Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

FALL 2019 

EDUCATION EDITION 

THE 

REVITALIZATION 

OF DOWNTOWN 

AUGUSTA 

• New superintendent 

to focus on leadership 

and accountability at 

area schools 

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• Columbia County is 

also working to bring 

life to its city centers 

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A PRODUCT OF 

PRESIDENT 

Tony Bernados 

EDITOR 

Damon cline 

DESIGNER 

Center for News & Design 

MAILING ADDRESS: 

725 Broad Street, Augusta, GA 30901 

TELEPHONE: 

706.724.0851 

EDITORIAL: 

Damon Cline 706.823.3352 

dcline@augustachronicle.com 

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this publication. 

CONTENTS 

4 

PICTURE THIS 

6 

OUR VIEW 

10 

OTHER VOICES: JIMMY ATKINS 

13 

COVER STORY: MAKING THE GRADE 

19 

FACES OF DOWNTOWN 

30 

URBAN CORE SCHOOLS MAP 

34 

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE 

40 

UP CLOSE: DR. KENNETH BRADSHAW 

44 

DIFFERENT BY CHOICE 

62 

44 

48 

DOWNTOWN IN THE SUBURBS 

54 

HOT IN HARLEM 

62 

GET ON OUR LAWN 

68 

OTHER VOICES: SUE PARR 

74 

STREETSCAPE IMPROVEMENTS 

80 

BRIEFING 

82 

GRADING DOWNTOWN 

83 

FINAL WORDS 

COVER IMAGE BY: MICHAEL HOLAHAN 

IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF 1736 

Take a closer look at historically significant properties 

in the urban core that are on Historic Augusta Inc.’s 

“Endangered Properties” list, and learn more about formerly 

endangered properties that have been saved from 

the wrecking ball and “demolition by neglect.” 

1736magazine.com | 3 

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PICTURE THIS 

4 | 1736magazine.com 

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Swimmers make their 

1.2-mile trek down the 

Savannah River during 

the Ironman 70.3 Augusta 

triathalon event Sept. 29. 

[MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE 

AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


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OUR VIEW 

RAISE 

W.S. Hornsby Elementary 

School students walk silently 

with their fingers pressed to 

their lips at their school in east 

Augusta. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/ 

THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

the BAR 


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LET’S MAKE EVERY RICHMOND COUNTY SCHOOL A “GOOD SCHOOL” 

By DAMON CLINE 

Augusta’s urban core 

is booming. 

Public and private investment 

is pouring into the 

central business district. The 

historic neighborhoods of Olde Town, Harrisburg and 

Laney-Walker/Bethlehem are slowly being revitalized 

block by block. Young professionals are moving into 

downtown apartments and homes to be close to jobs in 

the city’s medical and technology corridors. 

All the components for a thriving urban center are 

falling into place except one – the city’s school system. 

It needs a little help. 

The Richmond County School System has some of the 

metro area’s highest performing schools, as well as some 

of its worst. Viewed from the 30,000-foot level – when 

the entire district is taken as a whole – the performance 

metrics are sub par. 

This is not to say parents living in, or planning to 

move to, Richmond County can’t find high-quality 

education for their children, because they can. They just 

have to work a little harder to get it. 

By diligently navigating the district’s school-choice 

program, parents can send their children to the district’s 

best elementary, middle and high schools. Parents of 

particularly studious children can see that they enter 

the county’s nationally-recognized magnet school 

programs. 

In other words, a student can have a great public 

education experience in Augusta regardless of where 

they live. 

We’d just like to see the district improve to the point 

where parents – particularly those living in the urban 

core – won’t have to work so hard to find great schools 

for their children. We hope to one day see all of the 

Richmond County School System, but especially those 

in the inner city, elevated to the level befitting a strong 

and vibrant downtown. 

This magazine would not be true to its mission to push 

the city’s needle toward progress if it candy-coated 

obvious deficiencies in the city’s public-education 

system, deficiencies that can easily be verified by a look 

at the district’s performance metrics. 

Our criticism should not be taken as an indictment of 

any individual teacher, staff member, administrator or 

board member. The problems Richmond County faces 

are too large, too numerous and too lengthy to be any 

one person’s “fault.” 

The challenges many of the district’s schools face are 

indicative of many urban education systems: a large 

population of low-income students, disciplinary problems, 

aging facilities and a beleaguered faculty that must 

cope with a litany of classroom issues not involving curriculum 

or teaching. 

A wall shows the handprints of W.S. Hornsby Elementary School students, who were asked to help decorate the school to make it feel less institutional. 

[MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


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A growing city with a bright economic future deserves schools it can be 

proud of throughout the city – schools that can attract families seeking 

the best education, schools that can inspire children in disadvantaged or 

dysfunctional families to strive for a better life and make better choices. 

Considering one in every four county residents lives 

below the poverty line, the system should be saluted for 

doing as good as can be expected. 

But “good” is not good enough. Not anymore. 

Metro Augusta is growing, thanks to its large and stable 

health care, nuclear and diverse manufacturing industries, 

not to mention a rapidly expanding technology sector 

being fueled by the buildup of Fort Gordon’s cybersecurity 

and electronic intelligence-gathering missions. 

A growing city with a bright economic future deserves 

schools it can be proud of throughout the city – schools 

that can attract families seeking the best education, 

schools that can inspire children in disadvantaged or 

dysfunctional families to strive for a better life and make 

better choices. 

We know the city as a whole feels the same way. It 

is evident by the outpouring of support in recent years 

from community leaders, business owners, nonprofits 

and institutional stakeholders. Those groups have long 

been concerned with the state of education in Richmond 

County, but they have been jolted into action by the 

relocation of U.S. Army Cyber Command and a looming 

workforce shortage that will occur across all industries 

during the next decade as the tail end of the boomer generation 

enters retirement. 

Cyber Command’s highly educated civilian and 

active-duty workers, many of whom are accustomed 

to living in urban environments, are seeking the best 

educational experience for their children. Right now, the 

most consistent cluster of quality schools in the region 

is found in Columbia County, which is siphoning off 

potential residents and the economic benefits they bring 

to the community. 

We have no ill will toward Columbia County, but 

the success of its school system is based primarily on 

families of means who could – or would – be residing in 

Richmond County, the income source for the majority 

of its residents, if Richmond County had more “A”s and 

“B”s on its report card. 

As for the issue of retiring workers: Who will fill their 

shoes? If it’s not Richmond County’s young adults, it 

will be young adults from somewhere else. The county 

must “grow its own” skilled workforce or employers will 

be forced to recruit their talent from other parts of the 

metro area or outside the region. 

While newcomers are great for enhancing the area’s 

diversity and cultural fabric, is that more important 

than providing opportunities for this community’s own 

children? 

We don’t believe so. 

From an economic standpoint, Augusta’s next decade 

could be like no other. The community will see whether 

the influx of the Defense Department’s high-tech 

investment in Fort Gordon will be as “transformational” 

for the city as some community leaders have predicted. 

But even if it is not, there is absolutely no umbrage to 

take with the school system’s very deliberate focus on 

cyber-based educational programs and work-readiness 

initiatives. Both programs, each less than five years old, 

already are creating dividends by graduates moving 

directly into well-paying jobs, rather than incurring 

large amounts of debt for four-year degrees that may be 

of dubious value in the future workplace. 

The message for the school system is to keep innovating, 

keep motivating and continue holding every 

employee accountable. Richmond County has neither 

the time nor the room for clock-punchers. 

The message for the community is to continue – 

better yet, accelerate – the support it has shown the 

school system during the past few years. The partnerships 

that have been forged between the private sector 

and the district are making a difference in the lives 

of many students – the young people who, without a 

helping hand and some positive direction, could easily 

be future liabilities rather than workers, leaders and 

innovators. 

As Richmond County School Superintendent Dr. 

Kenneth Bradshaw says elsewhere in this edition: “All 

children are born and they all can learn at the same level. 

Even though there can be obstacles, our goal as educators 

is to provide them with those opportunities.” 

If you as an individual can help educators provide 

those opportunities and clear those obstacles, now is the 

time. 


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OTHER VOICES 

Jimmy Atkins, chairman of the Richmond County Board of Education, addresses a group from the lectern at the board’s Broad Street offices. [SPECIAL] 

THE 

‘board’s-eye’ view 

School board 

chairman proud 

of gains made in 

recent years 

By JIMMY ATKINS 

Chairman; Richmond County Board of Education 

In August 1959, my father, Jim Atkins, was transferred to 

Augusta to manage the grocery department at H.L. Green 

Company where he met my mother, Janie Kirkland, who 

worked there as a window dresser. 

H.L. Green was located at the corner of Broad and Ninth 

streets, which in November 2004, became the Central 

Office for the Richmond County Board of Education. 


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I was elected by the residents of District 8 on Nov. 

the use and accessibility of technology will be a central 

2, 2004, four days before my 35th birthday, and have 

component of the new plan. 

proudly served the citizens of Richmond County for 15 

We are looking for businesses and nonprofits to help 

years. 

make internet connectivity and/or computers available 

When my parents met in downtown Augusta, they 

to students who currently do not have access at home. 

could not know their only child would one day serve 

The “Digital Divide” among students remains one of the 

two terms as the President of the Board of Education 

biggest challenges for our community. 

Jimmy Atkins 

at that very location. 

The new plan will also put an emphasis on the importance 

of social-emotional learning, or SEL, as research 

In my years on the Board of Education, I have seen 

many changes and continued improvement in our 

has shown individuals with strong social-emotional 

school system, especially with choices offered to our students. skills benefit academically and professionally. Richmond County 

We have three 6-12 grade magnet schools (John S. Davidson School System Student Services and Curriculum are already 

Fine Arts, A. R. Johnson Health Science & Engineering and 

working closely with schools to implement SEL techniques in 

Richmond County Technical Career) with 100% graduation 

the classroom. 

rates this past year and one K-8 magnet school (C. T. Walker 

Having been born and raised in Richmond County, I’m 

Traditional) that recently was named a 2019 National Blue 

excited about the growth taking place with the revitalization 

Ribbon School of Excellence for Exemplary High Performance. of downtown. As a child, I still remember walking down Broad 

The Academy of Richmond County and Hephzibah High 

Street with my parents well before the malls were built. To see 

School, along with their feeder schools, offer the International that type of excitement back downtown is refreshing. 

Baccalaureate Program. We also offer programs such as the 

The Richmond County School System is proud to be a part of 

Cyber Academy of Excellence and the Marion E. Barnes Career downtown Augusta’s revitalization and we remain committed 

Center to prepare our students to leave high school and go 

to building a better future for all students through education, 

directly into the workforce. 

collaboration, and innovation. I encourage families to come to 

Along with the 100% graduation rates at our three magnet Augusta-Richmond County and see all that we have to offer! 

schools, the other high schools in the downtown Augusta 

area showed improvements this past year. The Academy of 

Richmond County was 90.1% (up 2.1%), T. W. Josey was 

74.8% (up 2.5%) and Lucy C. Laney was 84.3% (up 1.9%). Even 

though our goal is 100% for all schools, we still are proud every 

time we have an increase in graduation rates and test scores. 

Over the past five years, we definitely have had positive results 

due to the incredible work and dedication of our staff. 

In August of this year, the board was faced with the challenge 

of finding a new superintendent. I have been through 

four superintendent searches during my time on the board and 

we knew we had to have someone who knew the system and 

could continue the incredible work already being done. 

We found that person in Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw, who was 

unanimously chosen by the board and started work the first 

week of September. Dr. Bradshaw previously served as the 

deputy superintendent for Richmond County before leaving in 

June 2018 to accept a similar position in the urban school district 

of Hamilton County, Tennessee. While in Richmond County, he 

played a major role in many of our recent successes, such as the 

Reaching Potential through Manufacturing (RPM) program. 

Dr. Bradshaw believes in collaboration between everyone with 

a stake in Richmond County schools, starting with the students 

and their families and the community. He is working with everyone 

to get us to the next level. 

The school system and superintendent are currently working 

with students, families, community members, staff, and administrators 

to develop a new five-year strategic plan. The last time 

we developed a strategic plan, the system was just starting to see 

how the cyber boom was going to impact the Augusta area. Now, 


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COVER STORY 

Latosha Lattimer helps students at Lamar-Milledge Elementary School. 

Making 

the 

Grade 

Richmond County schools seek improvements 

through innovation, community partnerships 

Story by DAMON CLINE 

Photos by MICHAEL HOLAHAN 

It’s early afternoon at W.S. Hornsby 

Elementary. 

The second floor is silent, except 

for the pitter-patter of a dozen pre-K 

children being led single-file down a 

hallway. The tots are all blinks and yawns, 

having just awoken from nap time. 

The orderly procession is briefly interrupted 

as the group passes by the school 

principal, Dr. Willie Adkinson, who is walking 

in the opposite direction. A girl in braids 

and barrettes breaks formation to give the 

6-foot, 5½-inch principal a hug. 

She wraps her arms around his leg, her 

smiling face just above his kneecap. 


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Adkinson, who often refers to students 

as “his babies,” stoops down and returns 

the hug. The girl returns to the line and the 

children quietly resume their path down 

the corridor. 

Two years ago, before Adkinson’s 

arrival, the east Augusta school was a much 

different place. 

Chaos was rampant. Staff morale was 

low. Parental involvement at the school – 

situated in the heart of one of the city’s 

poorest neighborhoods – was practically 

nonexistent. The building, completed in 

2012 and named for prominent African- 

American businessman Walter S. Hornsby, 

looked more like a penitentiary than a place 

of learning. 

“The building was plain; damp – it just 

didn’t feel like a school,” said Adkinson, 

who oversees the K-3 campus at the K-8 

facility. “So the first thing I did was I 

wanted to rebrand our building to let parents 

know that this is a place that is going 

to be warm and inviting.” 

Adkinson commissioned local artist 

Baruti Tucker, owner of downtown 

Augusta’s Humanitree House Juice Joint 

and Gallery, to begin painting a series of 

colorful and inspirational murals on the 

beige walls of the 75,000-square-foot 

building. 

He turned one of the two faculty lounges 

into a reading room where teachers and 

volunteer tutors work to improve literacy 

at the school, where only 7% of students 

were reading at grade level based on the 

state’s Milestones English Language Arts 

assessment. The school is now at 50%. 

Adkinson began organizing volunteer- 

and business-funded field trips 

for students, many of whom have never 

ventured outside their low-income census 

tracts. 

“It hit home to me that my babies have 

never seen some of the things in Augusta 

other than the street they live on,” 

Adkinson said. “I had one, in kindergarten, 

who told me he went out of town. I said, 

W.S. Hornsby Elementary School Principal 

Dr. Willie Adkinson stands with a mural 

featuring famous and prominent African- 

Americans from the Augusta area. Adkinson 

commissioned murals throughout the school to 

give it a less institutional feel. 


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Volunteer Kory Futreal 

helps students at 

Lamar-Milledge 

Elementary School. 

A literacy grant is 

funding programs 

to help the school 

improve academic 

achievement. 

‘Oh, where did you go?’ He said, ‘I went to Heb-bu-bah.’ To 

him, going out of town was going to Hephzibah. That’s where 

I live. That’s not ‘out of town.’ ” 

At a school still marked by a 2015 shooting – when a thirdgrade 

boy accidentally shot a classmate with a pistol he brought 

to class – Adkinson created a mentorship program for boys, 

most of whom are from single-parent households. Community 

volunteers “teach them how to be young men,” Adkinson said, 

through life-skills and character-building lessons. 

The program dovetails with the school’s existing Positive 

Behavior Interventions and Supports initiative, known as 

PBIS, which focuses on reducing disciplinary cases, and its 

Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, program 

to help children develop academic habits for success in 

upper grades and even college. 

But most important, Adkinson has increased the school’s 

parental involvement, which formerly had been limited to 

encounters with disgruntled parents and caregivers. For that, 

Adkinson and his staff adopted a no-nonsense policy. 

“The expectation (for parents) is that you come right, or you 

don’t come at all. I said that from day one,” said Adkinson, 

a former college basketball star who was recently inducted 

into the Paine College Athletic Hall of Fame. “We had parents 

come in cussing and fussing. I said, ‘We can talk, but the first 

cuss word, you’re out the door. The second one, I’m calling 

the police.’ So I don’t have an issue anymore. It took about a 

month. When I first got here, a lot of people didn’t like me.” 

Last year, Adkinson’s first parent assembly drew only six 

people. By the end of the year, “it was standing room only,” he 

said. 


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Students walk past painted murals at W.S. Hornsby Elementary School, which is located in one of Augusta’s poorest neighborhoods. 

“I think this year we’re going to have 

to do two because we had so many people 

I think it might have been a fire hazard,” 

said Adkinson, a former assistant principal 

at south Augusta’s Glenn Hills High 

School. 

For Adkinson, the key to improving 

Hornsby’s poor academic performance 

started with culture before curriculum. 

The strategy is showing signs of 

success, as Hornsby earlier this year 

received Indiana-based Marzano 

Resources’ Level I certification for 

having a “safe, supportive, collaborative 

culture.” 

There are four more levels to go 

before Marzano deems Hornsby a “High 

Reliability School,” but Adkinson is taking 

baby steps toward the goal. 

“First, we had to come in and change the 

mindset of the grown folks and the culture 

of the building,” Adkinson said. “After 

those two big pieces were under control, 

now we had a school.” 

INNER-CITY CHALLENGES 

Richmond County schools have been a 

mixed bag for decades. The metro area’s 

most populous county has some of the 

region’s highest-performing schools 

and some of the worst. Augusta’s urban 

core has schools in both categories, from 

the award-winning Davidson Fine Arts 

Magnet School, which U.S. News and 

World Report ranks No. 3 in Georgia, to 

T.W. Josey High School, which the state 

Governor’s Office of Student Achievement 

gives an “F” grade. 

The Richmond County School System’s 

new superintendent, Dr. Kenneth 

Bradshaw, faces the same challenges of 

his predecessors: maintaining academic 

excellence at the best facilities – which are 

primarily magnet schools that attract the 

best students from throughout the district 

– while improving the quality of the 

lower-performing “zoned” schools that 

primarily serve specific neighborhoods 

mired in poverty. 

It’s a daunting task given the income 

level of Augusta’s urban core. 

