Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Robert Tidwell (00:20):
welcome to the peach buzz brought to you by
Tidwell's Strimban injurylawyers, Woodstock Georgia's
personal injury law firm.
The peach buzz is a podcastdedicated to showcasing people,
making a positive impact in ourcommunities here in North
Georgia.
Today, we are very excited tohave a very special guest with
us.
Dr.
Brian Hightower, who is thesuperintendent of the Cherokee
(00:44):
County school district.
Welcome to The Peach Buzz, Dr.
Hightower.
Dr. Hightower (00:46):
Well, thank you, Robert.
I appreciate the invitation andI look forward to just spending
some time with you and talkingabout the school district and
our community at large Cherokeereally is a great place to be.
Robert Tidwell (00:57):
Yeah, I agree.
A hundred percent and I'll justbe a little transparent here.
I'm pretty excited about havingyou with us today.
I've had an opportunity to, tomeet you a few times over the
years, and I follow you onsocial media and, you know,
quite frankly, I think you're apretty interesting guy and I'm
very much looking forward togetting to know you a little bit
better here today.
Dr. Hightower (01:16):
I will tell you, my family would tell you you've
set your bar way too low, but Ido look forward to talking about
our County and our schooldistrict.
Uh, uh, I know that you'veresided here in Cherokee, a good
while now I've been here a goodwhile and it is great place to
plug into, to work and live andraise a family, go to church.
(01:37):
Uh, Enjoy the, the civic arenaaround here and obviously to, to
work and to contribute.
Great, great place to be.
Robert Tidwell (01:46):
Right.
Sort of as a point of interest,a lot of people might not know
this, but you are a bit of anoutdoors guy, is that right?
Dr. Hightower (01:52):
Uh, I do love to be outdoors.
That's right.
We're sitting here looking out awindow that shows a pretty blue
sky today.
Robert Tidwell (01:59):
Yeah, it's tempting.
Isn't it?
Dr. Hightower (02:00):
It is very tempting.
Robert Tidwell (02:01):
I see, sometimes you are hiking like the
Appalachian trail, um, otherplaces.
What are, what are some of yourfavorite places you've had a
chance to visit?
Dr. Hightower (02:10):
Thank you.
I, I do love to get out andenjoy the scenery.
A friend and I have been workinga little bit on the trail.
Uh, mostly weekends we'redefinitely do it in sections.
If you read anything about theATVs folks unplugged from their
lives for four or five, sixmonths, we're following a guy
right now on social media.
That's in his ninth month.
(02:30):
And I think he's just basicallyliving on the trail, but, uh,
that that's always fun.
There are lots of stories fromthe trail.
There's a lots of interestingpeople on the AT, so we've,
enjoyed that.
We're literally sitting at milefour 22, gonna run up next
weekend and do another, anotherbig section to knock it out.
For the we're almost inVirginia, we're knocking on the
(02:52):
door.
And so we do enjoy that.
Robert Tidwell (02:55):
That is very cool.
I have a younger brother, thatlong story, not quite as long,
we didn't have the opportunityof growing up together.
He grew up in Maine and I grewup in South Carolina.
he is currently in the army.
He is a major in the army.
he and I have an agreement thatonce he retires, we're going to
do the Appalachian trailtogether.
And it's kind of symbolic seeinghow he grew up in Maine at the
(03:18):
top end of the trail.
I grew up in South Carolina atthe almost bottom end of the
trail.
And so he and I have a plan tosplit it up over a couple of
summers whenever he retires
Dr. Hightower (03:28):
what a great adventure, you know, especially
to spend some time with familyand friends, so that, that 2000
miles you get to know eachother.
You may not have grown up withhim, but I guarantee you'll know
everything about him by the endof that.
So it really is interesting whenyou self-reflect.
You enjoy the scenery.
It's a tough go, you know, and Ithink that's really another
(03:50):
piece that really draws me tothat is I like the challenge.
I like the training, loved theviews and there are a lot of
views on the T that they don'tgive away for free.
You have to work real hard forthem, but that's, that's kinda,
for me, that's really neat.
And we've done some time inColorado and Arizona, Utah, if
you're a hiking enthusiast,that's just a must.
You just got to spend some time.
(04:11):
I read an article just thisweek.
Colorado has 58.
14,000 footers.
For folks to try to manage.
So it's prime country out there.
And so a lot of fun.
Robert Tidwell (04:23):
Beautiful out there.
I agree.
Dr. Hightower (04:25):
Great therapy.
Robert Tidwell (04:26):
Yes.
So you mentioned a minute agothat, you've been here in
Cherokee County for a while.
How long has it been?
Dr. Hightower (04:32):
So I came to Reinhardt as a college freshman.
I grew up nearby in Cartersvillejust to the West of us and, came
to Reinhart, a two year schooland never left.
They offered me a position overhousing.
as a, here I am, I'm nineteen 10years old.
And I'm trying to tell guys howto behave in the dorms.
So you can imagine the adventurethat was.
(04:53):
I would drive down to Kennesawin the morning and work on my ed
degree.
Come back and do housing allevening, met my wife there.
She's an education major aswell.
So we, we knocked out theKennesaw thing.
