For this special edition of our Superintendent Interview Series, Daybreak’s Director of Partnerships and K-12 District Consultant and former Chief of Student Support at Boston Public Schools, Jillian Kelton, spoke with several Superintendents at the annual Superintendent Collaborative meeting held on June 26-28, 2024. These interviews cover topics and trends affecting these Superintendent’s school communities such as student mental health, chronic absenteeism, academic outcomes, and more. Our goal is to capture different voices and perspectives on the challenges facing our schools today.

DeKalb County Schools Superintendent Dr. Devon Horton lives by the motto “Equity in Action,” which is based on the idea that systemic change is built through policy, people, and practice. The Chicago-born Superintendent worked his way up through the ranks, from teacher to assistant principal, to principal then chief of schools. Today, he oversees 92,000 students and 14,500 staff across 131 schools in DeKalb County, Georgia.

Creating a robust multi-tiered system of support was a top priority for DeKalb County’s H5 Strategic Plan. The plan maps out the five years ahead for the district and ensuring that all students have access to differing tiers of support and intervention is essential in ensuring equitable academic outcomes.

Making Mental Health a Priority

When Dr. Horton was working on DeKalb’s H5 Strategic Plan, he shared that everyone – parents, teachers, students, the wider community – ranked mental health as their top concern. He considered adding more counselors, more social workers, but the answer, he soon realized, was building capacity in the team he already had. “We have to equip schools with research-based best practices … more bodies is not necessarily the answer,” he says. 

“Systems fail, not the students. We can not just pour more staff on top of a situation that doesn’t have a foundation. We have to continue to find a way to build our capacity. It’s not just the MTSS coordinators at each school, it’s [6,000] teachers as well,” he says. It’s this holistic, ground-up approach that makes the DeKalb School District a leader in equity and inclusion. 

For Dr. Horton, prioritizing mental health means looking at culture, climate, and training. The department upskills employees through Crisis Prevention Intervention (CPI) training, which teaches non-violence, de-escalation, behavioral support and risk assessment through the lens of empathy and respect. “It’s the way we do business. We must be humanizing in our approach to education, we must remain professional in how we engage – even when we don’t agree, or when we’re being attacked – and respectful of everyone and their cultures, their beliefs and positions.” 

Including People’s Voices

When H5 was in its planning stages, Dr. Horton visited 88 of the county’s 131 schools. He sat down with principals,  parents, and students to talk about the successes and challenges they were facing. “I’d say, ‘what can we, as a school district do, to better support you?’ Oh they were shocked that I asked that!,” he shared. 

The district’s approach to inclusivity considers all socio-economic backgrounds, educational levels and abilities. “How do we address [mental health]? We’ve made a commitment starting at the top. Let’s really look at people for who they are,” Dr. Horton says. He has created bilingual advisory groups for parents, plus student and staff advisory groups, which gives school communities direct access to decision makers. Building safe spaces for marginalized students is also a key part of H5. The district is converting select classrooms to “Safe Centers'' in some of the county's more challenging schools. Here, students can talk to social workers if that’s what they need, or just get something to eat and a warm sweater. 

Dr. Horton says being disrespectful and disobedient is often misinterpreted as bad behavior. Many times, he says, the student is crying out because they have a different need. That’s why Family and Community Engagement Advocates (FACE Advocates) work across the county as interpreters, of sorts, as relationship builders and mental health monitors, to make sure such needs get noticed. “Sometimes parents just can't get there, but all parents care about their kids. They send us the best they got; they’re not hiding their best kids at home,” Dr. Horton says. 

“What I learned early on, in the field of education, is that it's not as simple as just teaching students to read and write,” Dr. Horton says. It’s about enabling the right policies, people and practices so that students can win. 

Supporting Staff Wellbeing Through Equitable Practices

As Dr. Horton calls out, teachers need more support as well. “Students don’t get what they need because teachers have to get through the curriculum. We want to get results, students get frustrated, mental health [problems] expand.”

In an effort to prioritize both student and staff wellbeing, this May, Dr. Horton recently hired Dekalb County’s first chief equity officer – Dr. Triscilla Weaver, who joins the team with 25 years’ teaching experience. The move follows the introduction of the Infinite Campus platform, a resource hub dedicated to empowering students from diverse backgrounds, across DeKalb schools. In January, DeKalb County paid for 50 of its teachers to commence their master’s degrees. Meanwhile, new recruits can head into an on-campus residency (DeKalb Teacher Residency Ignite) that teaches restorative practice through hands-on experience. The addition of restorative practices puts healing and building positive relationships at the center, which creates a positive shift of culture and climate for the entire school community. Teachers taught for us, by us, as Dr. Horton says. 

It’s this holistic, ground-up approach that makes the DeKalb School District a leader in equity and inclusion. In creating an educational environment that welcomes communication, celebrates the growth of students and teachers, and listens as much as it speaks, DeKalb County Schools represent a paradigm shift in education. Or, as Dr. Horton likes to call it, “being disruptive for excellence.” 

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