Although inner-city neighborhoods are 

slowly being repopulated with middleclass 

and upper-income families seeking 

urban amenities, Census data shows the 

majority of households in the urban core 

are low-income, minority and headed by 

single parents. 

While benchmarking Richmond County 

schools to other metro area districts – 

primarily suburban Aiken and Columbia 

counties – is not an apples-to-apples 

comparison, Bradshaw acknowledges the 

comparison is unavoidable. 

“We can’t hide from comparing ourselves 

to the CSRA,” he said. “That’s going 

to be a natural comparison ... it’s reality.” 

Families seeking “good schools” in the 

metro area primarily move to Columbia 

County, whose school district has an overall 

“B” grade from the Governor’s Office, 

compared to Richmond County’s “D.” 


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ABOVE: Tiny 

bok choy 

plants begin 

to sprout 

at Lamar- 

Milledge 

Elementary 

school’s 

hydroponic 

lab. 

LEFT: Abigail 

Harris (from 

left), Makayla 

Williams, Alex 

Stewart and 

Demarion 

Jones, all 9, 

water the 

hydroponic 

plants. 

Fort Gordon officials have said 70% of families moving to the 

area for jobs at its growing cybersecurity and intelligence operations 

are residing in Columbia County, where SAT scores in 2018 

averaged 1107 compared to Richmond County’s 979. 

Columbia County, whose student body is roughly 20% smaller 

than Richmond County’s, had 1,210 students taking the college 

entrance exam, compared to Richmond County’s 807. 

The counties are a stark contrast: Columbia County’s median 

household income is just over $74,100. Richmond County has a 

median income of $39,400. 

‘WRAP-AROUND SERVICES’ 

Like east Augusta’s W.S. Hornsby, the Harrisburg neighborhood’s 

Lamar-Milledge Elementary school is a “Title I” school, a 

federal low-income designation that qualifies the school for additional 

funding to boost academic performance and provide services 

such as free lunch programs. 

Lamar-Milledge Principal Shetina Roulhac said 95% of its 

student body reside in the Harrisburg area, and 90% of them fall 

“within low socioeconomic status.” 

Many of the students living in poverty households get little to 

no support at home for reading, homework and other educational 

pursuits. 

“A prime example would be upper-grade students who will tell 

you their mama said ‘I don’t have to do that,’” Roulhac said. 

Those who do care about their child’s education are often hamstrung 

by limited time and resources, and are often struggling to 

meet basic household needs. 

COVER STORY continues on 22 


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LaToya Burns 

ANSWERING HER ‘CALLING’ 


LaToya Burns was a kindergartner 

at C.T. Walker Traditional 

Magnet School in 1993 when teacher 

Connie Mains asked the class what 

each of them wanted to be they grew up. 

"When she pointed at me," Burns said. "I said, 

'A teacher.' " 

Twenty-six years later, Burns is just that. 

The 31-year-old educator not only followed 

through on her answer, she now teaches at the 

very school where she made the pledge. 

Burns teaches first grade at the Wrightsboro 

Road school, a landmark in the historic Laney- 

Walker/Bethlehem neighborhood that was 

named in honor of Charles Thomas Walker, the 

founder of Tabernacle Baptist Church. 

Although the 85-year-old school has undergone 

extensive renovations – Burns recalls how 

classmates would delight at melting crayons on 

the building's old radiated heaters – it is largely 

the same C.T. Walker that Burns remembers 

from her youth. 

BURNS continues on 76 

LaToya Burns, a first grade 

teacher at C.T. Walker 

Traditional Magnet School, 

shows the nameplate she 

keeps on her desk. The job 

“does not feel like work at 

all,” she says. [DAMON CLINE/ 



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Thelma Nicole Mack 

LEARNING THE ROPES 


There are three types of teachers, 

Thelma Nicole Mack says. 

Those who choose the career as a 

child; those who are inspired by an educator 

parent or relative; and those who find their 

way into the profession through a circuitous route. 

Mack, an engineering and technology teacher 

at A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering 

Magnet High School, falls into the latter category. 

“I would say that this is my calling, but I had to 

find it,” Mack said. “I didn’t wake up saying, ‘I want 

to be a teacher,’ but I did find it along the way.” 

And now the 34-year-old’s serpentine journey 

into teaching has her helping shape young minds 

at her alma mater, the Richmond County School 

System’s premier STEM-based magnet school. 

The school isn’t the building the 2003 graduate 

remembers – the school was rebuilt in 2008 – but 

its mission and standards haven’t changed with 

the passage of time. 

MACK continues on 66 

Thelma Nicole Mack 

stands in front of A.R. 

Johnson Health Science 

and Engineering Magnet 

High School, which she 

graduated from in 2003 

and now serves on the 

faculty. [SPECIAL] 


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COVER STORY continued from 18 

“We have some parents who do care,” 

she said. “It’s not that they don’t care, but 

they’re trying to put food on the table by 

working three jobs.” 

Numerous national studies have shown 

a strong correlation between poverty and 

high school dropout rates. Some have 

shown students in families in the bottom 

20% of wage earners are five times more 

likely to drop out of high school than students 

from families in the top 20%. 

Federal wage statistics show high school 

dropouts earn roughly $260,000 less 

over their lifetimes than those who earn 

a diploma. Roughly half of Americans on 

public assistance are high school dropouts. 

A Northeastern University study found that 

each high school dropout costs taxpayers 

$292,000 in social services and criminal 

justice costs throughout the course of the 

dropout’s life. 

With Richmond County’s graduation 

rate dropping for the second consecutive 

TOP: A group of students work on their laptops at the Cyber Academy of Excellence. Students can 

obtain industry certifications and dual-enrollment status at Augusta Technical College through the 

program. 

ABOVE: Ashton George, left, and Elizabeth Conner work with an interactive cyber-threat map at the 

Cyber Academy of Excellence. Students from throughout the district can apply for the program. 



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Tim Spivey 

NEIGHBORHOOD ‘KID’ 

RESTORES PRIDE AT ARC 


In 2008, Tim Spivey was enjoying 

his sunset years in the Richmond 

County School System as principal 

of Westside High School. 

After seven years under his leadership, the 

suburban high school was performing well academically 

and athletically, and he was a popular 

figure among parents, teachers, staff and the 

900-member student body. 

Westside, he said, was where he planned to retire. 

School district officials, however, had other 

plans. Under the leadership of then-Superintendent 

Frank Roberson, they wanted him to be 

principal at the Academy of Richmond County 

— Augusta's oldest and most storied high school, 

located off Walton Way in the city's urban core. 

SPIVEY continues on 78 

Retired Richmond 

County Schools 

administrator Tim 

Spivey stands by 

the Harrisburg 

neighborhood sign on 

Broad Street, just blocks 

from where he grew 

up. [DAMON CLINE/THE 



1117_T_23_AM____.indd 23 

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year – 75.1% during the 2018-2019 school 

year compared to 77.7% for the previous 

year – the district relies heavily on 

contributions from the business community 

and nonprofit agencies to fill the 

educational – and often basic needs – voids 

many students face at home. 

These “wrap-around services,” as the 

district calls them, range from grant programs 

that fund educational programs and 

equipment to partnerships with nonprofit 

agencies that provide tutoring services as 

well as food, clothing and school supplies. 

Literacy tutoring is a primary focus 

at Lamar-Milledge, where just over 15% 

of students are reading at grade level. A 

three-year, $600,000 literacy grant from 

the the Community Foundation for the 

CSRA helps fund 12 partner organizations, 

such as Communities in Schools, the Boys 

& Girls Clubs of the CSRA, neighborhood 

churches and Augusta University, to place 

tutors in classrooms. The volunteers serve 

as an adjunct to students with deficiencies 

during “intervention blocks.” 

“So if I’m a teacher with 20 students, I 

can have a tutor that pulls five and another 

that pulls five so I can focus on just 10,” 

Roulhac said. “Some tutors are students 

at Augusta University. Some are retired 

teachers. Some are volunteers with different 

backgrounds.” 

Lamar-Milledge’s new hydroponics 

garden lab, which helps students learn 

about basic science theories by germinating 

and growing herbs and vegetables in 

12 hydroponic towers, was funded by a 

grant from Savannah River Remediation, 

the Savannah River Site’s liquid waste 

contractor. The project culminates with 

growing the ingredients to make salsa, 

which is served at a year-end “chips and 

salsa” party for students and parents. 

The most visible example of community 

assistance in the school district is the 

recently opened Success Center on the 

Butler High School campus, which offers 

families throughout the district a food and 

clothes pantry, mental health and tutoring 

services, school supplies and even washers 

and dryers for student laundry. 

The school system pays utilities at the 

building, which formerly housed Butler’s 

Career, Technical and Agricultural 

Education (or “CTAE”) programs, but 

nearly all services and furnishings were 

donated by community partners such as 

RPM-Textron student-employee Jermaine Brinson, above, and DezQuainqua Greene, below, assemble 

golf cart parts at the RPM campus on Mike Padgett Highway, which helps at-risk students stay in 

school while earning money building components and sub-assemblies. 

Golden Harvest Food Bank, United Way 

of the CSRA, Weinberger’s Furniture and 

TBonz Steakhouse. 

“Those wrap-around services are very 

important,” Bradshaw said. “Bottom line: 

All children are born and they all can learn 

at the same level. Even tough there can 

be obstacles, our goal as educators is to 

provide them with those opportunities. 

As we encounter their challenges, then we 

posture ourselves with alleviating some of 

those challenges.” 

WORK READINESS 

While Richmond County schools and 

its community partners help students 

overcome skills deficiencies and social 

barriers at lower grade levels, the system is 

plunging headlong into “work-readiness” 

programs to prepare high schools students 

for careers right after graduation, from 

manufacturing to cybersecurity. 

The system’s multiple pathways closely 

resemble the technical college model, 

where the focus is on job-specific skills 

needed by employers. 

“Ten years ago, the work-readiness 

component wasn’t there,” District 

Spokeswoman Melanie Lumpkin said. “It 

was more about get them a diploma and 

get them out of high school.” 

The Augusta Metro Chamber of 

Commerce’s Business Education Advisory 

Council, whose members represent many 

industries, was instrumental in bolstering 

the school system’s existing CTAE programs 

to produce work-ready graduates to 

fill open positions at employers throughout 

the region. 



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Richmond County Schools: By The Numbers 

Schools 

A.R. Johnson 

Academy of Richmond County 

Davidson Fine Arts 

Josey High School 

Laney High School 

Performance Learning Center 

4-year cohort graduation rates 

100 

ACT Composite 

30 

80 

25 

60 

20 

15 

40 

10 

20 

5 

0 

2015-2016 

2016-2017 

2017-2018 

2018-2019 

0 

N/A 

2015-2016 

2016-2017 

2017-2018 

SAT Reading 

600 

500 

400 

300 

SAT Math 

600 

500 

400 

200 

300 

100 

0 

2016-2017 

N/A 

2017-2018 

N/A 


200 

Note: In 2005, SAT testing changed from 

2 800-score tests (total out of 1600) to 3 

800-score tests (total out of 2400). SAT 

testing changed back to 1600 total in the 

2016-2017 school year. This report includes 

some students who took the old SAT as 

well as those who took the new SAT. Their 

scores have been concorded to the new 

SAT scale score. The total number of 

students in Richmond County who had 

their scores concorded to the new SAT 

scale was minimal. 

100 

0 

2016-2017 

N/A 

2017-2018 

N/A 


SAT Composite, 


Georgia milestones 

Percent of students scoring proficient and above, 2018-2019 

Not applicable 

A. R. Johnson 

Academy of 

Richmond County 

Davidson 

Fine Arts 

Josey 

High School 

Laney 

High School 

343 

1,121 

969 

1,181 

917 

8th 

3rd grade 

5th grade grade 

9th grade 

US 

School 

ELA Math ELA Math ELA Algebra I Literature History Economics 

Lamar-Milledge Elem. 12.30% 23.00% 22.90% 5.30% 

W.S. Hornsby K-3 7.50% 16.10% 

Murphey M.S. 8.10% 0% 

W.S. Hornsby 4-8 10.40% 8.70% 17.00% 3.40% 

Academy of 

Richmond County 1.30% 43.10% 27.80% 26.90% 

Lucy C. Laney H.S. 5.20% 42.00% 12.30% 22.50% 

T.W. Josey H.S. 3.80% 18.80% 2.40% 9.20% 

AR Johnson Magnet School 72.40% 30.60% 92.50% 60.50% 88.10% 

Davidson Magnet School 95.40% 73.80% 99.10% 83.80% 63.50% 

C.T. Walker 

Traditional Magnet School 78.10% 80.20% 77.20% 71.30% 68.00% 38.00% 

Source: Richmond County School System 

N/A: School had too few test-takers or did not exist at the time 

GATEHOUSE MEDIA 

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Larry Jones 

RAGS TO WRENCHES 


When Larry Jones volunteers to 

speak to students in Augusta’s 

urban core schools, he’s often 

met with apathetic faces. 

After all, how many cell-phone toting teenagers 

want career advice from a 68-year-old 

plumber? 

But they begin to perk up when they realize the 

old man in the Universal Plumbing golf shirt is the 

proverbial “millionaire next door.” 

They see his new car. They hear about his 

nice home. He tells them about the weeks-long, 

annual vacations he takes to Africa. 

Only after learning of the fruits of Jones’ labor 

do students give him their undivided attention. 

“They have no concept of plumbing or the 

rewards of plumbing,” said Jones, a 1969 graduate 

of T.W. Josey High School. “When you tell 

JONES continues on 79 

Larry Jones, founder 

and owner of Universal 

Plumbing, stands in the 

lobby of his company’s 

office on Milledgeville 

Road. [DAMON CLINE/THE 



1117_T_27_AM____.indd 27 

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An example is the Students2Work 

program, in which chamber members offer 

students a two-month paid internship at 

their places of business to expose students 

to the workplace environment and 

strengthen the “soft skills” students will 

need for workplace success. 

“We’ve heard from the business community,” 

Bradshaw said. “And their goal 

is to retain our students in the workforce 

and to have an educated workforce that 

can actually transition from high school to 

work.” 

Richmond County School System’s 

CTAE program incorporates 16 program 

areas and 34 career pathways in 11 high 

schools throughout the district. 

The district’s most visible program is 

arguably the four-year-old RPM campus, 

located in a former county-owned warehouse 

at 2950 Mike Padgett Highway. 

RPM, short for “Reaching Potential 

through Manufacturing,” is a school-towork 

partnership with Augusta-based 

Textron Specialized Vehicles that gives 

at-risk students part-time jobs building 

components and sub-assemblies 

for E-Z-GO golf cars and other Textron 

vehicles as they work toward graduation. 

Students earn $8 an hour on the manufacturing 

floor – which is housed in the 

same building as the classrooms – while 

learning marketable skills and a work 

ethic. The main goal, of course, is for the 

student to earn their diploma. 

RPM principal Dr. Jason Moore said the 

program has grown to 100 students and 

is annually graduating about 60 students, 

nearly all of whom were potential 

dropouts. 

“It has increased the (county’s) graduation 

rate 1.8% alone,” Moore said. “The 

message we send to students is ‘You come 

in behind, but you leave ahead.’” 

Many graduates end up working full 

time for Textron’s assembly plant on 

Marvin Griffin Road and its newer facility 

at 3646 Mike Padgett Highway, earning 

$40,000 a year with benefits building the 

company’s growing line of utility and offroad 

vehicles. 

Moore said one RPM graduate who went 

to work for Textron, a teenage dad, was 

recently approved for a mortgage. 

Other RPM graduates have enrolled in 

Augusta Technical College to further their 

skills. Some have gone to work for other 

RPM-Textron student-employees assemble golf cart components at the RPM campus on Mike Padgett 

Highway, which lets potential dropouts earn their diploma while earning $8 an hour for their work. 

area manufacturers, such as Kellogg and 

John Deere. From Moore’s perspective, 

any student who graduates is a success 

story, as dropouts account for roughly 

80% of the incarcerated population. 

“Our kids just get out and work,” Moore 

said. “Even though they may not have 

gotten that job at that specific place that 

they want to be, they’re out there working 

and contributing.” 

FUTURE JOBS, FUTURE SKILLS 

Georgetown University’s recent study, 

“Recovery: Job Growth and Education 

Requirements Through 2020,” shows 

nearly two-thirds of all jobs do not require 

a bachelor’s degree. 

Many of these jobs are lucrative to those 

with the right skills, such as automobile 

repair technicians, who can earn up to sixfigure 

salaries working on complex hybrid 

vehicles, computer-laden luxury cars and 

high-tech driverless vehicles. 

Turning students on to “blue collar” 

jobs is challenging because for years 

parents and students have been told the 

only path to a meaningful career is through 

four-year universities, said Al Young, the 

district’s CTAE coordinator. 

The result has been a worker shortage 

in many skilled-trade industries. U.S. 

Department of Labor figures show an 

excess of 1.1 million available jobs in building 

trades and craft occupations such as 

HVAC, plumbing and electrical – none of 

which require four-year degrees. 

“None of these jobs are menial jobs – 

they’re all well-paying jobs,” Young 

said. “You can make a nice life and, if you 

still want to go to college, you have the 

opportunity.” 

The newly constructed Marion Barnes 

Skilled Trade Center at T.W. Josey High 

school offers HVAC, electrical, masonry, 

welding, plumbing and cosmetology for all 

district students seeking marketable skills. 

Dr. Jamie McCord, the principal at 

Marion Barnes, said students at the center 

can earn forklift operator certificates and 

other Occupational Safety and Health 

Administration credentials that many area 

employers seek. 

“If you call up these businesses, the jobs 

are readily available,” McCord said. 

Young said the school system is trying to 

boost CTAE participation by elevating it to 

the level that other, more highly-regarded 

high school activities enjoy. 

“We’re trying to make it ‘cool’ to train 

toward a workforce-specific skill, just 

like athletics is ‘cool’ and ROTC is ‘cool,’” 

Young said. 

One of the “coolest” programs in the 

district is cybersecurity, which grew 

out of the industry’s increased presence 

in Augusta because of the relocation of 

Army Cyber Command to Fort Gordon, 

and the numerous cyber-related companies 

located in Augusta, such as Unisys, 

Raytheon and Parsons. 