We were married young becauseReinhart, they didn't
necessarily pay me a lot ofmoney, but I had free housing
and I ate for free and she hadto pay a dollar in the
(05:13):
cafeteria.
So, I mean, again, the 1980s,right.
But, we got married.
We were in love and we're aboutto celebrate 37 years and loved
every minute of it.
But we, we decided to stay here,plug into the school district
here for our jobs.
And, ultimately I mentioned it'sjust a great place to be.
And in a fast growth districtprofessionally, it's really
(05:35):
great because in a schooldistrict that gives you
opportunities.
And so, you know, for sure.
For young professionals that areupwardly mobile, there are great
places to plug in.
And so, uh, I'm currently in my35th year with the school
district and loving everyminute.
Robert Tidwell (05:51):
That's awesome.
I was looking through your CVand I saw that from 2000 to
2003, you were the principal atET booth middle school.
And that's right at the timethat Lori and I moved here, we
moved here in Oh two and, youknow, Lori and I cut up all the
time about just how much growthwe've seen in this area.
I can only imagine how much moreyou've seen.
(06:12):
I mean, what was it like as yougo downtown Lake Parkway?
Now, if you ever drive back byET Booth
Dr. Hightower (06:18):
I do.
I was there.
I actually, we had a little jokerun and I was out there four
straight weeks for variousreasons, honoring employees,
seeing kids.
I'm a pretty activesuperintendent.
I like to plug in this morning.
I spent some time honoring oursupport staff employees of the
year.
We named three last night.
So I dropped in on them thismorning.
(06:39):
And, uh, so I am at booth andall around Woodstock.
And in the early days, Iactually spent 16 years at booth
as a teacher, and then wasfortunate enough to be named as
an assistant principal and thenultimately was named as
principal.
So, 16 years in a middle school,I, you know, I consider that
hazard somewhat and, probablyshould be double credited on my
(07:00):
years.
I took up golf right about thetime I, had finished my time at
booth and people, would maybelike, okay, my back swing and
they'd apologize.
Take another swing.
I was talking to them, you know,I ate in a middle school
cafeteria for 16 years.
I didn't even know you were onthe course with us, so it's just
tune it out.
That's right.
(07:21):
That's right now the great days,what a way to, to start a great
career.
Robert Tidwell (07:26):
Well, what were some of the things that
motivated you to get intoeducation as a career?
Dr. Hightower (07:30):
Well, I think probably most educators would
say that there, there areteachers that impacted their
lives and were positiveinfluences.
And I really very early, evenwhen I was at Reinhardt and
those first two years, a lot oftimes you're working core those
first two years.
And you don't even declare amajor maybe.
I was really working thatdirection.
(07:51):
Uh, wanted to be around.
Kids, wanted to coach, wanted todo some of those kinds of
things.
I get a lot of energy.
I would rather be around someonequite honestly, that's younger
than me.
Maybe that somebody that's more,that's older or more sedentary,
uh, you know, with kids andyou've got to have your own.
They either keep you young orthey make you old.
(08:11):
And I've always chosen to pluginto their energy.
And I, don't always, I'm notalways up on vernacular.
You know, I get corrected by mygrown children now on my
vernacular and, my usage.
But I'm telling you, I love theenergy.
I love the activity.
I wanna, I want to be active,even after my days with the
school district.
Robert Tidwell (08:33):
Well, did you ever have any teachers coming up
that you look back on and say,Hey man, that, that person
really just had a big impact onme, maybe even bigger than they
realize
Dr. Hightower (08:42):
I do.
And I've tried to honor them andI will say my first year as
superintendent.
Uh, when it came to a teacherappreciation, I actually wrote
for our website and honored oneof my long time educators Dot
Frazier, female in BartowCounty.
She was the first femaleprincipal.
I had her as an eighth gradereading teacher.
(09:05):
She was everybody's mama.
In fact, a lot of people stillcall her mama Dodge.
She's still alive.
She's 83.
Uh, she still active in theirdistrict.
She taught and administrativefor 40 years and then rolled
that right into being theirexecutive director for the
school districts foundation.
And so she's still active andthey have big giveaways and she
sends me notes and I send hernotes.
(09:26):
And so I try to.
Really honor her with my careeras as much, you know, you do
things for yourself and for yourfamily, but you also try to do
them in a manner that honors thepeople that, that have been a
part of, of your experience.
And, you know, we all havementors.
We hear them speak to us whenwe're trying to think of a way
to work our way through maybe adifficult situation or a new
(09:48):
situation.
You hear those voices and theythey've spoken into your life.
And I've got those all the waythrough Ms.
Frazier was middle school.
I had a high school teacher,similar type of experience, even
into college, in my graduatestudies, I can, I had this small
Eastern European Gail, Dr.
Armento, uh, we called her thequeen of rewrite.
(10:10):
You never turned in anythingonce, so it just didn't happen.
And she would just in that, youknow, that heavy Slavic language
language would say to us, I didmy dissertation with a
typewriter.
And in other words, Stopwhining, you know, so those
folks have been great.
And, and I had some peoplepushing me into the
administrative piece and in mydays at booth, uh, one mentor,
(10:33):
Phil Grambling, who I get tovisit.
