Education Edition - 1736 Magazine, Fall 2019

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READY FOR SCHOOL
Bradshaw formulates strategy as he reacquaints himself with Augusta
By DAMON CLINE
Dr. Kenneth Bradshaw,
Richmond County
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
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