New ASD leader Griffin at home
The new school year was merely minutes old Monday when the new Achievement School District superintendent Sharon Griffin ran into a former student who is now a teacher.
There were tears, hugs, and stories from years ago.
Then it happened five more times — all former students who now teach in the ASD — during a tour of seven schools in a span of four hours.
“She made you feel like you were important as a kid,” Brittany Lavender Hill, of the ASD’s Libertas School of Memphis, said of her former teacher.
If Griffin had a mission for the first day of school — or her whole career — it was that. To empower students, teachers and school leaders. To let them know she is there for them. Because she is them.
The born and raised Memphian took a tour of the Frayser and North Memphis ASD schools Monday morning in a homecoming of sorts, introducing herself to those who didn’t know her, comforting a few homesick students, and,
with a watchful eye, making a mental checklist of needs.
She is the first leader of the 7-yearold state-run district, which operates 30 of its 32 schools in Memphis, to be from the city.
The reason Libertas was her first stop on a tour?
“This school is the closest to my house,” Griffin said.
Most superintendents visit schools on the first day, including Shelby County Schools Superintendent Dorsey Hopson, who dropped in on students in 11 schools across his district Monday.
But Griffin has only been superintendent for 44 days, since the state Department of Education poached her from her position as the No. 2 in SCS to run the state’s initiative.
Her visit marked the official launch of the revamped ASD under Griffin, a district that now pushes schools to work with each other, collaborating across district-run schools and charters, in an effort to accelerate growth.
The mission of the ASD is to intervene in schools that have struggled for, in some cases decades, and improve them before turning them back over to their local school district. Griffin is one of the few people in the country with a positive track record in that department.
Her job the last several years at SCS was to oversee the Innovation Zone schools, the district’s own improvement program for schools performing in the bottom 5 percent in the state.
The iZone has frequently outpaced the ASD schools in growth. Now, Griffin has switched teams.
The work is the same, Griffin said, with similar needs of students who are nearly all in poverty or considered economically disadvantaged.
In her first weeks in this role, she’s learned of a division between the schools that the ASD runs directly and those where the operations were outsourced to charter networks. She has to push staff past that, she said.
Griffin has also noticed, and it was apparent Monday as she toured through classrooms with several open seats, that late registration has plagued the district.
ASD does not have a centralized online registration system, something Griffin said she hopes to implement. Too often, she said, parents don’t understand the importance of having their child present on the first day. Even when they registered Monday morning, some students missed their first few hours of class.
At Whitney Elementary, Griffin ran into a former student who is now a parent of two Whitney children, one in the fourth grade and the other in first. The mother had brought them to register — and then planned to take them home, assuming the first day wouldn’t have much instruction.
Griffin pushed her to stay or bring her daughters back, and soon.
“I’m not playing with you,” Griffin said to the mother from the parking lot. “She’s coming back.”
In addition to the lost instruction time, Griffin said the district needs to know sooner than the first day how many teachers are needed for each school.
Charter networks by law have the power to hire their own staff, but Griffin said she wants to help by creating a pool of qualified, available teachers who could work at any ASD school.
This aligns with her plan to share resources and information across the 11 organizations that operate a total of 32 schools under the umbrella of the ASD.
Griffin is a naturally hands-on administrator, but the ASD’s model rests largely on charter schools to innovate and improve with little interference.
Charters will still have that independence, she said, but need to show results.
“If students are growing and mastering all of the content knowledge they need per grade, I’m fine,” she said. In fact, she’ll want to know what they’re doing so she can spread those practices to other schools.
Griffin said she knows she’s the state’s third chance at convincing parents the ASD is serious about the work of improving schools.
“I have to send a message,” Griffin said. “One thing I’ve heard since I’ve been in this role is that the community and the schools in Memphis felt disconnected from the leadership.”
At Cornerstone Preparatory School’s Denver Campus in Frayser, Griffin spoke to a school assembly of teachers, students and parents. She spoke of her decades in education and her roots in the neighborhood.
That hit home for parent Kristy Garrett, who was dropping off her son for his first day of kindergarten
“It will help a lot by us knowing that she’ll stay in the neighborhood,” Garrett said.
Angie Cramer, director of schools for the Capstone Education Group, which operates Cornerstone Prep, said parents could see Griffin’s “authenticity.”
“I believe her,” Cramer said. “She’ll be back.”
Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer.pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.