And he now lives in Colorado andhikes and fishes and golfs every
day.
He's still sharp, sharp, sharp,and still speaks into my life.
And so those folks, uh, youknow, we often are kind of an
amalgamation of the people whohave been around us.
The Bible even says, you know,if you want to see into your
(10:53):
soul, look at your friends,because those people are pouring
into it and you're spending timewith them.
So, great influences for me, Istill hear them speak, I still
talk about channeling an innerPhil Grambling or an inner Randy
Martin when I face a problem.
And I knew they faced it andwere successful.
Robert Tidwell (11:12):
And that's outstanding.
One of the traditions that Ilove that I've seen here in
Cherokee County, the seniorswriting notes to some of the
teachers that they had coming upthrough the school district,
sort of, you know, commenting onhow much that teacher meant to
them.
I had a chance to see my owndaughter's, notes that she had
written to some of the teachersthat impacted her.
(11:33):
And I love that.
I think that's a great, greatway to remind the kids that Hey,
you're here because of theeffort of a lot of people and
also to show the teacher someappreciation, because I'm sure
just like anything else when youdo it all the time, sometimes
you lose sight of the impactyou're having.
Dr. Hightower (11:50):
It is.
It's easy, uh, to do that.
And, we do have, different typesof initiatives that we take on.
And we, we sit sitting,sometimes you're sitting around
with senior staff and you're ina cabinet meeting and you may be
asked the question, what is itthat we want our kids to learn?
And obviously the, you know, thecore content that that's a
(12:11):
softball, right.
But from there, what aboutgratitude?
What about perseverance?
What about resiliency?
Uh, in my own life as a father,uh, one of the best things I
could ever work with my childrenon my own children is for them
to be resilient because life canbe tough.
It can throw you curve balls.
This last year has taught usthat, that you've got to be
(12:34):
flexible.
You've gotta be able to pivot,but beyond all of that, you
know, as you face those thingsface them, you know, rich
Froning a big CrossFitter, uh,has a great company and their
slogan is into the storm and heraises Buffalo and does exotic
jerky.
But I love the concept behind itis those Buffalo.
When a storm comes, they turntoward the storm, they face the
(12:56):
storm and they walk into thestorm.
Well, what a year to thinkthrough that kind of a
philosophy, when we face aworldwide pandemic, let's face
the storm.
Let's be together.
Let's work together and let's beresilient.
Yeah.
Robert Tidwell (13:09):
I like that a lot.
You know, I, I tell people allthe time that, pretty much any
type of professionalaccomplishment I get to
experience, I can trace back toeducators who have had a large
impact on me over the years.
Two that jump out justimmediately.
One is, uh, my elementaryschool, Sunday school teacher,
Ms.
Mogley, without a doubt, theabsolute sweetest woman that has
(13:33):
ever existed in the state ofSouth Carolina.
She was just a beautiful ladyand just loved on us and taught
us so much, not just aboutSunday school, but also just
about life in general.
Wonderful, wonderful lady, missher terribly, and then, I had a
professor in college, Dr.
Silverman and Dr.
Silverman.
I could spend an entire showtalking about how much out of
(13:55):
his way he went to make surethat, I went back to school
after I joined the army and tomake sure that, I finished up
and, he sort of launched me offto law school and, you know,
just a great, great guy.
I still reach out to him everychance I get.
He, he's now retired in PawleysIsland, South Carolina, which is
a bit of a dream of mine, maybeone day, but a great guy.
(14:19):
And you know, I'm just veryappreciative of him and the
other educators over there theyears.
Dr. Hightower (14:24):
I think really Robert, what it shows you is
when people lead and.
Whether they're leadingchildren, they have their own
or, or someone else's that ithappens through relationship.
And we talk a lot in ourdistrict about rigor and
relevance.
Those are important conceptswhen you start designing
educational programs andestablishing curriculum
(14:46):
standards, but the third arethere is relationship.
We've really tapped into that.
We belong to an organization,that's the international center
for leadership in education.
And so they send us coaches, forour teachers and we go and speak
at their model schoolsconference.
We have a great relationshipwith them.
One of their leaders, WesternKeach, Nick, and I enjoy his
podcast.
(15:06):
He and his wife do a podcastcalled teaching Keating and,
they attack a lot of differentthings.
And so, and he, and I've becomefriends over the years.
He wrote a book called breakingbold, and it was about rigor and
relevance and how we've got tobreak out of the normal high
school.
We see that, American highschools, a lot of times lagged
behind some of our Asian andEuropean neighbors.
(15:28):
But, he wrote this book aboutthe fact that we got to have
rigor in our classrooms and wegot to make it relevant and make
connections with our kids.
He basically went back andrewrote the book and added the
third arm.
And we were appreciative ofthat.
Well, that was something that wewere really preaching with our
folks, you lead throughrelationships and you find ways
to connect and in your you'rehumble and you serve.
(15:51):
And along with that, we saw agreat quote and I ended up
putting it on the wall for alittle while.
And it basically was this, uh,I'll be glad when we stopped
talking about servantleadership, but because that's
the only leadership style andthat really resonates with our
leaders, we want them to leadfrom a point of we're connecting
with our kids.
We're building great schools.