Richmond County is the only 

system in state offering a K-12 computer 

science curriculum. It also has a 

stand-alone cybersecurity program, the 

Cyber Academy of Excellence, which 



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1117_T_29_AM____.indd 29 

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18 

1. Monte Sano 

Elementary School 

2164 Richmond Ave. 

• Public 

• Grades PreK-5 

2. Wilkinson 

Gardens 


1925 Kratha Drive 

• Public 


3. The Academy of 


910 Russell St. 

• Public 

• Grades 9-12 

Urban core 

schools 

7. Performance 

Learning Center 

1740 Walton Way 

• Public 


8. T.W. Josey 

Comprehensive 

High School 

1701 15th St. 

• Public 


9. Intermediate 

Literacy and 

Math Center 

800 15th Ave. 

• Public 


Augusta 

Country Club 

Richmond Ave. 

Kissingbower Rd. 

1 

Russ 

Heard Ave. 

Wr 

Kratha Dr 

4. Murphey 

Middle School 

1921 Eagles Way 

• Public 


10. C.T. Walker 

Traditional 

Magnet School 

1301 Wrightsboro Rd 

• Public 

• Grades K-8 

2 

5. Lamar-Milledge 


510 Eve St. 

• Public 


11. Lucy C. Laney 

Comprehensive 

High School 

1339 Laney-Walker 

Blvd. 

• Public 


13. Curtis 

Baptist School 

1326 Broad St. 

• Private 


6. Sand Hills Center 

1740 Walton Way 

• Public 


12. A.R. Johnson 

Science and 

Engineering 

Magnet School 

1324 Laney-Walker Blvd. 

• Public 


14. Davidson 

Fine Arts 

Magnet School 

615 12th St. 

• Public 


Source: maps4news.com/©HERE, Richmond County Board of Education, staff research 

1117_T_30_AM____.indd 30 

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28 

Broad St. 

Georgia Ave. 

Buena Vista Ave. 

520 

E Martintown Rd. 

5 

Savannah River 

River 

Golf Club 

78 

Eve St. 

13 

Reynolds St. 

Walton Way 

Broad St. 

Telfair St. 

d Ave. 

Heard Ave. 

Russell St. 

3 

Wrightsboro Rd. 

Druid Park Ave. 

7 

6 

Augusta 

University-Health 

Science 

R.A. Dent Blvd 

11 

12 

13th St. 

14 

12th St. 

Walton Way 

AUGUSTA 

15 

East Boundary 

Greene St. 

4th St. 

78 

17 

SOUTH CAROLINA 

GEORGIA 

Sand Bar Ferry Rd. 

10 

16 

Wrightsboro Rd. 

Kratha Dr. 

2 

Eagles Way 

4 

Olive Rd. 

8 

15thSt. 

15th Ave. 

9 

Mill St. 

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. 

Old Savannah Rd. 

78 

Laney Walker Blvd. 

½ mile 

18 

Kentucky Ave. 

Bobby Jones Expressway 

520 

56 

15. Immaculate 

Conception 

Catholic School 

811 Telfair St. 

• Private 


17. Heritage 

Academy 

333 Greene St. 

• Private 


16. Cyber 

Academy of 

Excellence 

1001 4th St. 

• Public 


18. W.S. Hornsby 

Elementary- 

Middle 

310-320 Kentucky 

Ave. 

• Public 


GATEHOUSE MEDIA 

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was recently moved from south Augusta’s Richmond County 

Technical Career Magnet School to the downtown Craig- 

Houghton Building on Fourth Street to be closer to the Georgia 

Cyber Center, where 16 students are earning college credits 

through a dual enrollment in Augusta Technical College’s cyber 

program. 

Although the academy is not a magnet school, it draws students 

district-wide through an application process, said Marquez Hall, 

the academy’s program specialist. 

“There are no perceived barriers to actually becoming a cybersecurity 

professional through our program,” Hall said. “We just 

need kids who are interested. We don’t want kids to think there is 

a certain type of student we’re looking for, because a cybersecurity 

professional can be anyone.” 

Richmond County’s “CyberPatriot” teams increased from eight 

in 2016 to more than 80 last year. The Air Force Association’s 

CyberPatriot Program Office, which oversees the national high 

school initiative to promote careers in cybersecurity, earlier this 

year named Richmond County’s program a CyberPatriot Center of 

ExcellenceCyber, making the local program the 15th in the nation 

– and the only one in Georgia and South Carolina – to receive the 

honor. 

A fringe benefit of the academy is that it will pay for students to 

take CompTIA A+ certification tests – a nearly $400 set of exams. 

The certification is a virtual foot-in-the-door in the computer 

network-security industry. 

“If they pass that (CompTIA A+ text), they can go, let’s say to 

Unisys, and be ready to work,” Hall said. “I’ve heard of kids fresh 

out of high school making up to $40,000 a year.” 

The other reason the cyber academy was moved downtown is 

that it had outgrown its space at the county’s Technical Career 

Magnet School. The program now has 140 students rotating in on 

morning and afternoon schedules. 

“Next semester we’ll have 50 more kids enrolling,” Hall said. 

to do something of this sort,” Lewis said. 

Lewis said he knows of several students who have maintained 

relationships with their employers, including one student participant 

who continues to work part time at Starbucks’ soluble beverage and 

roasting plant in south Augusta. 

Because the program is open to students who are at least 16 with 

a valid driver’s license, a handful of next year’s participants will be 

those who participated in the program’s inaugural year. The experience 

will be valuable bullet points on job and college applications. 

“There’s a cohort of kids who will have three, eight-week internships 

when they go to college,” Lewis said. “Most college graduates 

don’t have that.” 

Bradshaw said such community partnerships will play a key role in 

improving the school system going forward, particularly in the urban 

core, where revitalization efforts in inner-city neighborhoods are 

attracting young professionals seeking quality schools. 

Although there is a five-year gap in Bradshaw’s institutional 

knowledge – he retired from the district in 2014 before returning this 

year from Chattanooga, Tenn., where he was chief operations officer 

of the Hamilton County School District – he said he is well aware the 

urban core is in the throes of a transformation being fueled by jobs at 

the Georgia Cyber Center, new investment from tech companies and 

millennials seeking an urban lifestyle. 

As superintendent, his job is to promote excellence at all of the 

system’s four-dozen schools in the county. But he acknowledges the 

need to prepare schools in the urban core for an influx of residents. 

“There’s been a major, what I call just an energy, downtown,” 

Bradshaw said. “So we are expecting a lot of growth in that area, 

so we are posturing to prepare for that growth.” 

COMMUNITY BUY-IN CRITICAL 

Richmond County’s 75.1% graduation rate is below the state average 

of 81% and the national average of 85%. But a higher percentage 

of students in the county earn diplomas than they did a decade ago, 

when the school system’s graduation rate was 68.4%. 

School officials say the ongoing campaign to raise the bar requires 

community involvement. 

“I think the reason we have we’ve gained momentum ... with many 

of the challenges is working closely with our business partners,” 

Bradshaw said. “It really takes the community to make it happen. The 

rallying of the community right now is really setting the model for 

success.” 

A prime example of increased support is the Augusta Metro 

Chamber’s Students2Work program, the brainchild of Fran 

Forehand, a Georgia Power executive and member of the chamber’s 

Business Education Advisory Council member. Forehand left 

Augusta earlier this year to take a job with the utility’s parent company 

in Louisiana. 

DeMargo Lewis, the system’s community engagement specialist, 

said business and industry throughout the county welcomed the 

students with open arms for eight-week, $8-an-hour internships. 

“The community had a rumbling for a couple of years about trying 


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Building 

for the Future 

SALES TAX FUNDS NEW SCHOOLS, HIGH-TECH ADDITIONS IN URBAN CORE 

Jeff Baker of GMK Associates 

presented the conceptual 

master plan for the Academy 

of Richmond County high 

school at the school’s 

auditorium in May. 

[MIKE ADAMS/SPECIAL] 


In 1997, Richmond County schools did not look like places that could 

educate a 21st-century workforce – especially the schools in the city’s urban 

core. 

It’s a fact Jeff Baker of construction firm GMK Associates doesn’t 

candy-coat. 

“A.R. Johnson was falling down. Laney was falling down,” said Baker, head 

of company’s construction services, architecture and engineering divisions. 

“Sixty percent of all facilities needed serious renovation assistance.” 


1117_T_34_AM____.indd 34 

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The changes since the passage of the first of the 

county’s five education sales tax initiatives – known as 

ESPLOST – have been remarkable. 

Superintendent Kenneth Bradshaw, who served as a 

deputy superintendent from 2014 to 2018, said all school 

facilities have been in “awesome condition” as long as 

he’s been with the district. 

“We’re just lucky to have that project (ESPLOST) 

with Richmond County Schools and it’s been one of our 

saving graces in terms of maintaining our building infrastructure,” 

Bradshaw said. 

Baker said the $844 million collected and spent to date 

has “touched all the schools” in the district, but has had 

a profound impact on the city’s older inner-city schools, 

where history and heritage run deep. 

“You learn very quickly what’s important to people 

when you start knocking walls down,” said Baker, who 

has managed the school district’s construction projects 

for the past 23 years. 

Sensitivity was particularly crucial at the city’s oldest 

high school, the Academy of Richmond County, which 

also has the distinction of being the nation’s fifth oldest. 

In addition to major renovation work to the historic 

high school’s three-story main building, ARC has 

received a new baseball/softball complex, improvements 

to its international baccalaureate program wing, 

and – by early 2021 – will have a 55,000-square-foot, 

34-classroom addition for STEM-based curriculum. 

“Even though it will have this nice facade that ties 

in with the historic nature of the school, all those labs 

and classrooms will be high-tech and new,” Baker said. 

“With this addition, we don’t have to worry about 

creating 1,500-square-foot spaces in a building that has 

600-square-foot spaces.” 

Demolition debris is cleared from the historic Academy of Richmond County high school on Walton Way. Every school in the Richmond County 

School System underwent some form of improvement under a voter-approved education sales tax. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


1117_T_34_AM____.indd 35 

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Just east of ARC, at the former Tubman 

Middle School on Walton Way, a $10 million 

renovation of the historic structure 

enabled the school system to repurpose the 

campus as an alternative learning center 

for special-needs students as well as those 

doing accelerated online learning at the 

system’s Performance Learning Center. 

In the nearby Harrisburg neighborhood, 

the ESPLOST enabled the school system in 

2012 to open Lamar-Milledge Elementary 

School on Eve Street to replace the closed 

Lamar Elementary and the demolished 

Milledge Elementary buildings. 

On the south side of the city’s medical district, 

a new Murphey Middle School was built 

next to T.W. Josey High School, a campus 

on 15th Street that now also has the Marion 

Barnes Career Center for students pursuing 

technical and skilled-trades education. 

School improvements in the historic 

Laney-Walker/Bethlehem neighborhood 

have been transformational for the historic 

district, which has been the focus of a 

decade-long city revitalization plan. 

More than 80 tracts of blighted residential 

property between Lucy C. Laney 

High School and nearby C.T. Walker 

More than 60 percent of the old Lucy C. Laney High School was demolished and rebuilt, including this 

modern student lounge area, with education sales tax funding. [SPECIAL] 

Elementary School were acquired to construct 

a nearly 9,000-seat sports stadium. 

“It really ties the greenspace together 

between Laney and C.T. Walker,” Baker 

said. “It really was a great, positive impact 

to the whole area down there.” 

More than 60 percent of Laney was 

demolished and replaced with modern 

classrooms capable of handling the increasingly 

technology-infused curriculum. The 

historic C.T. Walker school underwent a 

total historic restoration and renovation. 

1117_T_34_AM____.indd 36 

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“It was a very depressed, declining 

area,” Richmond County Schools 

Communications Coordinator Melanie 

Lumpkin said. “It’s almost like you’re on 

a college campus now.” 

Across Laney-Walker Boulevard, the 

entire A.R. Johnson Health Science and 

Engineering Magnet School was rebuilt 

from the ground up, including a new 

gymnasium. Construction was done 

in two phases so school would not be 

disrupted. 

“It’s a very important school to the 

system,” Baker said. “If you’ve been 

there, it’s a beautiful health science and 

engineering magnet school.” 

Closer to downtown Augusta, at the 

John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet 

School, one of the state’s highestperforming 

high schools, a multi-phase 

renovation plan includes the construction 

of a six-classroom addition. 

The old Craig-Houghton Elementary 

School building on Fourth Street near 

the historic Olde Town neighborhood 

now houses the school district’s Cyber 

Academy of Excellence. The program 

was moved this year from the Richmond 

County Technical Career Magnet 

School in south Augusta to be closer 

to downtown’s Georgia Cyber Center 

complex, where several of the district’s 

students attend cybersecurity classes 

through a dual-enrollment program 

offered by Augusta Technical College. 

In east Augusta, a new Hornsby 

Elementary School was constructed off 

Sand Bar Ferry Road in 2007 to replace 

the older school on Laney-Walker 

Boulevard. 

Savings from ESPLOST construction 

and renovation projects that came in 

under budget during the past two decades 

have been funneled into additional projects, 

including the construction of the 

ESPLOST IN THE URBAN CORE 

In 1997 Georgia enabled communities to fund school infrastructure expenses through a 1-cent educational specialpurpose 

local-option sales tax, or ESPLOST. Richmond County voters have since approved five ESPLOST referendums. 

Below is a list of improvements made to the district’s inner-city schools during each referendum: 

PHASE I (1997-2002) 

School Project Investment 

Academy of Richmond County Age-related interior and exterior renovations $6.3 million 

T.W. Josey High General renovations; 10 new classrooms $4 million 

Murphey Middle General renovations; 16 new classrooms; new gym $4.5 million 

Tubman Middle Vocational wing renovations; two-story addition with five new classrooms $4.5 million 

C.T. Walker Magnet New gym $436,000 

Craig-Houghton Elementary New school (consolidation of Peter H. Craig $7.7 million 

and Houghton elementary schools) 

Jenkins-White Elementary New school (consolidation of Levi White $7.9 million 

and Clara Jenkins elementary schools) 

John Milledge Elementary Roof replacement $180,000 

Joseph Lamar Elementary General renovations; six new classrooms; new gym $1.8 million 

East Augusta Middle Technology upgrades; new gym $549,000 

Monte Sano Elementary Roof replacement $200,000 

Wilkinson Gardens Elementary Substantial renovations and addition $6.8 million 

Central Administration Office Relocation to 864 Broad St. $15.3 million (surplus savings funds) 

PHASE II (2002-2007) 

Academy of Richmond County New roof; gym renovation $900,000 

A.R. Johnson Health Science New school $17.2 million 

and Engineering Magnet 

Lucy C. Laney High New athletic complex $13.5 million 

T.W. Josey High New gym and HVAC; general site work $4.3 million 

C.T. Walker Magnet Substantial renovations; 18 new classrooms $10 million 

W.S. Hornsby K-8 New school (replacing East Augusta Middle); $17 million 

substantial renovations to former East Augusta building 

Monte Sano Elementary General renovations; new classrooms, kitchen, cafeteria and gym $6.3 million 


1117_T_34_AM____.indd 38 

10/16/2019 1:47:54 PM

K-8 Freedom Park School at Fort Gordon 

and the renovation of the Wilkinson Gardens 

Elementary School in south Augusta. 

Considering the poor shape the county’s 

schools were in nearly 25 years ago – the 

district once had as many as 280 “portable” 

classroom buildings – Baker views the fivephase 

ESPLOST project as a success. 

“We’re already talking about what 

phase six will look like,” Baker said. “In 

1997, we had a lot of schools that were 

40 years old. Now they’re 63 years old. 

We’ve got to change our focus because 

you can’t put any more money into a 

63-year-old school.” 

More than 80 

tracts of blighted 

residential 

property between 

Lucy C. Laney 

High School and 

nearby C.T. Walker 


were acquired to 

construct a nearly 

9,000-seat sports 

stadium, partly 

using education 

sales tax dollars 

collected since 1997. 

[SPECIAL] 

PHASE III (2007-2012) 

Academy of Richmond County New track; International Baccalaureate classroom additions; $7.2 million 

additional gym renovations 

A.R. Johnson New gym; major auditorium renovations $6.5 million 

Lucy C. Laney High New gym $5.5 million 

T.W. Josey High New track; new stadium fieldhouse $2 million 

Tubman Educational Center Substantial renovations $10.2 million 

C.T. Walker Magnet Roofing and HVAC upgrades $600,000 

Lamar-Milledge Elementary New school (merger of John Milledge and $13 million 

Joseph Lamar elementary schools) 

W.S. Hornsby K-8 Substantial renovations $6 million 

PHASE IV (2012-2017) 

Academy of Richmond County Substantial renovations to interior rooms and outdoor fields $8 million 

A.R. Johnson Addition of 6th grade classroom wing and engineering lab $3 million 

John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet Miscellaneous interior general renovations; $2 million 

parking and drainage improvements 

Lucy C. Laney High Classroom replacements; substantial kitchen, cafeteria and $23 million 

gym renovations; entrance-exit upgrades 

T.W. Josey High General renovations to media and athletic centers $5.5 million 

roof replacement; HVAC and wiring upgrades 

Murphey Middle Relocated next to T.W. Josey High $16 million 

C.T. Walker Magnet Miscellaneous renovations to media center $1 million 

general site improvements 

Wilkinson Gardens Elementary Roof upgrades $850,000 

PHASE V (2017-2022) 

Academy of Richmond County General renovations to auditorium $18 million 

substantial 34-classroom addition; new roof 

A.R. Johnson Six-classroom addition $2.4 million 

additional auditorium parking 

John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet Six-classroom addition; specialty classroom addition; $10.7 million 

general auditorium renovations; roof upgrade 

Lucy C. Laney High General renovations; new HVAC; addition of second gym $900,000 

T.W. Josey High New Marion Barnes Skilled Trades Center; $8.3 million 

baseball and football field improvements 

C.T. Walker Magnet General renovations; new HVAC $2.8 million 

Murphey Middle Gym renovations; field improvements $3.7 million (estimated) 

Source: Richmond County School System; GMK Associates 


1117_T_34_AM____.indd 39 

10/25/2019 12:16:09 PM

UP CLOSE 

READY FOR SCHOOL 

Bradshaw formulates strategy as he reacquaints himself with Augusta 


Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw, 


School System’s recently 

appointed superintendent, 

is well aware of the challenges 

facing the county’s educational system. 

