. His background also includes working in the private sector and higher education.
Rough Draft asked Johnson some questions about the 100-day plan and what he is noticing during his tour of school campuses and meeting with community members.
Q: Why come up with a 100-day plan?
A: It’s really best practice. I think you’ll see it across the superintendencies. Really what it does is kind of lays out for the community what it is you’re looking to learn more about, and what you’ll be learning about, what you’ll be working towards. Because of how Georgia is legislated I had a vetting period and the opportunity to gain some additional context prior to implementation of the 100-day plan, and use that context to inform what would go into the 100-day plan. For instance, in the area of special education, I was able to listen in to the audit committee meeting and engage with multiple parents that that have expressed different special education concerns. From the standpoint of the audit, there’s some opportunity to do some deeper training. As far as federal and district expectations, there’s definitely opportunity to to ensure that there’s more accountability and support for teachers. The benefit of me being able to be in schools is, you know, I’m engaging with some special educators, and I’m asking the question, you know, how can we help you? What’s your biggest challenge? What are you seeing? And so, yeah, those things help to inform and help us to, you know, make the best decisions possible for students.
Q: Equity is one of the four categories in your 100-day plan. In Georgia, schools have already had to deal with the state school superintendent attempting to eliminate the Advanced Placement African American History class, but later reversed course. Why is equity important to prioritize at APS?
A: I’ve had conversations with folks within the community and the school board to continue to see us move the work in that in that area. Those activities are really important for me. It’s more than activities. We want to set the structure and the groundwork for us to be able to take off. One was obviously student achievement and subgroup performance. So we want to make sure that we really focused on closing and meeting academic gaps. Secondly, there is student discipline and looking at the disproportionalities within student discipline. Thirdly is … the allocation of resources to meet the needs of all of those partners.
Q: What has stood out to you as you travel to the different schools and meet students, teachers, members of the community?
A: It’s probably two things. The community meetings, and actually [last week] I had a neat opportunity to hear a group of students perform at a scholarship luncheon. The thing that really resonated with at community meetings as superintendent is you get the privilege, the honor, to serve in the community, and they need a superintendent that’s going to listen. They need superintendent’s going respond. Then, hearing this group of young ladies that were talented beyond what I could even even describe — reminded me of the privilege that we have to serve students. There are stories throughout the district, from honoring the teacher at Booker T. Washington who has been in the district for 59 years to meeting cafeteria staff that’s been here for more than 30 years, to the to the brand new teacher in the buildings. There’s so many instances that remind me of how special this work is, and how excited I am to be here and serve.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Rough Draft Atlanta.