(16:11):
Ultimately we're serving ourcommunity
Robert Tidwell (16:15):
on that topic of rigor.
One of the things that hasalways amazed me with the
Cherokee County school district,Is the advanced placement
offerings.
And not only just the sheervolume of classes that are
available for the students, butI'm also amazed at the success
the students have with the APexams.
(16:35):
I graduated with 56 people in asmall rural high school, and we
had one AP course and some of uspassed it.
Dr. Hightower (16:45):
I understand that completely.
Robert Tidwell (16:46):
So it amazes me to see, my freshmen daughter,
she's already taking AP classes.
There are so many thereavailable and the students do so
well.
I don't think a lot of peopleoutside of Cherokee County are
fully aware of just howsuccessful this district is.
What are some of the secretsthat sets Cherokee County apart
from other districts?
Dr. Hightower (17:07):
Well, as part of that build and I was, I was in
the, the build in the earlydays, uh, we looked for
obviously a rigorous programthat would Excel our kids and
push them and really get themcollege ready.
We've we've talked about it, youand I before, but ultimately we
want to build a system where akid could have enough rigor
that.
As they graduated, they hadchoices.
(17:30):
The AP program is tied veryclosely to act and sat, which
are college indicators for manyof our students.
And it compliments those twometrics.
So well, uh, that we jumped inreally with both feet and have
been known as a quasi,unofficial AP district.
There are districts around usthat have AP, some have IB,
(17:52):
which is internationalbaccalaureate.
The IB program.
We, when we researched it wasvery expensive, it was very
extensive and it necessarily,for us, we didn't think we would
get any better results.
It's also AP gives us theopportunity to move teachers in
and out and have young teacherstake the coursework, start
teaching those courses.
And it gives them a little bitof a career ladder too.
(18:13):
If you can imagine that, youknow, Getting to teach AP world
history.
You teach maybe a differentmotivated kid or a talented kid
versus like a regular worldhistory.
So it gives them someopportunities to teach kids
across the board, as far as thelevel of rigor.
And of course we jumped in againwith both feet.
(18:33):
And so all of our skills havelots of AP.
We range from school to schooland within our six day high
schools from 25 to 32.
AP courses.
So if you're in the AP realm andyou want to go to school and
about 79% of our parentsindicate early on that they want
their child in a collegeuniversity.
(18:54):
We just feel like that was agood marriage.
And so we've kind of led the wayin the Metro area, our rates for
kids taking the courses and thentaking a final exam, an exit
exam where they have thepotential to earn some college
credits.
It's just been a great marriagefor us, and we've seen the kids
thrive in that.
We've seen that our ICT and satscores have reflected that, not
(19:16):
only are we really leading theMetro area in AP, have some of
the highest passage rate on thattest, we lead the nation.
We have about 72% of our kidstake the AP exam, turn around
and pass it with a three, getthe college credit, the national
average there, where we're at a72%, they're at a 59 in the
nation.
(19:37):
Just this past year.
We gave over 4,500 tests.
We had about 2,500 kidsparticipating in an AP course.
So when you, you think throughthe scale of that, we've got
lots of kids reaching out anddoing that for a parent.
It's great.
They're getting the collegecredit.
We've had a lot of kids walk inalready as a second semester
(19:59):
freshmen or a course or twoaway, really from sophomore
status just based on theircourses.
We're heading toward the springtime of the year.
We'll ultimately honor, our Valand sales at each of our
schools.
We do a little banquet with themand honor their parents in them.
And they bring a favoriteteacher and we, we laugh and
tell stories on each other thatnight, but, and ingrained or
(20:20):
embedded in a lot of thosestories from the teachers or
their experience with thatchild, where they saw them
during a year where they hadfour and five AP courses on
their schedule.
So these are kids that arelooking at rigor because
ultimately they want to havesome choices.
We send kids all up and down theEast coast, Ivy league, and I,
lot of the prestigious privateschools, I saw a note, just
(20:43):
yesterday on one of our softballplayers has been accepted to
Harvard.
And so you talking about givingkids choices in the end with our
sat, which we also do.
A lot of times lead the, theMetro area and our sat scores.
We mailed to, uh, sat andresumes for applications to over
420, uh, colleges anduniversities last year.
(21:07):
So to me, that's saying we'vegot a system is vibrant.
Our kids are going a little bitof everywhere.
Uh, East coast, West coast,Midwest they've got choices.
And so for me that's a point ofpride.
I'm almost like a proud father.
When you see the opportunitiesthat our kids have, have
basically been afforded throughtheir education.
Robert Tidwell (21:27):
That's outstanding, a 72% passage rate
on the AP exams.
And just in case anybodylistening is looking for a, a
critique of that stat.
I want to make it clear thatanyone who wants to take the
class can take the class, right?
It's not like the County ischerry picking certain students
to take AP classes to bolsterthat 72% pass rate.
(21:51):
It's just wide open youregister, you take it.
And 72% of the kids here arepassing.
Dr. Hightower (21:56):
That's correct.
And what we actually do, wereally feel, that there is a
definite push in our nation andin the Southeast to pay more
attention to diversity equityand inclusivity, the charge for
me as a superintendent is tomake sure that we.