The career educator that has worked as a teacher, 

principal and district-level administrator served as 

the county’s deputy superintendent in 2014. He was 

even a finalist for the superintendent job eventually 

offered to Dr. Angela Pringle, who left earlier 

this year to head North Carolina’s Winston-Salem 

Forsyth County Schools district. 

Bradshaw, who retired shortly before Pringle’s 

arrival, later took a job with the Hamilton County 

School District in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he 

served as chief operations officer. He’s also worked 

in the DeKalb County School District. 

So he brings something of an outsiderinsider-outsider 

perspective to Georgia’s 

second-largest school system outside of metro 

Atlanta (the Savannah-Chatham County Public 

School System exceeds Richmond County’s 33,000 

students by about 5,000). 

With just three months under his belt, Bradshaw 

acknowledges he needs to be “brought up to speed” 

on changes that have occurred at the county’s third 

largest employer. He said he is meeting with consultants 

this fall to strategize his path forward. 

But he’s already identified goals to help improve 

the metro area’s largest – and most challenged – 

public education system. 

One of those objectives is a renewed focus on 

leadership and accountability. 

“My definition is that leadership does matter; 

having the right leadership at the right location at 

the right time is critical,” Bradshaw said, adding 

that leadership training will be a key component of 

“professional development” at the 4,400-employee 

school system. 

“Tactical and technical expertise – that’s the term 

that I use,” he said. “The tactical piece is knowing 

Richmond County School Superintendent Dr. Kenneth 

Bradshaw, left, smiles as he is introduced by Board 

President Jimmy Atkins Jr. during a September board 

meeting. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

the effectiveness of the operation, knowing how 

to work with parents and teachers and the communities 

and just the day-to-day operations. The 

technical piece is just knowing how to improve 

student achievement, knowing how kids learn, to 

teach best practices, the pedagogy – everything that 

impacts the classroom and helps support teaching 

and learning.” 

Bradshaw points to the Belair and Richmond Hill 

K-8 schools as models for what future Richmond 

County schools will look like. 

Belair, which opened last year, is a three-wing, 

115,850-square-foot building featuring two computer 

labs, a collaborative learning area, an art 

room with Apple computers for design projects 

and three STEM labs tailored to each grade-level 

tier. Richmond Hill, which opened this year, is of 

similar design and enabled the district to consolidate 


1117_T_40_AM____.indd 40 

10/25/2019 12:11:49 PM

New Richmond County School Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw said he intends to strengthen the community partnerships 

that have improved some area schools in recent years. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

students from the older Rollins and Southside elementary 

schools, along with a cluster of Glenn Hills Middle 

School students. 

“We took three schools and built one large K-8 that is 

state-of-the-art,” Bradshaw said. 

The new tech-infused schools are a beneficiary of the 

ESPLOST, or education special purpose local option 

sales tax, that Richmond County voters have approved 

every five years since 1997. Bradshaw is hopeful the 

funding stream continues so other schools can be modernized 

and outfitted with the latest technologies. 

“It’s been one of our saving graces in terms of maintaining 

our building infrastructure,” Bradshaw said. 

Though new buildings and high-tech tools improve 

the learning environment, they will not improve the 

schools’ performance metrics in and of themselves. 

Which is why Bradshaw intends to continue expanding 

partnerships with community organizations to assist 

the system’s lower-performing schools that generally 

have a high percentage of students from low-income 

households. 

“Wrap-around” services, as the district calls them, 

include partnerships with area organizations and nonprofits 

to provide tutoring and basic-needs services at 

schools with student populations more likely to face 

obstacles to academic achievement. Such schools tend 

to be neighborhood-zoned schools, rather than the 

“choice” schools where students apply for enrollment, 

such as the John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School 

and A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering 

Magnet School. 

Augusta’s urban core is unique in that it has nationally 

ranked schools, such as Davidson, in addition to schools 

with low academic achievement and high dropout rates, 

such as Lucy C. Laney and T.W. Josey high schools. 

“The urban core has variance in demographics ... 

(Some of) our kids come with unique needs and challenges,” 

Bradshaw said. “So our goal is just to provide 


1117_T_40_AM____.indd 41 

10/25/2019 12:11:54 PM

Richmond County School Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw points to 

new schools such as Belair K-8, shown here, as the “future” of schools in the 

district. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

The Reaching Potential Through Manufacturing, or RPM, partnership 

campus at Textron Specialized Vehicles was one of several initiatives created 

by Richmond County School Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw during 

his previous years with the school system. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

those services, whether they’re counseling services, 

mental heath services or just food.” 

Bradshaw believes the system can take some of the 

“best practices” at high-performing schools and incorporate 

them at schools that are lagging, including those 

in low-income neighborhoods where poverty, weak 

parental involvement and crime can disrupt academic 

achievement. 

“We educate the child. The expectations don’t change 

regardless of the location,” Bradshaw said. “The key is 

having those high expectations.” 

Augusta’s urban core is increasingly becoming a 

hotbed for tech-related jobs, with the Georgia Cyber 

Center serving as a melting pot for cybersecurity 

companies, educators, entrepreneurs and government 

agencies. Global tech-service provider Unisys has 

planted a flag in downtown as well as software-development 

companies such as TaxSlayer and RSI. 

Opportunities abound, Bradshaw said, for Richmond 

County students taking classes in specialized programs 

such as its Cyber Academy of Excellence, which enables 

students to be dual-enrolled in Augusta Technical 

College’s cybersecurity institute, a certified National 

Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense by the 

National Security Agency and Department of Homeland 

Security. 

Sixteen Richmond County students are going through 

Augusta Tech’s program while completing their high 

school diplomas. 

“We are looking at continuing our dual enrollment, so 

we are strengthening that partnership,” he said. “The 

numbers are pretty good, but our goal is to grow.” 

Another one of Bradshaw’s goals is to change the 

perception of Richmond County’s school system. The 

decades-long disparity between the county’s highand 

low-performing schools has overshadowed many 

of the changes the district has implemented to offer 

specialized curriculum that enables students to get a 

jump start on college or obtain high-wage employment 

upon graduation. 

Many residents and newcomers also are unaware the 

district implemented a “school choice” program in 2016 

that enables parents to send children to any school in the 

county where seats are available. 

The district’s communications director, Kaden 

Jacobs, said school choice brochures are mailed to every 

parent as well as distributed to businesses and community 

organizations county-wide. School officials 

also have met with groups such as the Greater Augusta 

Association of Realtors to get the word out to future 

Richmond County residents, particularly those interested 

in living in the urban core. 

“You can have the young family that wants to live in 

a loft downtown,” said Jacobs, who himself is a parent 

residing in the urban core. “If their kid is interested in 

some of those programs, they can go anywhere in the 

district. It doesn’t preclude them. They don’t have to 

live in a certain place. They can be part of the revitalization 

of downtown.” 

Bradshaw said the expansion of community partnerships 

with business and industry will continue to play 

a major role in bolstering its career-specific workreadiness 

programs at the Richmond County Technical 

Career Magnet School and the new Marion E. Barnes 

Career Center at T.W. Josey High School as well as traditional 

neighborhood schools. 

That goes for inner-city schools as well. The district 

is forecasting additional growth based on existing birth 

rates and an influx of young professionals moving into 

inner-city neighborhoods undergoing revitalization. 

“I know just by working with the mayor and the 

economic development (officials) that there is an expectation 

for a lot of movement in the downtown area,” 

Bradshaw said. 


1117_T_40_AM____.indd 42 

10/25/2019 12:12:08 PM

1117_T_43_AM____.indd 43 

10/25/2019 1:03:21 PM

Different 

by 

CHOICE 

FAITH-BASED, INNER-CITY PRIVATE 

SCHOOL CONTINUES TO GROW 



1117_T_44_AM____.indd 44 

10/16/2019 11:36:37 AM

Heritage Academy, downtown 

Augusta’s newest private school, 

is bursting at the seams. 

The 260-student school at 333 

Greene St. will reach full capacity 

once its current class of 6th graders reaches grade 8. 

This is somewhat remarkable for a faith-based school 

that started in 2001 with a class of 10 kindergartners and 

a budget that – even today – is 85% donation-funded. 

“The majority of those donations – in fact, more than 

50% – are made by individuals,” Executive Director 

Linda Tucciarone said. “To me, that just says amazing 

things about this community.” 

The school’s size has changed over the years, but its 

mission has not; Heritage Academy’s “target market” is 

low- to moderate-income families. 

Tucciarone said roughly 60% of the school’s student 

body resides in the city’s urban core and sections of 

east and south Augusta – places where many traditional 

public schools are perennial academic underperformers. 

According to Private School Review, a third-party 

research firm, nearly 90% of the student body is 

African-American. About 15% of Heritage Academy’s 

students live in public housing, Tucciarone said. 

“Those families may be under-resourced, but it 

doesn’t mean they’re under-motivated,” she said. 

“They might have a family member, or even a pool of 

people, who are helping a student to be here.” 

HERE BY CHOICE 

School choice, a buzzword in education circles in 

recent years, is the Heritage Academy’s raison d’etre. 

The school’s founders started laying the groundwork 

for the inner-city Christian school in 1999, when 

educational options for lower-income families were 

practically nonexistent. 

The academy’s concept was bolstered by the 

landmark Supreme Court decision Zelman v. Simmons- 

Harris – a 2002 case involving Cleveland public school 

system – that upheld public vouchers for schools, 

including religious ones, did not violate the First 

Amendment’s Establishment Clause forbidding governments 

from publicly promoting religious activity. 

Heritage Academy saw another enrollment boost after 

Georgia lawmakers passed 2008 legislation enabling 

residents and corporations to receive dollar-for-dollar 

tax credits on donations for student scholarships at 

private schools. 

Although Richmond County’s magnet school program 

Students line the halls before heading off to class at Heritage 

Academy. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

was created in the 1980s, Heritage Academy’s inception 

predates the county’s “school choice” program enabling 

parents to send children to schools outside their neighborhood 

zones if seats are available. 

“It wasn’t until the Cleveland voucher decision that 

school choice sort of hit the headlines and people began 

to think about something other than a ‘one-size-fitsall’ 

model,” Tucciarone said. “Parents are the best 

advocates for their children; they know what they want 

for their children. So bringing choice to this last place – 

education – played a significant role.” 

Tax-credit scholarships help fund roughly half the 

student body at Heritage Academy, where tuition is 

a sliding-scale based on a family’s ability to pay. The 

school’s annual operating budget is $1.1 million, according 

to GuideStar, a research firm that reports on nonprofits. 

Aside from tuition, attendance at Heritage Academy 

comes with four set-in-stone rules: children must bring 

their own lunch (the school does not participate in the 

National School Lunch Program); children must wear a 

uniform; parents are responsible for getting their child 

to school (there are no buses); and attendance at parentteacher 

conferences are mandatory. 

Heritage’s Christian-based philosophy is the cornerstone 

of its goal to create future leaders with the strong 

foundation described in Matthew 7:24. 

“The scripture says, ‘the wise man built his house on a 

rock,’ “ she said. “Foundations are critical. I don’t think 

of this as an elementary school for the young boys and 

girls under my care, I think of this as being foundational 

to the rest of their lives.” 

OPPOSITE PAGE: Heritage Academy Executive Director Linda Tucciarone, left, and Principal Jan Hitchcock stand at the entrance 

to Heritage Academy, the newest of downtown’s three private schools. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


1117_T_44_AM____.indd 45 

10/25/2019 12:23:52 PM

Grandparents mingle with students during Grandparents Day at Heritage Academy. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

IN THE CLASSROOM 

There are two main standardized testing methods to 

chart primary-education student achievement: criterion-referenced 

tests, such as the Criterion-Referenced 

Competency Tests, or CRCT, that the state of Georgia 

uses; and norm-referenced tests, such as the Iowa Tests 

of Basic Skills test, which is used by Heritage Academy. 

Criterion tests compare a student’s knowledge or 

skills against a state’s predetermined standard or 

performance goal. Norm-referenced tests essentially 

compare a student’s performance against a national 

average of test takers at the same age or grade level. 

In Georgia, the CRCT assesses the standards of 

students in grades 1-8 as outlined in the Common Core 

Georgia Performance Standards curriculum, which state 

teachers are required to teach. The pressure to meet 

standards made headlines in 2011 when an investigation 

of the Atlanta Public Schools district linked 178 teachers 

and 38 principals to a cheating scandal involving the 

falsification of test results. 

Although Heritage Academy’s academic performance 

is above average – it’s 2018 annual report shows a 71% 

third-grade reading proficiency score, compared to the 

35% national average – Tucciarone said the school does 

not have a “testing culture.” 

“That allows us to have a lot of flexibility to investing 

in other ways that cognitive abilities are developed 

in children,” she said. “Children need so much more 

than being able to pass a test. They need love. They need 

affirmation. They need play. They need art. They need 

music. They need PE. 

“Why is there a growing backlash against the testing 

culture?” she said. “Because it hasn’t worked, has 

it? The emphasis on testing has not really moved the 

needle.” 

Among the more unusual programs at the school is a 

20-minute-per-day “NeuroNet” neuromotor integration 

program for K-2 students, a screen-based program 

in which children follow a series of directional prompts 

using their hands and feet to strengthen the neural connections 

and cognitive capacities between the right and 

left hemispheres of their brains. 

“Now why do we see a need for this? Because children 

are playing less. They are outside less,” Tucciarone said. 

And, like most area schools, Heritage Academy has 

instituted a cyber-education initiative. But its program, a 

3-year, 300-hour curriculum called Cyber Aces, focuses 


1117_T_44_AM____.indd 46 

10/25/2019 12:23:46 PM

TOP RIGHT: Heritage Academy students have their morning 

snack. BOTTOM RIGHT: Heritage Academy students have some 

quiet reading time during class. The faith-based academy 

is one of three private schools in the urban core. [MICHAEL 

HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

less on cybersecurity theory and tactics and more on backbone 

architecture, such as hardware installation, network 

management and computer coding. 

“We’re a cyber city for the Southeast now,” she said. 

“We’re at negative unemployment in that area and we 

want children to be poised to get those types of jobs.” 

THE FUTURE 

The 50,000-square-foot building Heritage Academy 

acquired in 2006 from Augusta businessman and philanthropist 

Clay Boardman is starting to get crowded. 

Both floors of the historic building – which operated as 

the county’s John W. Houghton Elementary School from 

1916-2000 – are fully occupied with classrooms, labs and 

offices. 

The 2-acre Greene Street property is landlocked, so 

to alleviate crowding, the school hopes to raise money 

to construct a small gymnasium behind the main school 

building on the Ellis Street side that can double as additional 

classroom space. 

The school raised $2.5 million a decade ago to purchase 

and renovate the original school building, which had 

fallen into severe disrepair during the five-year period 

it was left vacant in the heart of the city’s historic Olde 

Town neighborhood. 

“It had been vandalized, there were homeless people 

living in the building,” Tucciarone said. “It cast an unfortunate 

shadow over the neighborhood.” 

The renovation of the main school building was primarily 

accomplished with donated building material and 

volunteer labor. The gym, which would be new construction, 

does not yet have a price tag. 

The school also is hoping to develop an “early learning 

academy” for children as young as 2 years old. Such 

centers are a hybrid between daycare centers and Pre-K 

programs, where children can develop language and social 

skills in a fun but structured environment. 

Tucciarone sees the early learning academy as an 

adjunct to the curriculum in the main school, where the 

primary focus is providing young people the foundation 

needed to “earn a family-sustainable wage.” 

“While we offer a rigorous education, we have to 

remember the end game is a job or a career that helps you 

take care of your family,” she said. “We need to realize 

that anyone who is going to be a contributing member to 

this community needs to have a job and needs to take care 

of their family. That is something to be valued.” 


1117_T_44_AM____.indd 47 

10/25/2019 12:23:41 PM

COLUMBIA COUNTY 

Downtown 

in the 

SUBURBS 

Meybohm Vice 

President of Leasing 

Paul Myers, from 

left, Meybohm CEO 

Mike Polatty and 

Meybohm Commercial 

Development Director 

Jordan Collier stand in 

one of the company’s 

commercial suites 

overlooking the 

Columbia County 

Performing Arts Center 

in Evans. [MICHAEL 

HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA 

CHRONICLE] 

Evans’ The Plaza development puts quality before expediency 


Urban downtowns don’t sprout up overnight 

– and neither do made-from-scratch 

ones in the suburbs. 

This is why business and government 

leaders in Columbia County are not overly 

concerned with the plodding pace of its citycenter 

development – The Plaza at Evans 

Towne Center. 

Officials are more concerned that the 

26-acre development – sandwiched between 

Towne Center Park’s Lady Antebellum 

Pavilion and the future Columbia County 

Performing Arts Center – is done right than 

done quickly. 

“The public wants to see it all built out 

overnight, but the truth is, how you do this 

first building is going to set the tone for 

everything else,” said Mike Polatty, president 

of Meybohm Real Estate, the developer of The 

Plaza’s cornerstone commercial building. 

The 58,000-square-foot mid-rise that 

opened last fall is just 43% occupied – with 

virtually all of that space taken by Meybohm 

company operations. 


1117_T_48_AM____.indd 48 

10/25/2019 12:30:53 PM

The low occupancy isn’t a sign of weak market 

demand so much as Meybohm’s admittedly stringent 

standards. The company isn’t developing just another 

shopping center; it’s trying to create a walkable, highdensity 

development brimming with niche tenants and 

an upscale flair. 

Company officials point to developments such as 

Revel in Gwinett County, Avalon in Alpharetta, Ga., and 

Charlotte N.C.’s Birkdale Village. The closest analogue 

in metro Augusta, they say, would be Surrey Center. 

“Those are the prototypicals,” said Paul Myers, 

Meybohm’s vice president of leasing. “We’re trying to 

create a culture around a piece of real estate – where the 

real estate itself becomes the destination, not necessarily 

any one retailer.” 

The vision is aligned with Columbia County’s 

leadership, which began exploring the concept of creating 

a “downtown” in Evans through a public-private 

partnership with Meybohm more than four years ago. 

