Crew Heimer candidate for Board of Education District 4

I call the Hawthorne Elementary (Briarwood Manor)  area home.

​

I have watched and participated (PTA, Lakeside Expansion Committee) for 13 years as my children progressed through the DeKalb County School System. With two students times 12 years, I have met many dedicated and wonderful DeKalb County teachers.

My daughter, a senior at Chamblee, plans to major in Math next year and had hoped to teach Math until she reached out to her favorite teachers – who all advised against teaching. Many students elementary students are not achieving State standards.  If the DeKalb School System is not working for many students and not working for the teachers – then who is it working for?                 

I offer an non-traditional background for a School Board Member with dozen-year stints in private industry, in consulting, and with the State of Georgia as a licensed Professional Engineer.  I worked on the railroad in maintenance and operations, learning creative solutions because one could not go home if the railroad was not running.  My stories are mild compared to rail old-timers – the most my gangs and I ever worked to restore the railroad was thirty hours straight.  In consulting, I number crunched, completed conceptual studies and inspected rail lines as part of due diligence for financial institutions. 

With the State, I helped negotiate rail access, managed federal studies and built transit stations and parking.  The drawback in most government is that, unlike the urgency and rewarding feeling of restoring rail service, the system discourages making waves, it is often perceived to be better to do little rather or to move slowly than make big changes that inevitably upset someone. 

We need change in DeKalb County Schools.  We need to stop avoiding problems. 

If DeKalb County is to prosper, it can’t have families moving to other counties because the school systems elsewhere are better. We can’t have a system that teachers do not want to work for.  We can’t continue to fail to teach reading and writing in elementary school – or we will have to start building more jail cells down the road.

What we do need is a system that encourages parents and volunteers to participate.  This is difficult work because parents are wild cards that do not match system expectations of keeping disruptive waves down.  To rephrase a joke about economists – if you lined up all the parents end to end  - they would point in all directions.               

What we need to expand is cheering teachers and students on, so they can do their best.  We need more mentoring of teachers, students and families by their peers.
 

When my daughter started at Kittredge (and only motivated students could apply for the lottery to enter), I was surprised at the level of support from the school.   None of the following processes came from the Central Office, they came from dedicated educators that identified problems and sought solutions.  They needed parents to monitor homework, so they created a weekly spreadsheet of all assignments for a student in one place – one stop shopping.  They realized that even good students needed help with study habits and set up resources to help learn how to time manage and study.  They realized that transition to a demanding school could be hard and assigned mentor families to new families.  None of this came from Central Office direction – but from empowered educators. 

Now let’s look at other schools with students often not as motivated.  Generally none of those resources are available to parents.  Why do other educators not feel empowered to seek solutions?   
 
 
The role of the school board member is to select and guide the Superintendent.   

I would also like to help set and example.  Perhaps just an illusion of my mind, but if possible, I would like to partner with a South DeKalb District  member and pick one elementary school to focus upon to encourage community involvement.  I would like to have grounds session days each semester similar to and based upon my time as Building and Grounds committee at Briarlake Elementary where the community painted crosswalks and curbs, planted dozens of roses, spread truckloads of woodchips, installed drainage in the playground, fixed potholes, pressure washed, etc.  And add to that seeking volunteers from Churches, Businesses, and Families to mentor families and students and to come read to elementary students.  Maybe an ambitious throught, but we really will not know what we’re up against until we try.          

  
A decade ago, I was on the Lakeside High expansion committee with Ms. Allyson Gevertz, the current Board member (and Chair) from District 4, who is not running for reelection I think highly of her. 

What scares me the most is that for years DeKalb County has had seven committed and dedicated board members that try to find the best Superintendent.  Yet overall poor academic performance does not seem change, while we have revolving door Superintendents at the top. My fear?  Will I be able help to break this vicious cycle?      

I’m more interested in trying to figure out and correct root causes than in assessing blame.  A bit of folk wisdom is that when the car is stuck in the ditch, the focus should be on getting the car out of the ditch – and once out, with the relief of crisis over, it is often much easier for the involved parties to figure out how the car got in the ditch.

When working with teams, I state: when we succeed there is plenty of credit to go around; when anyone fails, we all fail.