The students that would normallybe unrepresented or under
served, have those kinds ofopportunities.
(22:18):
And so we, we believe that justover the last couple of years,
we've even enhanced our policiesto encourage kids that are
traditionally underserved intothose, get them into those
classes, get them enrolled andgive them opportunities.
You shared a little bit of yourstory with me earlier about
opportunities and through ascholarship, had a great
opportunity to stretch yourselfand go to a great school and add
(22:41):
a lot, agree, same thing here.
If we can create doors for someof our kids that really gives
you a sense of it.
Accomplishment.
Robert Tidwell (22:49):
Yeah.
That's outstanding.
And sometimes some of these kidsare, are not in an environment
where they're encouraged or evenexpected.
To Excel.
So they have that opportunity totaste some success and it just
sort of fuels that desire to goand do more in here.
You know, the schools inCherokee County seem to be
giving those kids everyopportunity to go and do more
Dr. Hightower (23:09):
sure.
And with it comes challenges.
You know, when I say that thereare 79% of our kids.
Are wanting to go to college anduniversity.
You know, the logical questionis, well, what do you do with
the other 21?
And so we've really, I think ofher my five years as a
superintendent upped our game inthe arena of college and career
are, and creating more CTAclass, pathways.
(23:32):
We've got lots of pathwaycompleters and, believe it or
not the, in the pathways andwhether they're going to look at
something that's like, say anautotech or an HPAC or a
welding, or even an academicpathway.
The numbers on the graduationrate for those students.
She w we did just achieve ourhighest graduation rate ever as
(23:54):
a County, under the cohortmodel, we were one percentage
point behind Fayette.
And if you know, Peachtree cityand our Metro area, they're a
smaller district about 21,000students where we're sitting at
43,000.
It's a little more fluid thanus.
I, and so, but we compete withthem.
I call their superintendentregularly, uh, and we aggravate
one another because if I passhim, you know, on an AP score or
(24:17):
an ICT, I let him know it.
So we look at them and, ourgraduation rate is really
getting solid.
We really feel good about it.
I do want to say to anyone whowould be listening.
Don't confuse our graduationrate with a dropout rate.
It doesn't mean that 10% of ourkids are dropping out.
It really just speaks to thefact that they're graduating on
time meeting the requirements oftheir pathway.
(24:39):
A drop out rate is much, muchlower.
We usually are between three and4%.
That's kind of a, a standardacross the suburban districts
around us.
Cobb Fulton.
For PSI, we see those same kindof numbers.
It's just that we're beatingthem a little bit on the
graduation rate and we let themknow that we're, we're proud of
our kids and, you know, ourteachers work so hard and pay so
(25:02):
much attention to pushing thatkid across the finish line.
And so as we get to the springand we're starting to plan
graduations already, there's anexcitement.
You know, I go to all of them.
I did have to treat myself for alittle carpal tunnel last year.
It was really funny.
My family gave me a lot of griefabout dad.
Can't squeeze my hand for amonth after graduations.
(25:23):
But we want everybody toparticipate.
My cabinet participates theboard participates.
For us, it's a celebration, youknow, that it has been working
for 13 years to get there.
Those kids, especially, youtalked about your daughter, take
an APS.
Those kids walk across withthose AP honor.
Chords.
And we, we just, as part of our,our metric, we just looked
really a long and hearted.
(25:45):
All of our AP scores, 343 kidslast year were declared by the
NA national organization as APscholars.
Wow.
So 343 kids.
Now we're talking, they reallygot to go on out.
They're really accomplishingthings.
Those kids I'm telling you canwrite their check almost to a
school for a parent.
You've got two daughters, one inschool and whatnot.
(26:06):
It's, there's always a, let'shave some choices, but also show
me some money.
Right.
So we want to get them there.
And, we traditionally say ourkids earn lots, lots of
scholarship dollars.
Robert Tidwell (26:18):
Yeah.
I don't think I've ever heard aparent say, golly, that tuition
is too low.
I wish I was writing a biggercheck.
Dr. Hightower (26:24):
That's right.
That's right.
Robert Tidwell (26:28):
I guess it would probably be safe to say that out
of all of your years ineducation this past year has had
to have been the mostchallenging.
Is that, is that fair to say?
Dr. Hightower (26:37):
That's so safe.
That's so safe that you'retossing me a softball.
Robert, um, it has, is trulybeen challenging for Alma.
A couple of fronts.
One, we knew that we wanted toopen face to face and your
listeners may not know, butCherokee was really one of the
largest school districts in thenation to open early.
We opened on Monday, August 3rd.
(26:59):
Uh, per our calendar, uh, weheard from our, our constituents
and from our board, we want youthere.
We want you to open.
We want some face to face.
There was a big, big disconnectfollowing the March 13th closure
last year, uh, when our governordeclared schools close and put
us into a sheltering in placemode, uh, you know, the world
(27:20):
kind of stopped for a, for abit.
Now I will tell you that wekept, we kept teaching and
learning.
We did.
We modified our calendar just alittle bit to end our school
year by, by Memorial day.
By that time folks were done.
They were tired.
It had been a real big push, butwe weren't all spring and summer
long days during that time to,to design, uh, what we believed
(27:42):
would be a face-to-face modelthat everybody good plug into an
also at the same time, uh, pivotand have a digital model.