The county acquired the 26-acre “Marshall Tract” 

property in 2010 with the goal of developing a mixeduse 

space for community gatherings. A deliberately 

engineered downtown was a product of necessity, as 

the unincorporated community never had the chance to 

develop one organically – the high-growth area transitioned 

from mostly rural to fully suburban in just three 

decades. 

“We didn’t have the benefit of an old downtown we 

could just redo,” Columbia County Administrator Scott 

Johnson said. “So that was the vision way back then, 

that there needs to be a downtown area for Columbia 

County. It’s just very difficult to do that from scratch.” 

Work progresses on the Columbia County Performing Arts Center in Evans, a central piece to the new-urban The Plaza development. 

[MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


1117_T_48_AM____.indd 49 

10/25/2019 12:30:59 PM

Fortunately, the county was able to find a willing 

private-sector partner in E.G. Meybohm, the founder 

and chairman of Meybohm Real Estate and a Columbia 

County native. 

With the help of a Maryland firm known for 

designing “new urban” projects, the county and the 

developer drew up the $65 million Plaza concept using 

Lady Antebellum Pavilion and the future $32 million 

performing arts center as bookends for a pedestrianfriendly 

commercial zone filled with boutiques, 

restaurants, offices and apartments. 

Under the deal, the Development Authority of 

Columbia County deeded Meybohm eight acres for its 

office building and two additional ones in exchange for 

installing the infrastructure necessary to develop the 

county’s 82,000-square-foot performing arts center 

and 150,000 square feet of private-sector commercial 

space. 

Once completed, the property’s streets, sidewalks 

and landscaping revert to county ownership, which 

lowers Meybohm’s property tax burden to only the 

vertical footprint of its buildings. Johnson said the 

arrangement reduces the company’s development risk 

while giving the county control over the development’s 

aesthetics in perpetuity. 

“We wanted to maintain ownership of that (public 

space) because we want to make sure our downtown 

looks nice,” he said. “We want to make sure the grass 

is always cut and the bushes are always trimmed back 

and the flowers are always blooming and those sorts of 

things.” 

The Plaza development’s pace largely hinges on the 

success of the performing arts center, which is scheduled 

to open in December 2021. Tied to the project 

is a $4 million, county-financed parking deck that is 

expected to break ground this fall, as well as a $3 million 

public greenspace known as the “Farmer’s Market 

Pavilion,” which can double as overflow parking for up 

to 800 vehicles during major events. 

Meybohm Commercial Development Director Jordan 

An artist rendering depicts a fully 

developed The Plaza at Evans 

Towne Center, as viewed to the 

east from Evans Towne Center Park. 

The high-density development 

is designed to give the area a 

“downtown” feel. [SPECIAL] 


1117_T_48_AM____.indd 50 

10/25/2019 12:30:38 PM

Collier said the arts center and market greenspace will 

be traffic generators that make the surrounding properties 

more marketable. 

“Those are the two projects we’re super excited 

about seeing,” he said. “We are just one piece of a 

bigger plan that is coming together.” 

The county hosts about a dozen major events at the 

park’s amphitheater each year, with an equal number 

of concerts and shows organized by private promoters. 

More shows and events are expected once the 

2,200-seat performing arts center fills the void for a 

large-scale indoor-performance venue. 

The first non-Meybohm tenant to move into The 

Plaza is the build-you-own-pizza chain Your Pie, 

which is expected to open its 3,700-square-foot 

eatery on the building’s first floor before the end of the 

year. The company said it is in late-stage negotiations 

with a financial service company expected to occupy 

a large amount of office space, but the deal had not 

closed as of press time and further information was not 

available. 

Polatty acknowledged recent developments, such as 

the state-backed Georgia Cyber Center in downtown 

Augusta and Evans’ Mullins Colony shopping center, 

absorbed office and retail tenants that could have 

located at The Plaza. 

He also said some prospective Plaza tenants, including 

a boutique hotel chain, are waiting to see the 

development more fleshed out before committing to 

the site. Other businesses, namely local and regional 

restaurants and retailers not used to class A rents in 

Augusta, also are sitting on the fence. 

Meybohm’s four-story building can house an office 

suite up to 5,500 square feet, 7,000 square feet of retail 

and five restaurants, ranging from 2,300-square-foot 

spaces on the street level to a 3,800-square-foot suite 

on the fourth floor that comes with 1,800 square feet of 

rooftop veranda space. 

“It’s probably the most beautiful view in the Columbia 

County area,” Myers said. 


1117_T_48_AM____.indd 51 

10/25/2019 12:30:30 PM

An artist rendering depicts a fully developed The Plaza at Evans Towne Center. County officials say the surface parking depicted on 

the right will be a parking deck instead of a surface parking log. [SPECIAL] 

The cornerstone building wasn’t built with residential 

units in mind, but Polatty said future buildings will need 

housing – most likely condominiums or upscale loft 

apartments – to create a true downtown vibe. 

“That’s part of what makes a downtown feel alive,” he 

said. “That’s what gives it a sense of energy.” 

Johnson agrees, saying he believes the county’s leadership 

is open to small-scale residential development to 

complete the live-work-play concept. 

“We want to make sure we have the right fit there,” he 

said. “The commissioners aren’t interested in just allowing 

a freestanding apartment complex there, but they’d 

love to see some second-floor residential above retail or 

maybe a large retail component that’s in front of a restaurant 

component. All of those things are on the table.” 

As for The Plaza getting off to a slow start, Polatty 

said it wouldn’t be a first for Meybohm. The company 

had to weather an economic downturn and a housing 

bubble to keep its Champions Retreat golf course development 

and its neotraditional Rhodes Farm subdivision 

to fulfill their visions. 

“When it comes to playing the long game,” Polatty 

said. “E.G. is one of the few people who will put his 

money where his mouth is.” 


1117_T_48_AM____.indd 52 

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1117_T_53_AM____.indd 53 

10/30/2019 3:30:52 PM

COLUMBIA COUNTY 

Hot in 

Harlem 

City’s downtown comes back 

to life after years of decline 


T 

he town of Harlem, Ga., is 

merely a puddle in Columbia 

County’s sprawling sea of subdivisions 

and shopping centers. 

But instead of grousing about 

what they don’t have, leaders in this 

community of nearly 4,000 are laser-focused on 

the one thing Harlem has that the rest of the county 

doesn’t: a bonafide downtown. 

“There’s nothing unique about Harlem outside 

of Columbia County,” City Manager C. Brett Cook 

says. “You go outside the county and there are two 

or three towns like Harlem – it’s only unique in 

Columbia County.” 

Indeed, Harlem’s central business district is the 

quintessential Southern downtown, a byproduct 

of being a train stop along the Georgia Railroad and 

the crossroads of U.S. Highways 221 and 78, known 

to locals as Louisville Street and Milledgeville Road. 

Harlem’s distance from Columbia County’s 

sprawl has given its downtown a “stuck-in-time” 

aesthetic that is absent in the county’s more 

populous eastern end, where unincorporated communities 

such as Martinez and Evans have been 

shaped into suburbs of Augusta during the past few 

decades. 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 54 

10/25/2019 12:34:42 PM

OPPOSITE: Cars pass over 

the railroad tracks on North 

Louisville Street in downtown 

Harlem, which has Columbia 

County’s only traditional central 

business district. [DAMON CLINE/ 


LEFT: A photo shows the old 

Masonic Building in Harlem a 

few years after its construction 

in 1911. The renovated building 

now houses loft apartments and 

ground-floor commercial space. 

[SPECIAL] 

BELOW: Lionel Prather and 

father Larry Prather show one of 

the four apartment units in the 

newly renovated Masonic Lodge 

building in downtown Harlem. 

[DAMON CLINE/THE AUGUSTA 

CHRONICLE] 

BOOM TO BUST TO BOOM 

The town’s distinctly rural appearance 

belies the fact it was the county’s center of 

commerce for nearly two-thirds of the 20th 

century. 

When Columbia County was sparsely 

populated farmland and forests, Harlem 

boasted electric street lights, three grocery 

stores, two pharmacies and a newspaper. 

The town also had heavy industry – the 

Harlem Oil & Fertilizer Co. – as well as two 

gin mills and a cotton warehouse. 

Turn-of-the-century train travelers 

could stay at the Hicks Hotel, or take in a 

show at the Columbia Opera House and rub 

shoulders with wealthy Northeasterners 

on winter visits as well as country-home 

owners from Augusta seeking respite from 

the heat, humidity and mosquitoes. 

“Harlem was the economic driver of 

Columbia County, before the exodus from 

Augusta started,” Cook said. “The first 

bank was in Harlem. The opera house was 

in Harlem. Appling was the county seat, but 

Harlem was the driver.” 

The town’s economy took a hit when 

the Georgia Railroad Depot was torn down 

in the mid 1960s. Harlem’s decades-long 

period of disinvestment was exacerbated 

by a 1972 federal desegregation order for 

Richmond County schools. The forced 

busing prompted many families to move 

across the border into Columbia County’s 

unincorporated areas of Martinez and 

Evans, while rural Harlem largely sat on the 

sidelines. 

“If you talk to people today who are in 

their 70s or older, they remember when 

everybody came to Harlem,” Cook said. 

“Of course, they remember when there was 

nobody in Harlem, so now they’re seeing 

that renaissance, that resurgence.” 

MANAGING GROWTH 

Today, nearly 150,000 people live in 

Columbia County. With Martinez and Evans 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 55 

10/25/2019 12:34:48 PM

Harlem City Manager C. Brett Cook stands in the theater section of the newly restored Columbia Theater in downtown Harlem, one of several downtown 

revitalization projects the city has undertaken in recent years. [DAMON CLINE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

A sign 

advertises 

First State 

Bank’s future 

location in 

downtown 

Harlem near 

the corner 

of Louisville 

Street and 

Milledgeville 

Road. [DAMON 

CLINE/THE 

AUGUSTA 

CHRONICLE] 

saturated with rooftops and shopping centers, 

more and more new residents – fueled 

by the growth of Fort Gordon’s cybersecurity 

and intelligence missions – are 

moving westward along the Interstate 20 

corridor toward the incorporated cities of 

Grovetown and Harlem. 

“By process of land-development patterns, 

it just so happens that we’re back in 

the game again,” Cook said. “Barring the 

apocalypse, the growth is coming this way.” 

With suburban expansion knocking on 

Harlem’s door, the town is working hard 

to court new business while preserving 

the unique characteristics of its traditional 

downtown. 

“We definitely want to try to stay ahead 

of the growth,” said Alison Couch, owner of 

accounting firm Couch Consulting and president 

of the Harlem Merchants Association. 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 56 

10/25/2019 12:34:53 PM

A 1912 photo shows members 

of the Harlem Chamber of 

Commerce. James Atkinson, who 

started the Columbia Sentinel 

newspaper, is pictured in the front 

row, third from the left. [SPECIAL] 

HARLEM HISTORY 

Harlem’s roots go back to 

the 1830s, when the Georgia 

Railroad was built from Augusta 

to Eatonton, Ga. One of the main 

stops along the route was a 

booming but rough-and-tumble 

lumber town known as Saw 

Dust. 

Dr. Andrew J. Sanders, a 

graduate of the Medical College 

of Georgia in Augusta, moved to 

the area in 1857 and began selling 

land for $1 an acre to entice 

more people to reside nearby. 

Dr. Sanders also donated land 

to build what would become 

Harlem Baptist Church, Harlem 

High School (now Harlem Middle 

School) and Harlem Methodist 

Church. 

In the mid-1860s, Newnan 

Hicks moved to the area after 

quitting his job as a railroad 

engineer after being asked to 

work on a Sunday. A teetotaler, 

Hicks wanted to start a town 

that – unlike Saw Dust – didn’t 

sell liquor. He built his home 

near Dr. Sanders and helped 

incorporate Harlem on Oct. 24, 

1870. 

They named the town based 

on a suggestion from a visiting 

resident of New York, who said 

he thought the area resembled 

Harlem, N.Y., which at the time 

was a semi-rural haven for New 

York City dwellers. 

Saw Dust was absorbed by 

the city in 1887, as was the 

Cerlastae settlement in 1906. 

Norvell “Oliver” Hardy, half of 

the famous comedy duo Oliver 

and Hardy, was born in Harlem 

in 1892. 

By the early 20th century, 

Harlem had 500 residents and an 

assortment of industry and cultural 

attractions, including the 

Columbia Opera House, which 

was destroyed by fire in 1917. 

Columbia County’s first movie 

theater, the Columbia Theater, 

opened in Harlem in 1949. 

The town’s economy began to 

wither in the 1950s and 60s as 

highway improvements made 

it easier for Columbia County 

residents to procure goods and 

services in Augusta and its suburbs. 

The decline accelerated in 

the 1970s and 80s as new county 

residents flocked to fastergrowing 

areas in the county’s 

unincorporated eastern end. 

In 1988 the city created the 

annual Oliver Hardy Festival, 

which draws tens of thousands 

of visitors to town. 

The city is growing once 

again as suburban development 

moves its way westward along 

the Interstate 20 corridor, fueled 

by expansions of Fort Gordon’s 

cybersecurity and intelligence 

operations. City officials also are 

working to expand the city limits 

through annexation. 

The town’s population has 

grown 50% since 2010, and it 

expects to have close to 4,000 

residents when the 2020 Census 

is complete. 

Source: City of Harlem, staff research 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 57 

10/25/2019 12:34:59 PM

A mural paying homage to the comedic duo Laurel and Hardy adorns the side of a downtown building in Harlem, Ga. City leaders want to prepare the city 

center for impending suburban growth. [MIKE ADAMS/SPECIAL] 

The association is working hand-inhand 

with the city’s Urban Redevelopment 

Authority, which was formed in 2015 

to implement the “Harlem City Center 

Plan,” a strategy to reverse the disinvestment 

from the past few decades and keep 

suburban-style development from changing 

the city’s “small town” feel. 

Many of the changes are already evident. 

The city’s old museum and welcome 

center was sold by the redevelopment 

authority to The Prather Co., which is 

marketing the property to restaurateurs. 

The museum/welcome center has been 

moved a block down North Louisville 

Street to the newly restored Columbia 

Theater, which has twice the floor space 

as the old museum to pay homage to 

Harlem’s most famous son – Norvell 

“Oliver” Hardy, the portly character from 

the famous “Laurel and Hardy” comedy 

duo. 

The city’s annual Oliver Hardy Festival, 

held the first weekend in October each 

year, draws tens of thousands of visitors to 

the downtown area. 

Cook said the expanded museum also 

has more space to present cultural displays 

about the town and Columbia County 

history. 

“There are 100,000 people in the county 

that have lived here less than 30 years,” 

Cook said. “Why not come over to Harlem 

and learn about where you’re living. See 

what the county actually looked like before 

those massive influxes of people.” 

The Columbia Theater also has a 50-seat 

theater the city plans use for special 

events, as well as screenings for secondrun 

“dollar theater” films. The museum/ 

theater complex sits next to Columbia 

County’s newly built Harlem library complex, 

whose greenspace is used for outdoor 

movies and events. 

“The library has been a real catalyst for 

us,” said Cook, who also serves as director 

of the city redevelopment authority. 

Cook said the city is working to acquire 

the adjacent convenience store near the 

corner of Louisville and Milledgeville roads 

to expand the the Columbia Theater’s 

seating capacity, as well as provide additional 

greenspace for the library complex 

to create an outdoor amphitheater. 

“We’ve already paid an architect to plan 

it, so we’ve got the design,” Cook said. 

“So in the next five years we should have a 

small amphitheater.” 

DOWNTOWN LIVING 

A fire in 1917 destroyed the old opera 

house and several other downtown 

buildings, but many historic homes 

and buildings are intact, including the 

108-year-old Masonic Lodge building on 

North Louisville Street, which is believed 

to be the oldest commercial building in 

Harlem. 

The 8,000-square-foot building – 

designed by noted architect G. Lloyd 

Preacher – was converted earlier this year 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 58 

10/25/2019 12:35:04 PM

into a mixed-use building by The Prather 

Co., which turned the upper floor of the 

historic building into four upscale loft 

apartments and created four commercial 

suites on the ground floor. 

The apartments are fully occupied and 

two of the four commercial spaces are 

being built out for Harlem Family Dental. 

The third space is occupied by the Yoder’s 

Dairy Barn’s ice cream shop, which opened 

this summer and has enjoyed brisk business, 

with patrons using bench seating in 

the adjacent “pocket park.” 

“We are starting to see foot traffic 

pick up, which is a good thing for our 

boutiques and restaurants,” said Couch, 

whose downtown office opened in 2016. 

“We would like to see the city get some 

additional parking because, believe it or 

not, the parking on the street fills up pretty 

quickly.” 

The merchants association schedules 

several weekend events to drive more 

people downtown, including a Ladies 

Night Out, where all the town’s shops 

open at night with wine and appetizers, a 

Trick or Treat on Main Street event a week 

before Halloween, and Jazz on the Lawn, a 

free event in front of the library that featuring 

live music and food and drinks from 

local restaurants such as Red Oak Manor 

Paintings and memorabilia decorate the new Laurel and Hardy Museum in Harlem, Ga., one of several 

improvements the city has made to its downtown in recent years. [MIKE ADAMS/SPECIAL] 

and Monte Olivos. 

The mini-park where visitors and locals 

linger was created when the city tore down 

the decrepit, asbestos-filled police department 

building. 

“It’s really just been over the last three 

or four years that Harlem has become a 

place where on the weekends people are 

out and about,” Cook said. 

The police department is now housed 

in the city’s public safety complex at 

the corner of Louisville Street and 

Milledgeville road in a building 

that once housed the 

Culpepper Ford 

dealership. 

The 1-acre vacant lot just west of the 

complex will be the future site of First 

State Bank. The authority sold the property, 

which used to house a car wash and a 

mobile home park, to the Wrens, Ga.- 

based community bank that operates as 

Firstate. A condition of the sale included 

the company constructing an additional 

35 parking spaces that the city can lease 

as overflow parking for the public safety 

complex, whose courtroom doubles as the 

city council chambers. 

And just west of the future bank site is 

the recently opened Harlem Pharmacy, 

The small Georgia town of 

Harlem comes alive every year 

at the annual Laurel and Hardy 

Festival in Harlem, Ga. Officials 

hope downtown revitalization 

efforts will make the city center 

a year-round destination. 

[MIKE ADAMS/SPECIAL] 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 59 

10/25/2019 12:35:09 PM

You throw 50,000 people around Harlem and Appling, it just 

changes things. This is where all the people who are trying to 

escape, so to speak, urban sprawl. This is the last frontier. Unless 

you’re going into McDuffie County, this is the last frontier. It will 

be interesting to see how this plays out. 

HARLEM CITY MANAGER C. BRETT COOK 

which occupies the former Harlem Woman’s Club 

building the city purchased in 2017. The civic club, 

formed in 1925, now meets in the Harlem public 

library. 

“They couldn’t keep the property up,” Cook 

said. “We said you can meet there (in the library) 

for free and we’ll buy your building. Take the 

money and use it for scholarships and such. We 

told them we’re not going to demo it, we’re going 

to find a way to keep it for public use.” 

SMALL STREETS, BIG IDEAS 

Over on New Street, a side street off North 

Louisville Street, officials envision an “artist’s 

row” studio-and-residential neighborhood on 

property currently occupied by the city’s public 

works department, which the city hopes to relocate 

next year. New Street also connects to a 4-acre 

parcel where a 40-unit townhome development 

with a public park has been proposed. 

New Street is No. 2 on the list of side streets with 

the most potential to become an expansion of the 

city’s downtown corridor. 

No. 1 is Hicks Street, which is occupied by an idle 

pecan shelling and processing plant that nobody 

has figured out how to redevelop. 

The 3.5-acre tract at the corner of Hicks and 

North Louisville streets is in the hands of Texasbased 

San Saba Pecan. The company acquired the 

property in 2010 from the Tracy-Luckey Co., a 

pecan supplier that was a Harlem family-owned 

enterprise for nearly a century. 

The property and its 90,000 square feet of 

buildings has been on the market for years. 

While the city owns or controls much of the 

prime real estate in downtown Harlem, it simply 

lacks the funds to purchase the entire property – 

listed at $1.9 million – although it did acquire the 

750-square-foot building that was used as a product 

showroom as a way to control future use of the 

frontage space. 

“There is a lot of multi-use development potential 

there. You could almost have a little village 

in there, “ Cook said. “I’m shocked nobody has 

bought it.” 

Regardless, the city’s property tax base 

increased 40 percent during the past three years, 

largely from new home construction but also 

increasing downtown property values, Cook said, 

adding that additional funds are used to make 

improvements in the central business district. 

Increased population also results in Harlem receiving 

a bigger share of county sales taxes, which are 

allocated based on Census data. 

“Forty years ago we might have been 10% of the 

county. Now we’re like 2%,” Cook said.”But over 

the last few years, we started growing again.” 

Aside from the subdivisions under development 

in and around Harlem city limits in the northern 

section, Cook believes many new residents will 

seek housing in the city center to be close to the 

revitalized central business district. 

“Harlem can be densely populated, but it can 

still be Harlem – you can still recognize it,”Cook 

said. “For us its taking the residential development 

and triangulating it on downtown.” 

Projections estimate 50,000 people living in 

western Columbia County during the next 30 

years. That makes Cook’s job downtown revitalization 

and protection efforts even more crucial. 

“You throw 50,000 people around Harlem and 

Appling, it just changes things,” Cook said. “This 

is where all the people who are trying to escape, 

so to speak, urban sprawl. This is the last frontier. 

Unless you’re going into McDuffie County, this is 

the last frontier. It will be interesting to see how 

this plays out.” 


1117_T_54_AM____.indd 60 

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1117_T_61_AM____.indd 61 

10/30/2019 3:30:32 PM

An artist rendering depicting a west-facing view of the Riverfront at the Depot project shows the apartment and office buildings facing 

Riverwalk Augusta and the city marina with a renovated depot building along Reynolds Street. [HANDOUT/AUGUSTA DEVELOPERS LLC] 

ON 

GET 

OUR LAWN 

Riverfront at the Depot developer has high hopes for greenspace 


1117_T_62_AM____.indd 62 

10/15/2019 5:30:26 PM


Most of the anticipation 

surrounding the $94 million 

Riverfront at the 

Depot development has 

been focused on buildings 

– a 143-unit apartment community, a 

100,000-square-foot office tower and more than 

16,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. 

It’s easy to forget a substantial portion of the 

mixed-use development at the corner of Sixth and 

Reynolds streets will be public greenspace. 

And developers of the project hope the community 

gets as much enjoyment from the lawn as they 

do the buildings. 

“We do hope and expect we can energize that 

greenspace with as much public activity as we 

can,” said Mike Carpenter, a principal with BLOC 

Global Group, the Birmingham, Ala.-based company 

developer behind the Riverfront at the Depot 

project. 

Carpenter said he hopes the greenspace, which 

would be between the renovated historic train depot 

building and the apartment buildings, would be 

a place for residents, business customers and the 

general community to enjoy regular programs and 

events. 

The Riverfront at the Depot, a $94 million mixed-use development on a long-vacant city-owned tract along the river near Sixth and Reynolds streets. 

[HANDOUT/GEORGIA POWER] 


1117_T_62_AM____.indd 63 

10/25/2019 12:38:19 PM

The historic train depot at 6th and Reynolds streets would be transformed into a restaurant and retail bazaar under a mixed-use 

development proposal in its final stages of approval. [MICHAEL HOLAHAN/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

“We would like to see art shows, market-type 

events and maybe food trucks,” Carpenter said. 

“We intend to have a video screen where we can 

have movie nights or broadcast sports events and 

other things that would encourage the public and 

downtown residents to come out.” 

BLOC Global, which is developing the 6-acre, 

city-owned tract through a venture called Augusta 

Developers LLC, has engaged in similar publicprivate 

ventures where greenspace has been a 

crucial amenity. 

The development and consulting firm was 

involved in assembling the land for Birmingham’s 

Railroad Park, a 19-acre greenspace in the city’s 

downtown that has often been referred to as 

“Birmingham’s Living Room.” The area that 

spans four city blocks is situated along the Norfolk 

Southern and CSX rail lines that run through the 

city’s downtown district. 

The project, which opened in 2010, is a popular 

recreation spot for downtown residents and 

students of the nearby University of Alabama at 

Birmingham campus. The area was previously a 

warehouse district. 

“We have seen around that park, since its 

completion, tremendous economic growth with 

mixed-use developments,” Carpenter said. 

BLOC Global’s Riverfront at the Depot development 

aims to bring the same vitality to Broad 

Street’s east end by turning the long-vacant city 

owned parcel along the riverfront into a retail and 

entertainment destination similar to Atlanta’s 

Ponce City Market. 

The project’s first phase involves renovating the 

historic train depot building – the only structure 

on the property – into retail and restaurant space. 

BLOC Global’s sister company, Retail Strategies, 

has been in negotiations with specialty retailers, a 

microbrewery and a steakhouse as potential tenants. 

Renderings of the project depict an outparcel 

development on the corner, directly north of the 

Augusta Museum of History. 

DEPOT continues on 67 


1117_T_62_AM____.indd 64 

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1117_T_65_AM____.indd 65 

10/30/2019 3:30:18 PM

MACK continued from 21 

Mack had reservations about whether she was professionally 

“ready” to teach there, despite having four years of 

teaching under her belt at Richmond County’s Hephzibah 

High School and one year at Columbia County’s Lakeside 

High School. 

“I just didn’t know if I was ‘A.R. Johnson cut,’” said Mack, 

who graduated in the upper 20 percent of her class. “Parents 

hold their children to a higher standard here, so I felt a little 

bit of pressure to meet the expectations.” 

Mack teaches five different courses daily – ranging from 

Intro to Drafting and Design to 3D Modeling and Analysis – 

which requires her to juggle five different lesson plans and 

schedules. 

Mack jokingly says she had to “have an intervention” 

during her first year of teaching because of the stress. 

“If I had to start here my first year, mentally would I 

be ready? Now that I think about it, no,” said Mack, who 

earned a degree in architecture/interior design from 

Howard University in Washington, D.C. “The first year is 

rough, especially if you don’t have that experience in your 

family, with people who have been teachers before. With 

all the things that are thrown at you, you feel like you can’t 

get it all done, you can’t meet deadlines. You have to have 

people constantly telling you to hang in there.” 

One of the colleagues Mack leaned on during her early 

years was Millicent Bowman, who was Mack’s teacher when 

she was a student at A.R. Johnson. Bowman, who retired as 

a state K-12 teacher at Lakeside but continues teaching at 

Aiken Technical College, was among those who influenced 

Mack to become a teacher. 

Mack had graduated from Howard when the nation was in 

the early stages of the Great Recession. She wanted to stay 

in the metro D.C. area, but she could not find a job in her 

field. 

“I was even going on group interviews, where you’re 

sitting not just with yourself but with two other people 

showing your portfolios,” Mack recalled. 

She decided to return to Augusta to plot her next move 

and be closer to her parents, father Henry “Wayne” 

Howard, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives 

who represents Augusta’s District 124, and mother 

Cassandria. Mack grew up spending time at the family business, 

Howard’s Upholstery Co. on Martin Luther King Jr. 

Boulevard, which influenced her college major. 

After returning to Augusta, Mack helped out at the family 

business and did freelance interior-design work before 

taking a full-time job at the Sephora cosmetics store at 

Augusta Mall. The job was by no means glamorous for an 

interior design graduate, but she said the retail job helped 

her sharpen skills she would later use as a teacher. 

“I learned some really good skills as far as management 

and customer service, which we are things we really use in 

the classroom every day,” she said. 

After two years, she enrolled in Augusta University’s 

master of arts teaching program in 2014. Her first teaching 

job at Hephzibah High was family consumer science, which 

was primarily focused on nutrition. Ironically, the interior 

design segment of the career-pathway course had been 

dropped the previous year. 

Four years later she would join Bowman, her mentor, at 

Lakeside to teach engineering and technology. The year was 

difficult for Mack because she was pregnant with her first 

child and was making nearly hour-long commutes from her 

home in North, S.C., a town just east of Wagener and north 

of Orangeburg. 

When the opportunity to teach at A.R. Johnson became 

available this past year, she jumped at the chance to shave 

a little time off her commute and return to her roots. Mack 

attended Tabernacle Baptist Church’s child development 

center before going to the nearby C.T. Walker Traditional 

Magnet School for her K-8 education. 

“Dad was super excited for me to be back in Richmond 

County; his prayers might have been the one that got me 

here,” she says jokingly. “He loves his district.” 

Mack said she knew she made the right decision when she 

picked up one of the school’s architecture textbooks; it was 

an updated edition of the same book her maternal grandfather 

– James Burroughs, who taught architecture and 

construction at Aiken High School – gave her before leaving 

for Howard University. 

“Seeing it was like one of those spiritual, divine things,” 

she said. “We would always have these talks about engineering 

because I saw him mocking up plans. I would show 

my drawings to him and we would talk about it.” 

Considering the transitions she made in her own life – 

from wanting to be an architect to an interior designer to a 

teacher – Mack said she tries to help students decide on a 

career choice by assigning them to create a “career portfolio.” 

The assignment has students detail engineering/ 

technology occupations and the education, tools and skills – 

both “hard” and “soft” skills – that the jobs require. 

“The skills you end up obtaining through college can 

really cross over into other engineering fields,” she said. “So 

I’m not going to say, ‘You have to make a decision by college,’ 

but you need to be at least close to it.” 

She believes the exercise also helps students “manage 

their expectations” regarding their future. 

“Otherwise, they’re going to come out of school with 

these false realities, and that’s how people get into depression 

and anxiety,” she said. “The pressure is really there for 

students to decide on a career; to make a certain amount of 

money by this certain time.” 

Mack said she was unsure if teaching would be her longterm 

career when she first started. But now that she has 

grown more confident and is beginning to see the impact 

she is having on the next generation of A.R. graduates, she 

believes education is the final stop on her occupational 

journey. 

“Every year you get challenged to make things better in 

your classroom, and that’s how you end up staying,” she 

said. “And I feel that is happening. My classroom gets better 

every year.” 


1117_T_66_AM____.indd 66 

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DEPOT continued from 64 

Retail Strategies has been a contract consultant of 

Augusta’s Downtown Development Authority since 

2013. BLOC Global executives have been working with 

the authority and the city to develop the riverfront tract 

since 2016. 

The company in 2018 formally announced the 

Riverfront at the Depot concept and has since been going 

through legal and contractual procedures to acquire the 

property, which comes with a $12 million commitment 

from the city to construct two parking decks that would 

be used by residents, visitors and employees of the 

nearby Unisys office. 

The two, two-level decks would accommodate space 

for 850 vehicles and serve as the foundation for the 

upscale apartment community, whose first floor would 

be level with the riverfront levee and the Riverwalk 

Augusta pedestrian and bike trail. 

BLOC Global, which has completed its due diligence 

period and is financing its $80 million portion of the 

development through multiple sources, had planned 

to break ground this fall. Delays in finalizing the bond 

agreement and other contracts involved in acquiring the 

property – which the city has valued at $1.8 million – has 

pushed the construction start date into 2020. 

Carpenter said the ball is essentially in “the Augusta 

Commission’s court.” He said the groundbreaking date 

is a “moving target.” 

“We realize these kind of public-private partnerships 

take time, but every day that we don’t have action is 

delaying the project,” Carpenter said. “Right now, we’re 

ready to move the ball forward.” 

The project would be the single-largest private 

investment in downtown Augusta since construction 

of the Augusta Marriott at the Convention Center and 

adjacent Augusta Riverfront Center office building in 

the early 1990s. That project also was a public-private 

partnership, with the city investing in the convention 

center’s parking decks and other public infrastructure. 

The property on which the Depot development will sit 

has been vacant and off the county’s tax rolls since the city 

acquired the property from the railroad nearly 60 years ago. 

Aside from future property and sales taxes, BLOC Global 

has estimated the project will create nearly 800 jobs during 

construction and 230 permanent jobs once completed. 


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10/25/2019 12:38:49 PM

OTHER VOICES 

WORK 

STUDY 

Business, education join forces to expose children to future workforce 

By SUE PARR 

President & CEO 

Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce 

Over the past two decades, the 

imperative of meaningful partnerships 

between business and 

public education has grown significantly. 

From the business 

perspective, there are a number of reasons we are 

seeing an all-time high in interest and engagement. 

First, the development of a highly skilled local workforce 

requires a marriage of traditional academics with 

job-ready soft skills and fine-tuned career preparation. 

New workers to the labor market have an expectation to 

succeed in meaningful careers quickly, and businesses 

have a much shorter glide path for recruiting, training 

and onboarding new workers. 

Businesses are attempting to attract students at a much 

younger age to their industry sectors, and they are eager 

to demonstrate and articulate the significance of communication, 

interpersonal and social skills in the workplace 

and the emotional side of the work-ready equation. 

Second, businesses understand the relationship 

between economic growth and the role a competitive 

school district plays in attracting new population and 

jobs. Communities that cannot offer new residents the 

highest level of public education for their children will 

stagnate, yielding fewer and fewer opportunities for 

existing businesses to expand and grow. Additionally, 

businesses depend on geographically concentrated labor 

pools to competitively source local workers. 

The Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Business 

Education Advisory Council, in partnership with the 

Richmond County School System, has developed numerous 

collaborative programs to support students, the school 

district and engage our business community in worthwhile 

opportunities to maximize the local workforce pipeline. 

Under the council’s leadership of Phil Wahl, president 

of Security Federal Bank, and the Chamber’s Board 

of Directors, led by Jim Davis, president of University 

Health Care System, the chamber has worked closely 

with the district’s superintendent and its Board of 

Education to prioritize needs and develop programs that 

expand student career exploration, prioritize soft skill 

learning, raise awareness of socioeconomic gaps and 

improve district branding. Here are some highlights of a 

few of those programs. 

Students2Work: The evidence is clear that experiential 

learning in the workplace for high school students provides 

a unique baseline understanding of the realities of work. 

This in turn helps students to align their academics to the 

requirements of a future career of interest, keeps them 

motivated to continue their education and introduces them 

to the importance of emotional intelligence and soft skills 

to be successfully and meaningfully employed. 

Each summer, the Students2Work Program provides 125 

high school juniors and seniors with an eight-week paid 

internship with local employers. Students are selected 

based on academic and interpersonal criteria and matched 

to a wide variety of industry sectors including professional 

services, hospitality, technology, health care and 

manufacturing. Students are screened with background 


1117_T_68_AM____.indd 68 

10/15/2019 5:11:40 PM

Enoch Tarver partner Ed Enoch, from left, works with Cornell Harris of Richmond County Technical Career Magnet School, and with 

fellow partner Ed Tarver during the annual Students2Work program, which gives Richmond County schoolchildren a two-month paid 

internship sponsored by area employers. [CONTRIBUTED] 

and drug checks and are also required to attend 32 hours of 

soft-skills training before their work experience begins. 

Over the last two years, local employers have invested 

nearly $500,000 in employing students through the 

program. Employers have noted that the program builds 

recognition for their company and their sector to promote 

future recruitment. It has also given them an important 

glimpse into the next generational cohort, Generation Z, 

and how these young workers will impact their business. 

Digital Inclusion: In 2018, an initiative was developed 

to quantify the number of students in the Richmond 

County School System that do not have home internet. 

This effort was important due to the district’s interest 

in rolling out their 1:1 Initiative which aims to provide all 

students with a personal device and to ensure that all students 

have the opportunity to learn the use of technology 

for their education and skill development outside of the 

classroom. To the knowledge of the Chamber and RCSS, 

this had never been done before in the state of Georgia. 

After an extensive research period, heat maps were 

created with data points for both existing broadband 

infrastructure and home subscription and it was 

determined that approximately 4,000 students in the 

school system do not have access to the internet in the 

home environment. What was additionally clear from 

the maps, was that 30% of the students were clustered 

across just five census tracts opening up opportunities 

for geographically engineered solutions for free wi-fi. 

On Aug. 1, the Chamber and RCSS hosted the first 

of its kind, The Augusta Digital Inclusion Summit. The 

Summit brought together the business community, the 

Board of Education, the Augusta-Richmond County 

Commission, telecommunications carriers and others to 

begin the conversation on the importance of technology 

equity for all citizens and the opportunities for public/ 

private partnerships to improve access. A Task Force of 

volunteers from the Summit will continue conversations 

on leveraging existing technology assets to close the 

gap and raise awareness of the need for abundant free or 

low-cost resources to families and their children. 