We started the year with about9,000 of our kids in digital.
Uh, and that's a big lift.
We really are running a dualsystem this year.
So you've got that piece, butthen you also have the building
(28:03):
facility piece and we did takesteps very early to change some
of our things to improve thecleanliness of our building.
We wrote into our existingcustodial contract.
We enhanced it by over$2 millionto add in a hundred additional
custodians.
We threw money at people toclean and disinfect.
We did some other things withinour building.
(28:25):
We took out our water coolers,put in water bottle.
Fillers.
Uh, we changed out our filters.
They raid out there's thissystem where you write a filter
in it's a Merv one Denine.
And we were at about a six.
We bumped that all the way downto four, got in a filter that
our, ultimately our hand airhandlers could, could get push.
(28:45):
Uh, but we just fill out, we'vegot cleaner, healthier
buildings.
Our flu and cold numbers arelike, they just hit off the prep
precipice.
They're gone down.
Uh, we have not had really acold and flu season and our
district that year.
Uh, but because we believe ofthe steps that we've taken, so
you've got academics, you've gotbuilding.
(29:07):
And then of course the lastpiece is just the health piece.
We have become public healthadministrators, whether you
wanted to do that or not, areour administrators and
counseling staff and schoolnurses will tell you that they
spend a lot of time working withkids that have potential
symptoms, doing contact tracing,as required by our DPH to stay
open.
(29:27):
A lot of our parents when theirkids get caught up in, uh, in a
quarantine because of closecontact or they're frustrated,
this kid has to sit out they'rehealthy, they don't get the
illness and they, they feel likethey, we forced them to have
this disconnect from theirschool, but that's really the
price that we've had to pay tostay open, uh, is to live by
(29:48):
those rules.
Add a couple of school districtsthat got a little bit out ahead
of the governor and just said,we're not going to close
quarantine, healthy kidsanymore.
And, uh, they got a real quickCSUN to see us and got back in
line on that.
So I had received, emailed dailyabout that.
Parents are frustrated with thatpiece.
(30:09):
It is the price of doingbusiness and in a worldwide
pandemic.
And I just try to say again, weneed flexibility.
We need grace in this kind ofenvironment and we've stayed
open.
We can had to close individualschools.
We created a reopening planetand, it was shared statewide.
And then actually nationwide.
It made its way to the whitehouse.
The white house took a peek atour plan.
(30:30):
They liked it.
When we've had to close say aclass or we've had to close a
school, people had said, Oh,look, you're playing.
It's a failure.
But our plan actually talkedabout how we would deal with,
with outbreaks or clusters asdefined by our DPH system.
And we've said, we're going toclose.
Classes and schools to keepeverybody healthy when it's
(30:52):
needed.
And so there've been pieceswhere we've had schools pop out.
Your daughter was probablycaught up in a, in a closure of
her high school.
Uh, we looked at one justyesterday where we had to decide
if the numbers really relegated.
It we're fortunate right now,you know, we're in two days
remote while we do a big two-dayvaccination event for our
teachers, we'll be vaccinatingover 3000 people in these two
(31:15):
days.
And to pull that kind of a thingoff, we needed all of our
teachers accessible we'revaccinating, literally 200 an
hour, three yesterday.
Got my shot.
Visited with our teachers sawwhat was there and I'm telling
you it was quite an event, andorganized, you know, we, we had
all the right pieces in place,but it did mean that we needed
to unplug for a couple of daysback it up to a weekend.
(31:37):
In case we had teachers withsymptoms, I feel like, again,
we've done the right.
Things in the right way.
Uh, it meets with some criticismbecause even to have kids in
face-to-face during a worldwidepandemic, you know, is somewhat
controversial, but we believe,uh, in the end that our kids
have, not only survived, butthey've grown.
(31:58):
And that was a real challenge.
Last year, I mentioned to youearlier, I got to sit in and be
a panelist and a wise ed K-12podcast.
And the, the originary is, asyou would have guessed, Wazniak
Steve Wozniak.
Uh, but they were looking at howto open and, I was the only one
of the three Atlanta panelists.
That was going to open.
(32:19):
And so it was a mixed bag thatday.
And, uh, but I, what I, I guesswhat I can say is that we've
been real aggressive about thatpiece, but we've also had a plan
that, that really scripted outwhat we would do when we would
have cases.
And we have had cases, we've hadclosures, but we're really
healthy.
Now.
We're really feeling good aboutwhere we are and our case loads.
(32:40):
And, uh, we, we think we'vegotten on top of this thing and
it really helps obviously forthere to be a national rollout
of vaccines.
Uh, that's a piece of thestructure that we needed to have
happen, but, uh, we, we areready or putting steps out there
to look at reopening to.
For next year.
Uh, we don't think thepandemic's necessarily going
away just because we havevaccines in place.
(33:01):
We've got a lot of folks thatwill not for one reason or
another, uh, take the vaccine.
Maybe they can't take thevaccine.
Uh, we know that that's whatprobably wrap around into the
next year, but we believe we'vegot the basis for a good system
going forward and we justcontinue to work.
It it's long hours.
Uh, there wasn't a lot of springand summer vacation.