Telling The Story: Tools for parents to navigate the 

abundant opportunities available to students offered 

by the Richmond County School System and to put the 

right information into the hands of high influencers has 

been a priority of community’s desire to champion the 

district’s continuing success. 


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10/15/2019 5:12:01 PM

Over the past few years, the District has 

made significant changes in adding more 

specialized academic programs, building 

new schools and empowering parents to 

choose the kind of education they want 

for their children. With graduation rates, 

reading comprehension rates and test 

scores improving at many county schools, 

existing and new residents in Augusta- 

Richmond County are anxious to enroll 

their children and benefit from a district 

that is leading in liberal arts, STEM, 

skilled trades and cyber technology. 

Over the past summer, the Chamber 

conducted a focus group of real estate 

professionals to learn more about how the 

district can support relocation and home 

selling experts. Key takeaways from the 

meetings included creating better online 

resources for new families by making the 

system more user friendly and expanding 

the district’s social network communications; 

with a special emphasis on 

improving the district’s digital footprint 

of old and outdated information. Watch 

for more information soon on how the 

Richmond County School System will 

address these findings and continue to 

serve the needs of our ever-growing 

population. 

Jasmine Yancey stands with 

Blanchard and Calhoun 

Executive Vice President 

Thomas M. Blanchard III. The 

A.R. Johnson Health Science and 

Engineering Magnet High School 

student was among dozens 

of participants in the annual 

Students2Work program this 

year. [CONTRIBUTED] 


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1117_T_71_AM____.indd 71 

10/30/2019 3:29:51 PM

DOWNTOWN PARKING 

‘SMART’ 

PARKING METERS 

RECOMMENDED FOR 

DOWNTOWN 

Hourly charge could be paid using cell phones 

By SUSAN McCORD 

“Augusta +” could be the name of a new paid parking 

space program downtown. 

Among the recommendations made by SP+, the city’s 

consultant on the metered parking program, is a logo and 

other marketing tools to inform the public about the system, 

said Jason Sutton, regional manager for SP+. 

The firm is recommending implementing paid on-street 

parking along Broad Street between the Fifth and 13th street 

bridges and on side streets between Reynolds and Greene 

streets, Sutton said. 

Long-sought by some to increase retail opportunities 

downtown, the Augusta Commission agreed last month to 

hire SP+ to design a system to bring back to the commission 

later for approval. The firm began stakeholder sessions in 

October. 

At a proposed rate of $1.50 per hour, motorists can pay 

either on their cell phones or at one of 50-60 kiosks to park 

for a certain amount of time set by the city. They reserve 

space by entering their license plate number, he said. 

SP+, which has contracts with cities large and small, has 

more than 40 percent of parking transactions are done on 

cell phones, Sutton said. The kiosks have large LED screens 

that “walk (users) through the process,” he said. 

The same logo will appear on public parking decks, which 

will be priced at a rate lower than the on-street rate, he said. 

Parking revenue – which Sutton said would be somewhere 

under $1 million the first year – would be returned 

to a “parking benefits district” for beautification, repairs, 

marketing and additional “ambassadors” for large events, he 

said. 

The targeted side streets, as well as Greene and Ellis, have 

spaces that could be made long-term, employee, residential 

or short-term parking. 

Scott Fox, of Parkeon, displayed his company’s parking kiosks at an 

October session on Augusta’s proposal to implement paid on-street 

parking downtown. [SUSAN McCORD/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 


1117_T_72_AM____.indd 72 

10/25/2019 12:43:21 PM

Parking is particularly difficult to find in downtown’s 1000 block of Broad Street, which is near 

numerous popular bars and restaurants. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

SP+ will train as many as a dozen 

workers – half full time and half part time 

and hired by the city – to operate the 

system, he said. 

Employees will issue tickets and review 

and process appeals. Continued opposition 

will go before a “retired judge or solicitor” 

or the like who’s agreed to take on the task, 

he said. Those who challenge their tickets 

are likely to “see what should be a minimum 

of three pictures of the violation,” said SP+ 

representative Natasha Labi. 

PAY WHEN YOU GO 

Study finds most drivers prefer paying 

for parking when exiting the spot 

Expecting to find parking spots directly 

in front of downtown businesses is not 

just an “Augusta” thing. 

A recent study commissioned by the 

Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation 

Center shows most downtown drivers 

will overwhelmingly choose parking on 

the street over a parking lot or a deck, 

even if “the alternatives have an identical 

walking distance and parking fee.” 

The study found the average willingness 

to pay for on-street parking among 

participants was $2.65, with the majority 

of respondents saying they preferred 

to pay for street parking upon departure 

versus upon arrival, with a fixed-rate 

parking fee. 

Most prefer debit or credit-card meters 

and kiosks that maintain an open account 

period until the driver confirms an exit 

command, which keeps drivers from 

having to worry about the meter expiring 

and incurring a citation. For meters set 

up to charge drivers a fee to a set period of 

time, the study found the parking violator 

“did not deliberately intend to break” 

the parking rules. Most “accidentally 

exceeded the duration,” the report found. 

The lower the price of on-street parking, 

the more “crusing” motorists will do 

to find a parking spot, the study said. The 

report cites previous studies that have stated 

between 8% to 74% of downtown traffic is 

crusing for parking spots, with the average 

length of time a driver spends searching for 

on-street spaces is 3.5-14 minutes. 

The survey queried respondents in 

New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., 

San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, 

Phoenix and Blacksburg, Va. 

Oklahoma City put the first parking 

meter into service in 1935 to increase traffic 

turnover in its dense business district. 

Most have been coin-operated but wireless 

and digital technology has enabled 

newer ones to accept electronic payments. 

— Staff Research 


1117_T_72_AM____.indd 73 

10/25/2019 12:43:27 PM

SALES TAX-FUNDED STREET 

PROJECTS PROGRESSING 

Some work won’t be started until 2022 

By SUSAN McCORD 

Several downtown Augusta streetscape projects wait their 

turn while the Transportation Investment Act sales tax has 

funded some $11.6 million in other transportation projects in and 

around downtown. 

Since the 1% tax went into effect in 2012, collections have paid 

to repair and restore four bridges over the Augusta Canal where 

the canal meanders into downtown Augusta. Bridges at Seventh, 

11th and 15th streets as well as two on Broad Street received a 

combined $3.3 million in upgrades, according to state records. 

A more inviting gateway into downtown Augusta would be constructed at 

13th Street under the proposed streetscape plan city officials have discussed 

for transportation sales tax funding. [SPECIAL] 


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LEFT: Projects in “Band 2” of the sales tax-funded 

transportation improvements in downtown Augusta include a 

$9.1 million repair and restoration of the Fifth Street bridge over 

the Savannah River, which could be converted to a pedestrianonly 

bridge. [JOE HOTCHKISS/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] 

The priciest project completed so far is the $8.3 million 

reconstruction of John C. Calhoun Expressway, which 

funnels commuters in and out of downtown at 13th and 

15th streets. 

Under construction now with about a year to go is a 

$5 million upgrade to 15th Street, to include medians, 

repaving and improved access by people with disabilities 

between Calhoun and Central Avenue. 

“We put the emphasis on the street portion first,” said 

John Ussery, the city’s traffic engineer. “We wanted to 

finish the roadway first so we can lessen the impact on 

traffic.” 

Going in later is a new eight-foot multi-use path 

accessible by both pedestrians and bicyclists on the east 

side of 15th, he said. 

The 15th Street project is in the 10-year tax’s Band 2, 

meaning all projects must be under way by the end of 

2019. 

Also in Band 2 are a $6.2 million reconstruction of 

James Brown Boulevard and a $9.1 million repair and 

restoration of the Fifth Street bridge over the Savannah 

River. 

City leaders have said the bridge likely will be converted 

to a pedestrian-only bridge. 

The downtown streetscape projects, which captured 

the public’s imagination during a series of 2016 input 

sessions, are in Band 3 of the tax and must be ready for 

construction by the end of 2022 when the tax expires. 

Ussery said the plan is to start with Telfair and 13th 

streets. 

On Telfair, $19 million is budgeted for resurfacing, 

curb and gutter, storm drainage and streetscape work 

between 15th Street and East Boundary. 

The same treatment for $3.1 million is planned for 13th 

between R.A. Dent Boulevard and Reynolds Street. 

“The current plan is to start with Telfair and 13th then 

proceed to the numbered streets then to Greene and 

Broad at the end of the process,” Ussery said. 

Fifth and Sixth streets were budgeted a combined $14 

million for resurfacing, curb and gutter, storm drainage 

and streetscape work. 

The priciest project downtown is Broad, budgeted at 

$25 million that is not expected to cover the entirety of 

work between Washington and Sand Bar Ferry roads. 

A team assembling a project list for the next sales tax 

has included another $50 million to continue the curb 

and gutter, streetscape, storm drainage and resurfacing 

work on Broad. 

Ambitious plans to reshape downtown streets, such as depicted in this artist rendition of an improved Broad Street near the Augusta 

Common, are several years in the future. [SPECIAL] 


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BURNS continued from 19 

“This school has so much history. That’s why I love it; the feeling 

I get when I walk though the doors in the morning,” she said. 

As it has for the past four decades, the high-performing magnet 

school draws students from throughout Richmond County. Burns, 

who grew up in south Augusta, attended elementary and middle 

school at the K-8 facility before earning her diploma at nearby A.R. 

Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet School. 

Burns attended both Paine College and Augusta University 

after graduating in 2006, but she never completed her degree. She 

acknowledges she was rudderless as a young adult, neither building 

a sustainable career nor working toward he childhood goal. 

“It was a period of time where I just wanted to do some soul 

searching,” she said, adding that she worked various jobs in 

Augusta before moving to Atlanta. “I always ended up in some kind 

of training role, which is a form of teaching. I think maybe around 

this time I decided to go back to school. I said, ‘I know this is my 

calling.’ It was something that I prayed about. It was something 

that was continuously revealed to me.” 

She finished her degree at Troy University in 2016, taking a job 

teaching first grade at the DeKalb County School District’s DeKalb 

Academy of Technology & Environment in Stone Mountain, Ga. 

Burns was enjoyed living in suburban Atlanta and partaking in its 

big-city amenities. 

Then she got homesick. 

“I was in Atlanta for five years,” she said. “I loved the school 

that I was at. I loved the kids. I loved the team. I loved the school 

administrators. I definitely enjoyed my time there, but I just knew I 

had this feeling like a year before I moved. I was just ready to come 

back home.” 

She would take note of Augusta’s booming economy when 

visiting her mother and her stepfather, who was a former ROTC 

instructor at Glenn Hills High School. Burns, who grew up attending 

Augusta’s Mount Cavalry Baptist Church (she’s now a member 

of Tabernacle Baptist Church), believes in the affirmations as 

described in Proverbs 18:21, which says “Death and life are in the 

power of the tongue.” 

One night she made an affirmation: “If I move back to Augusta,” 

she said. “I will work at C.T. Walker Magnet School.” 

Two months later, a job for a first-grade teacher opened at C.T. 

Walker. She applied and was offered the job “five minutes” after 

C.T. Walker Principal Aletha Snowberger got off the phone with 

her principal at DeKalb Academy. 

“I do believe this is God’s plan,” Burns said. “I do believe it was 

already divinely ordered.” 

Burns said she enjoys teaching first graders because they are at 

an age where their “foundations are built.” It’s not always easy 

transitioning children from free-form kindergartners to structured 

students, but the challenge is what makes the job worthwhile. 

“I will say I have my moments, just like any other job where you get 

frustrated and tired, but I look forward to coming back every day,” 

said Burns, whose desk nameplate reads “Today Will Be Awesome.” 

“It does not feel like work at all. I love my students. I love what I do. I 

love when they have their ‘aha moments.’ It’s just really heartwarming 

to see someone six or seven years old look up to you.” 

Science, she said, is her favorite subject to teach because of the 

inherent opportunities for exploration. She said children enjoy 

learning about the natural world around them, such as weather 

patterns and how plants grow. 

She said children are essentially the same as they were when she 

was their age. With a few exceptions. 

“The real difference I see in kids today is the technology. If I ask 

‘What did you do last night?’ They will say, ‘Oh, I was playing on 

my iPad,’ “ Burns said. “I remember when I was in first grade, I 

wanted to finish my homework so I could go outside and play. I was 

riding my bike. I was racing. I was jump-roping. I was playing with 

kids in the neighborhood. I don’t see a lot of that anymore; kids 

staying outside until the sun goes down and actually get a lot of 

physical activity.” 

Burns said she has enjoyed getting reacquainted with her old 

school, which earlier this year was recognized as a Blue Ribbon 

School, an honor bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education 

on only 362 schools nationwide this year. The award brought back 

memories for Burns, who had just left middle school when C.T. 

Walker was named a Georgia School of Excellence in 2003. 

She’s also indulged in nostalgia by thumbing through old 

yearbooks and class pictures in the school’s library, and showing 

students where her old classrooms used to be, and giving history 

lessons about the school’s principals, whose portraits hang on a 

wall in the school’s main corridor. 

But most of all, Burns enjoys being surrounded by colleagues 

committed to carrying on the legacy of the C.T. Walker school, a 

place that has left an indelible imprint on her life. 

“The teachers are here for the development and nurturing of 

students. That’s one of the reason I wanted to teach here is that I 

loved the teachers when I was a student here,” Burns said. “I do 

feel as if I was not only taught academically, but I was nurtured.” 


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1117_T_77_AM____.indd 77 

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SPIVEY continued from 23 

Although Spivey was a Richmond Academy alumnus, he 

politely declined the offer. But then the “offer” politely turned 

into an order. 

So in 2009, a somewhat reluctant Spivey took the helm of a 

school that had lost its luster in the 34 years since he roamed 

its halls as a senior. But his three years as principal not only 

changed the school – it changed Spivey’s life. 

“It was the best job I ever had,” said Spivey, who retired 

from the school system in 2014 as deputy superintendent. 

Although graduation rates, test scores and other performance 

metrics increased under his leadership, Spivey 

considers his crowning achievement to be restoring the historic 

school’s sense of pride, and its decorum. 

“The school was out of control,” Spivey said. “They were 

having some gang issues, a lot of fighting going on. There just 

wasn’t a lot of pride in the school. The teachers were just kind 

of down and out.” 

Spivey made sweeping changes at the school, relying on a 

common-sense based playbook the former physical education 

teacher and coach developed during his years in administration, 

first as a principal at Tutt Middle School and later as 

principal at Westside. 

First on the list was restoring order. Spivey got security officers 

out of the central office and dispersed them throughout 

the three-story building. Then he changed the policy to allow 

students to enter the building when they arrived at school - 

just like Westside - rather than letting them crowd around the 

school’s locked doors. 

“You can imagine what it was like not letting them in until 

the bell sounded,” Spivey said. “You’ve got 1,300 students 

trying to rush the doors.” 

Spivey also cut the school’s three lunch periods to two, 

eliminated the second period that cut into classroom time. He 

reduced lunchroom crowding by implementing an intramural 

basketball program, which encouraged many students to eat 

faster to play and watch the games. He also had the school’s 

former cafeteria, which had been turned into a weight room 

during the 1980s, turned into a seniors-only lunchroom, which 

dispersed the crowds even more. (The lunchroom was later 

renamed The Carl T. Spivey Cafe in his honor.) 

He boosted school spirit by replacing damaged trophy cases, 

which had been broken during fights, with new cases built 

by a friend who was a master carpenter. The cracked tiles at 

the school’s main entrance were replaced by floating wood 

flooring with the school’s “R” logo prominently painted in 

the middle. Against the advice of his colleagues, he allowed a 

bonfire to be lighted during homecoming. 

“Everybody had a great time, nobody got in trouble,” Spivey 

said. “Those are just the little things to kind of restore that high 

school atmosphere. It didn’t hurt that the football team was 

good and they were winning - that adds a lot of school spirit. 

“Football’s the first sport of the year. If it does well, a lot of 

kids get on the bandwagon and it makes a lot of difference with 

the culture of the school. If (the athletes and cheerleaders) are 

not doing well, then other people become the ‘cool’ kids.” 

Spivey himself was a high school athlete, getting baseball 

scholarships to South Georgia State College and the University 

of West Georgia. His first jobs in the school system were 

teaching physical education and serving as a coach at several 

county schools before moving into administration in 1996 as 

assistant principal of Westside High School. 

When it came to discipline or counseling students from 

disadvantaged backgrounds, Spivey could draw on his own 

experiences growing up in Augusta’s blue-collar Harrisburg 

neighborhood, which at the time was home to many textile mill 

workers, city employees and other working-class families. 

His first home was in the Olmstead Homes public housing 

project before his father, a firefighter, moved the family to 

a home on nearby Lake Avenue. Like many Harrisburg kids, 

Spivey attended John Milledge Elementary and Tubman Junior 

High, and spent a lot of time at Chafee Park’s pool and gymnasium, 

as well as the adjacent Whataburger and the Boys & Girls 

Club on Division Street. 

“I always thought we were kind of middle class, but as I look 

back, we probably were kind of poor,” Spivey recalls. “But our 

parents made us go to church on Sunday and taught us good 

lessons. The neighborhood people, everybody watched out for 

everybody, so I think I learned some good life lessons by being 

raised in Harrisburg. I think my older friends would say the 

same thing. 

“I think being raised in Harrisburg helped me stay 

grounded,” he said. “As I became a principal, I could relate 

to the kids. At Richmond Academy, we had a very diverse 

population. I always felt like I could relate well to all of them 

because I knew where I came from.” 

Spivey’s biggest contribution to restoring pride in Richmond 

Academy was his idea to establish a school “Hall of Fame.” He 

came up with the concept after seeing a similar program at a 

smaller school while on a cross-state cycling trip with his wife. 

With a charter dating back to 1783, Richmond Academy 

has produced numerous noteworthy graduates, from former 

Supreme Court Justice Joseph R. Lamar to Forrest “Spec” 

Towns, Georgia’s first Olympian and first gold medal 

recipient. 

Spivey and a committee began working on the Hall of Fame 

and in 2012 named its first inductees, which included former 

Georgia Gov. Carl Sanders, anchorwoman Judy Woodruff and 

NCAA Hall of Fame coach Pat Dye. Portraits of inductees hang 

in the school’s media room and recipients are recognized at an 

awards banquet every October. 