And for the, I can
Robert Tidwell (33:20):
imagine, I can imagine.
And some of the folks listeningmight not know this, but at the
beginning of the school year, inAugust, uh, the Cherokee County
school district announced thatparents would have an option.
If they wanted to send theirchildren to face to face
learning, they could, if theywanted, instead to keep the
children home, to do digitallearning, they could do that, do
(33:43):
that as well.
And that's sort of what you weretalking about a few moments ago
when you said that there aredual systems learning systems
here in the County for the year.
Um, my question is.
How difficult was itlogistically when it's may June,
July shelter in place ordersabound.
(34:06):
We're not really sure what'sgoing on how this thing is being
transmitted.
Who's safe, who isn't safe andyou're trying to coordinate the
school district and the seventhlargest County in the state of
Georgia to create this dualsystem.
And have it in place in time foran August 3rd start date.
W what was that even like?
Dr. Hightower (34:28):
So, so you can imagine the stress level, but
because while we try to joke andwe don't take ourselves so
seriously, we try to keep all ofour leadership roles in context,
we take our job very seriously,and we believe we answer to our
community and for our community,uh, our community, I'm telling
you, made it very, very clear tous that they wanted their kids
(34:50):
in school.
So as we pivoted in spring.
And we were, we were sitting,the kids were at home.
Our teachers were home.
Uh, leadership was not at home.
We considered ourself essential,uh, much like the governor, uh,
kind of outlined that, uh, hewanted shelter in place except
for essential employees.
We considered our taskessential.
So, we weren't out and aboutrunning around.
(35:12):
We didn't do vacations thissummer.
We worked a lot of 10, 12, 14hour days to ready it because we
wanted to, to do it and to do itwell.
And so we immediately reallyearly spring, we plugged in to
work a lot groups and I, I'm apart of three different national
collaboratives withsuperintendents and hold a
fellowship with one.
(35:32):
Ultimately it gave me greatopportunities to tap into the
vision and the leadership ofother folks and see how they
were dealing with it.
But somewhere really about lateApril, we started pivoting and
started talking about reopeningplans.
So we really spent April, may,June, July.
Fine-tuning that piece, that thedifficult piece, as you design a
(35:53):
digital out program, isdesigning it with teachers that
are off contract and are stillobserving shelter in place.
So that was a little bit of apush.
And when our board basicallysaid, we want you to open on
time that that was limitingsomewhat from the teacher
training piece.
And we just basically said,okay, just understand as we
we've readied the ship now, andas we take this air ship down
(36:16):
the runway, there's still goingto be some building parts
because teachers still have sometraining to get to them.
And so early on, whenever wepopped out.
Of a school or a class.
We took that opportunity totarget that school or that class
to do more teacher trainingright there.
It's important to know that forthe 9,000 students that chose to
go digital, they were affordedopportunities and led by
(36:40):
teachers or proctored byteachers who were at school.
They were working out of theirclassroom using the resources
and the bandwidth that we had,they were plugged in and doing
duties like they would, if theywere a normal teacher, they have
taken this, our teachers just asa hero, they've just really
stepped up.
They've been at work every daythat they could, we have
encouraged them.
(37:00):
There is a lot of discourse outthere not just nationwide.
I mean, you can come all the wayback to within our zip codes.
We've had folks that haven'tagreed with the way that we've,
we've conducted our plan andconducted school that year.
There's nationwide discourseover whether you should be in
face or, or digital, whetherkids should have my ask or not
(37:21):
where their employee should havemasked or not.
When we ran, we ask our, statesuperintendents association to
run some.
Surveys for us.
I was part of a group thatreally kind of pushed forward
with that.
We found out very early in theyear, late summer to early year,
that only about 50% of thedistricts were having their
(37:43):
adults wear mask.
And only about 30% were havingtheir kids, wear masks.
Now we, we stepped out, wewanted our adults in masks.
We knew our employees needed tobe masked.
We did not create a mask mandatefor kids.
We saw that as problem.
Yeah.
Attic, uh, it's.
It can be done.
We didn't feel like it posturedus very well within our given
(38:05):
community, uh, to, to be able topull that off.
Uh, we felt like that we weregoing to have right daily
battles with our adult kids.
We would have daily complianceissues with our younger kids.
You know, how do you have athird grader?
Keep a mask on all day.
There's some logistical, commonsense issues there.
We did encourage them.
It's not that we don't believein mask.
We, we believe in the science.
(38:25):
We believe that any way that wecan limit the spread or the
outbreak we want our folks to dothat.
So we kind of postured ourselvesaround strongly encouraging,
strongly recommending those.
And, we've worked that systemnow, again, if you agree or
disagree, you know, you and Icould sit and talk that one
through all day long, I willtell you that I still get masked
(38:47):
emails and we're at, you know,March 12th.
Uh, this would have been theFriday a year ago that we would
have had our last day in thebuilding.
And from that day forward, we'vegotten discourse on every issue
that we faced.
Our two day event that Imentioned earlier, I got some
hate mail yesterday from parentsthat were not happy that their
(39:07):
kids were remote yesterday.
And you just have to keep it incontext.
You want to be responsible.