“I think it has really helped pull the community back into the 

school,” Spivey said. 

The Hall of Fame’s bylaws state that at least one inductee 

each year be an educator. This year, that educator happens to 

be Spivey, who after leaving Richmond Academy served as the 

school system’s deputy superintendent as well as its interim 

superintendent until his retirement in 2014. 

In all his 34 years as an educator and administrator, Spivey 

still considers his three years at Richmond Academy as the 

high watermark of his career. 

“I know that our graduation rates improved and out test 

scores improved,” Spivey said. “But the biggest thing that 

changed was the atmosphere. That feeling of being able to 

enjoy school.” 


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JONES continued from 27 

them about all the things that you can have, their mouths open 

because they think those things can come only by being a rap 

artist.” 

Changing young minds one student at a time has been a pursuit 

of Jones ever since his Universal Plumbing service turned 

into one of the region’s largest plumbing contractors. 

It’s a mission forged out of his own upbringing, a ragsto-riches 

story shaped by Jones’ ambition, fortitude and 

old-fashioned hard work. 

Jones can relate to many of the students because he used to be 

like them, having grown up in what was once – and still is – one 

of Augusta’s poorest neighborhoods. Jones’ father, who worked 

at the Merry Bros. brickyard, had a second-grade education; his 

mother, who worked as a maid for wealthy Augusta families, left 

school in junior high. 

But both were insistent their son graduate high school, work 

hard and – above all else – stay out of trouble. 

Jones was a standout defensive end on the Josey High team but 

was admittedly mediocre in the classroom 

“I was not an “F” student, but I was a terrible student,” Jones 

acknowledged. “I was just not student-oriented. I was not college 

material.” 

This is all the more reason Jones’ inspirational talks stress the 

skilled trades as a career path, particularly for students who are 

not interested – nor able to afford – a four-year college degree. 

Most of Jones’ employees, who can be seen crisscrossing 

the metro area in the company’s signature white trucks, earn 

$70,000 to $90,000 a year providing needed services. 

“They’re using their hands and they’re helping customers,” 

Jones said. “They’re taking care of people, and in return, those 

people take care of us. This is honest work – this is is hard work.” 

He is proud his alma mater is now home to the Marion E. 

Barnes Career Center, a 20,000-foot-facility that offers students 

work-ready programs in everything from welding and 

HVAC repair to general construction and cosmetology. Jones 

helped create the curriculum for Josey’s plumbing program 

through his work on the Richmond County Board of Education’s 

CTAE Advisory Council. Jones also is a longtime member of 

Augusta Technical College’s board of directors, as well as a 

Heritage Academy. 

He is involved in so many organizations and civic projects 

that he’s had to enlist the help of his niece and business manager, 

Shalanda Morris, a Harvard-educated former educator 

headteacher, to oversee his civic commitments and charitable 

contributions. 

For Jones, who earned his Georgia master plumber’s license 

by studying nights and weekends while working in the Medical 

College of Georgia’s maintenance department, his mind was set 

on running his own business from day one. 

At the time, black plumbers were a rarity – and black plumbing 

company owners were almost non-existent. Jones distinctly 

recalls the derision heaped upon him during the company’s early 

years in the 1980s. 

Jones recalls his contemporaries laughing at his white truck – 

uncommon in the industry associated with dirt and grime – and 

how a competitor he met at a plumbing supply store once asked 

for one of his Universal Plumbing T-shirts so he “could put it on 

the wall and throw darts at it.” 

“It was their way of saying, ‘Stay in your space. Stay in your 

lane,’ “ Jones said. “It was like they were saying, ‘You’re not 

supposed to be here.’” 

Jones persevered by falling back on the advice his mother, 

Laura Frances Jones, gave him one day when he considered quitting 

the football team because he was tired of getting “hurt.” 

She said, ‘Are you hurt, or are you injured? If you’re hurt, you 

get back up and do it again. If you’re injured, you can’t do it,” Jones 

recalled. “So if you’re not injured, you keep getting back up.’” 

The ridicule that had hurt Jones’ feelings during his company’s 

early years was distilled into high-octane ambition. 

“I was hurt,” he said. “But I wasn’t injured.” 

Jones hopes to instill the same values in students trying to find 

their way in the world while carrying baggage from growing up in 

often-dysfunctional homes. When mentoring troubled children, 

many of whom are lower-income African-Americans, Jones uses 

the analogy of being hit by shrapnel from a hand grenade thrown 

at someone else. 

“That’s (the lesson) we have to give kids because they’re 

beat down. Some of them are collateral damage,” Jones said. “I 

always tell them, you might be experiencing bad things in your 

family, in your life. It’s not intended for you.” 

But Jones’ biggest challenge is trying to instill a work ethic in 

a generation that has never known what real poverty is. Jones’ 

boyhood home on Meadow Street, just blocks from Josey High 

School, was on a dirt road that didn’t have running water until 

the late 1950s. 

The bathroom was a backyard outhouse. The hand-powered 

well pump that Jones muscled as a child is prominently displayed 

at his office on Milledgeville Road as a reminder of his dirt-poor 

roots and as an inspiration to new and prospective employees. 

“So many kids are not taught the value of work. They’ve been 

given the $150 sneakers and the things that pacify them, but the 

skills and talents that they may have, haven’t been cultivated,” 

he said. “So when they get out of high school, they have this 

mentality of having been given all of this stuff, but not knowing 

how to honestly get it. So sometimes they go south.” 

Like many contractors, Jones believes too many children with 

an aptitude for skilled-trade jobs have been steered toward fouryear 

college-degree programs that, in many cases, they will not 

complete or end up owing more in student debt than the degree 

is worth. 

Jones acknowledges there are some students who, for myriad 

reasons, will not follow his example and instead seek easy money 

through criminal activity. Many of them, unfortunately, will end 

up incarcerated. Some may wind up dead in the streets. 

It’s a tragic scenario he sees on an all-to-regular basis as a 

member of the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice’s advisory 

board. 

Still, Jones is undeterred. He considers it a victory to put at 

least one student on the road to success – be it in the skilled 

trades or some other “honest” occupation. 

“I’ve done everything I can to help (young people) in their 

lives,” Jones said. “My success is making sure that their bills are 

paid, that they’re taking care of families and that they’re making 

the money they want through the right choices.” 


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10/25/2019 12:08:29 PM

BRIEFINGBy DAMON CLINE 

HITS & MISSES 

GREENE STREET IMPROVEMENTS: The sidewalk and paver work along the 

Greene Street corridor look great, and so do the new traffic circles in the historic 

Laney-Walker/Bethlehem neighborhood. Hopefully, these are just a little taste of the 

improvements to come when the transportation tax-funded downtown streetscape 

plan starts getting implemented. The plan will not only make the city more walkable 

and bikeable, but give a much-needed facelift to streets and thoroughfares that 

haven’t seen major investment since the 1970s. Downtown’s public spaces deserve to 

match the vibrancy of its private ones. 

BID OPPOSITION: The majority of downtown property owners and stakeholders 

are not satisfied with the city’s current level of attention to downtown infrastructure 

and cleanliness, which is why grumblings for renewal of the city’s former 

downtown Business Improvement District never went away after the Augusta 

Commission disbanded the original program, created in 2007, years ago. The 

downtown of today, clearly, is not the downtown of a decade ago. Members of the 

Augusta Commission have repeatedly stated they have no interest in renewing the 

self-funded program that operated the Clean Augusta Downtown Initiative (known 

as “CADI”) even if a majority of property owners want it. We have to ask: Why? 

EDGAR’S ABOVE BROAD: We can’t think of a better way to get new people to 

take a second look at an older downtown building. The operators of 699 Broad St.’s 

storied Pinnacle Club, Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia and the CSRA, have 

upped the ante and are in the process of expanding their hospitality operation at the 

downtown midrise to include a balcony bar in the building’s currently-vacant executive 

suite on the third floor. The bar/eatery, to be called Edgar’s Above Broad, should 

be a complimentary addition to the city’s burgeoning theater/cultural district on the 

700 block as well as the office building’s future tenants. 

DEPOT POLITICS: Efforts by what appears to be a small cadre of Augusta 

Commissioners to derail the $94 million Riverfront at the Depot project is as 

lamentable as it is mystifying. Why would any city officials work overtime to throw 

wrenches into the gears of a tax base-boosting project that would be the largest 

private-sector investment in downtown in nearly three decades? We’ve yet to hear 

a cogent explanation. Yes, issues with the project’s parking lot still need to be 

worked out with the neighboring Unisys office, but there is almost no downside to 

the deal enabling a developer to transform property vacant for five decades into a 

vibrant mixed-use development. If anyone can point to a legitimate liability or risk 

in this public-private partnership, please show us. 


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HITS & MISSES 

MORE GREENSPACE: An oft-overlooked component of the future Depot at the 

Riverfront mixed-use development is the nearly 2-acre greenbelt that will separate 

the historic depot building from the multistory apartment and retail complex along 

the riverfront. Officials with the development company say they plan to make the 

space a public greenbelt, complete with year-round programming, such as outdoor 

movie nights, cultural events and staging areas for nonprofit organizations. Locals 

looking for a grassy spot to”hang out” along the riverfront will find what they’ve 

been seeking. 

THE METER IS RUNNING: Things may have changed by the time this edition is 

out, but as of press time, there is still no downtown parking plan to speak of. Which 

is somewhat perplexing, given that lack of parking is – at the very least – in the 

top three barriers to economic development in the city’s central business district. 

There clearly needs to be a method for enforcing “turnover” in the limited number 

of surface spots along Broad Street and other major downtown arteries, but there 

also is a need for an additional parking deck or two in the central business district 

to accommodate future office workers and residents. How can the city work on the 

big tasks if it can’t complete the little ones? 

“PTVS” DOWNTOWN: Personal transportation vehicles, or PTVs (better known 

to the general public as “golf cars”), should be a common site in downtown 

Augusta. After all, the Augusta-metro area produces nearly 90% of the world’s 

vehicles. Kudos to the Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau for working with city 

officials on an ordinance permitting their use downtown. Although the vehicles 

have yet to become a downtown staple – the CVB has yet to contract with a PTVbased 

tour company – there could come a day in the near future when downtown 

residents and major downtown employers use the smaller vehicles to get around in 

the defined boundaries of the central business district. That could alleviate downtown’s 

parking problem and reduce automobile emissions. 

SLOW ON THE SAVANNAH: It’s one thing for the Army Corps of Engineers to 

recommend an environmental mitigation plan for the Savannah River that robs 

Augusta of its beloved river “pool,” it’s another to keep locals in suspense for 

months to reach a final decision. The Corps’ plan to deal with the environmental 

impact of the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam – tearing it down and replacing it 

with a rock pile that lowers the river levels in downtown Augusta – is simply unpalatable 

to metro Augusta. Prolonging the decision process and the metro area’s 

ability to fight it – most likely through a federal lawsuit – doesn’t do either side any 

good. We’d like to avoid a fight, but if one is unavoidable, we’d prefer to get it over 

with sooner than later. 


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10/25/2019 12:49:34 PM

GRADING DOWNTOWN 

6.5 5.5 6.5 2.0 


PUBLIC SAFETY 

Previous Score: 6.5 

GOVERNMENT 


HOUSING 


PARKING 


Owners of bars, restaurants 

and nightclubs – some of downtown 

Augusta's most thriving 

businesses – are largely not 

responsible for what their patrons 

do after they leave the premises. 

The brutal assault on a young 

patron outside The Scene nightclub 

in August, allegedly by a trio 

of fellow club-goers upset over an 

incident that occurred in the club, 

is not something club management 

could have foreseen or 

prevented. While such an incident 

could have happened at any nightclub 

in the city, it would behoove 

club owners and their security 

personnel to be extra vigilant. 

It's difficult to get city leaders to 

invest more in the city's growing 

downtown when middling growth 

in its tax base has essentially 

kept budgets frozen in austerity 

mode. But numerous examples 

of questionable spending – the 

fuel allotment for commissioners 

being a prime example – begs the 

question: Is it too much to ask for 

just a little more money to keep 

downtown looking presentable? 

A little extra investment toward 

landscaping and graffiti removal 

could go a long way toward 

making the central business 

district more welcoming to locals 

and visitors alike. 

Several small- to large-sized 

residential developments are 

in the works in the urban core, 

but until those come to fruition, 

it will be difficult to attract the 

businesses – namely grocery 

stores – that will make downtown 

more "livable." There are 

constant rumors swirling about 

replacing subsidized housing 

units downtown with marketrate 

apartments – the Richmond 

Summit complex on the 700 block 

being the prime example – but 

such improvements would require 

buy-in from the private property 

owners. And it doesn't appear 

those owners have much motivation 

to make a change under the 

current climate. 

8.5 5.5 7 8 

We've asked the question so many 

times it's almost become comical: 

Why must it take so long to implement 

a managed-parking program 

in downtown Augusta? It's not as 

if the city is in uncharted territory 

on this one; numerous cities in 

Georgia have successfully implemented 

parking-enforcement 

plans. Such programs are about 

as close to being an "off-theshelf" 

solution as any government 

service. The fact that a parkingmanagement 

plan is nearly a year 

overdue lends credence to the 

notion of Augusta city government 

being mired in bureaucracy. 

Please prove us wrong and get a 

system in place ASAP. 

DEVELOPMENT 


INFRASTRUCTURE 


ARTS & CULTURE 


COMMERCE 


It's been years since we've been 

this excited about the potential 

for redeveloping long-vacant 

downtown buildings in the city's 

urban core. The owner of several 

of downtown's largest and most 

prominent buildings has taken a 

major step by contracting with 

a professional commercial real 

estate firm to explore redevelopment 

options for her buildings. 

Another major property owner, 

whose holdings include the 

former Belk warehouse building 

along the Augusta Common, also 

appears ready to turn an eyesore 

property into productive use – 

once they resolve the building's 

structural problems that caused 

officials to close one lane of 

Reynolds Street. 

The maintenance of downtown's 

landscapes and hardscapes is so 

inconsistent that many downtown 

property owners – the most 

visible being Wynn Capital's Rob 

Wynn – have resorted to personally 

getting involved in the 

upkeep of public spaces. While 

such civic-minded volunteerism 

is to be applauded, it should also 

send a message to city officials 

that the central business district 

needs more attention than it 

receives. Look no further than the 

dead and dying trees along the 

recently completed James Brown 

Boulevard streetscape project. 

OVERALL SCORE: 

6.19 

Previous score: 6.18 

The backlash against proposals for 

Augusta's gateway public art installations 

does not bode well for plans 

to expand public art in the central 

business district, which is woefully 

lacking when compared to the more 

vibrant peer cities of Asheville, N.C., 

and Greenville, S.C. Public art helps 

create a sense of place and gives 

residents and visitors alike something 

to enjoy while exploring our 

historic downtown. On the upside, 

the Augusta Convention & Visitors 

Bureau's recently opened "visitor 

experience center," Augusta & Co., 

has become a great addition to 

downtown. 

Officials with the Downtown 

Development Authority report 

downtown business owners 

are very satisfied with their 

customer activity. More visitors 

– and locals – are making the 

decision to explore the central 

business district's cultural and 

entertainment offerings. New 

businesses, such as the American 

Journeyman boutique and the 

future Mexican eatery being 

developed at the former Blue Sky 

Kitchen restaurant, are signs of 

positive growth. And the massive 

Riverfront at the Depot project 

should help lure additional traffic 

to Broad Street's east end. 


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10/15/2019 6:07:42 PM

FINAL WORDS 

Partnerships help 

Richmond County schools, 

but more can be done 

DAMON CLINE, EDITOR 

Producing this edition of 

1736, which focuses on the 

strides Richmond County has 

made to improve its school 

system, has me reminiscing 

about my own high school experience. 

I was not honor roll material; what I cared about 

most were metal shop and the student newspaper. 

The reason I'm a journalist and not a welder 

can be traced to one embarrassing incident I will 

describe momentarily. 

First, a little background: My school was in a small 

southern Arizona mining town, an area so rural kids 

from two neighboring towns were bused in. 

I was oblivious to my school's lack of resources 

until my junior and senior years when teachers 

began taking me and my classmates to large urban 

and suburban schools in Tucson – the nearest city – 

for field trips, workshops and conferences. 

One of those excursions was a VICA tournament 

held at one of Tucson's largest high schools. VICA 

was the "Vocational Industrial Clubs of America." 

It's now called "SkillsUSA" – a national organization 

that promotes technical jobs, skilled-service 

occupations and construction trades to young 

people. 

I was doing quite well in the competition, with 

judges giving me high marks in the arc and oxyacetylene 

categories. Then the tournament coordinator 

led us to the MIG stations. 

My intestines turned to jelly. 

I knew nothing about metal inert gas; my school 

didn't have a MIG welder. I discretely apprised the 

coordinator of the situation. He gave me a pitying 

look, offered me a two-minute tutorial and provided 

tepid words of encouragement: "Just do the 

best you can." 

When it came time to show our work, my lack 

of skill was on display for all to see. A strong 

five-year-old could have snapped my welds. The 

big-city kids snickered. 

In that one moment, I was done with the industrial 

arts. Journalism, here we come. 

I relay this anecdote to highlight the importance 

of community involvement in schools. Had my 

school formed partnerships with regional business 

and industry, nonprofits or foundations, our 

metal shop might have had a MIG, or maybe even its 

sexier cousin, TIG (tungsten inert gas). 

This edition of 1736 highlights the power of 

partnerships and how they can help area schools – 

particularly those with special needs, such as 

Richmond County's. These alliances can give struggling 

students a helping hand, raise the academic 

bar for college-minded students and provide more 

job-specific skills to graduates ready to go to work. 

The outpouring of support from Augusta-area 

community leaders and corporate citizens in recent 

years has had a measurable impact. But more can be 

done – both by the schools and the private sector – 

to strengthen existing partnerships and create new 

ones. 

It's a worthwhile endeavor. A little help today 

could create tomorrow's welder. Or auto technician. 

Or certified nursing assistant. Or computer 

network specialist. 

And maybe even the people who created this 

magazine: journalists. 


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10/25/2019 12:56:00 PM

Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

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