You always want to selfevaluate, you know, the
effectiveness of yourorganization as a leader.
Uh, but at the same time, justknow that the discourse is going
to be there.
I had pretty thick skin beforethis started, but I didn't know
COVID would make it thick.
Robert Tidwell (39:27):
Trial attorneys, we are notoriously thin skinned.
We have this need to be liked byeverybody.
And I don't know if it's becauseof the nature of our career,
where we're always talking to anaudience hoping for a specific
outcome, but, uh, you know,we're, we're notoriously thin
skinned.
We want to be liked byeverybody.
(39:48):
So when I saw some of thenational criticism that was
being levied against theCherokee County school district
for reopening, it bothered me.
And I've always wondered, howdid it affect you?
What did it feel like when youwould see, some, in my opinion,
some unfair criticisms that youwould see on television or
(40:08):
national media outlets, what wasthat like?
Dr. Hightower (40:12):
Well, that's a, that's a real fair question.
I appreciate you even broachthat topic because we were large
and we were out there and wewere open.
Nobody else in Atlanta reallywas open, uh, Forsyth.
Our neighbor to the East wasgoing to pop in about a week, a
week and a half later.
Uh, we were really out there byourselves, and we had a couple
(40:32):
of unfortunate pictures, seniorslike to gather and picture, give
vets, that's a traditional roundhere.
The girls wear their blackdresses and they get together
and a group of a hundred,they're going to get their pig.
And they did that.
You know, obviously, uh, it'snot something that we can down
and we endorsed, uh, they, infact, in one situation, took a
(40:53):
picture with a mask and thentook them all off and took
their, you know, their portrait.
They wanted something toremember each other by, and,
that kind of stuff never getscovered, but that got passed
around, you know, when you're onthe TMZ, Papa Razzi shows,
national shows in the evening,that's never fun.
I think probably the only partthat stung was that critics took
(41:13):
that opportunity to, to whack usover the head with that.
So that's never verycomfortable.
We got past that, but we gotbeyond that school started
opening.
What is really amazing and I'vefound through my collaboratives,
uh, nationwide is that we stillhave a lot of systems not open
one of our big Metro districtsto the South.
Just opened this week.
(41:34):
We've got another district thatwould serve where the airport is
and everybody flies throughAtlanta airport.
Right.
That County is under who attemptto open, face to face after
spring break.
So at that point, we'd been inall year and have seven weeks to
go we're we're at the finishline almost right.
They're just starting tointroduce face to face.
Another Metro County downtownCounty, started opening
(41:56):
staggered over the last coupleof weeks, but they've already
also mandated that their kidsare going to go to summer school
all summer.
So you don't open all year, butthen the kids have to go all
summer.
And so that for us, we just tooka different approach and I'm not
being critical, I guess I'm, I'mcomparing ourselves and really
saying we locked our systembetter.
It, it did come with itstrade-offs you mentioned some of
(42:19):
the national attention.
We did have a New York timesstory that popped out about a
month ago.
He sent us questions for aboutfour months.
We answered it.
We sent him lots and lots ofmaterials and uh, we felt like
the story was slanted, but itwas the New York times.
So it's gotta be right.
You know, we, we're out on back,we asked for about nine.
(42:41):
Corrections and edits.
He refused as a rider.
Uh, he, he did one cause he hadnamed a school wrong.
So that was an easy, nobrighter.
We wrote again, we got a dayeditor involved and the story
was, was corrected for therecord.
Of course it was buried.
You know how that is?
People read the story one time,
Robert Tidwell (43:02):
front page story, fourth page correction.
Dr. Hightower (43:04):
That's right.
And so, you know, what that doesis it does give you a lot of
heat.
From across the nation I'veheard from, you know, not just
Woodstock, Georgia, but I'veheard from Tacoma, Washington at
this point, you know?
So, uh, that, that's not a wholelot of fun.
It really detracts from thethings that you need to be
spending your time on.
(43:24):
But ultimately, I think our teamand our board great leaders,
every one of them, can know thatthey've stepped up for our
community and, had a good year.
And, uh, I've, I've, uh, triedto mention this a couple of
times and it leaks away from meas I talk.
But one of the things that wetalked about as a cabinet senior
leadership last spring was okay.
(43:45):
There are really these, thesepieces that you go through when
you're faced with a nationalhealth crisis.
One is fear, obviously there's,there's fear of the unknown
there's fear that, that you'regoing to contract this.
You, you, you know, we saw themedia, we saw the dance, we saw
the worldwide.
Contact numbers somewhere inthere.
You've got to determine if youcan move beyond that and learn
(44:07):
about it, get knowledgeable andgive it some constructs, give it
some framework so that you canstart to work and survive within
that framework.
Robert Tidwell (44:18):
It's obvious this County is growing by leaps
and bounds.
You can't drive five miles inany direction without seeing
multiple neighborhoods.
And other things going up, whichis exciting, but it also brings
in a lot of students and ourhigh schools are, are big.
And, we're approaching thatmaximum capacity, even with
9,000 kids learning from home,um, our schools are still
(44:43):
getting kind of full.
Are there any plans for anyfuture growth, any additional
schools or high schools oranything like that?
Because I get asked that a goodbit.
I don't know why people think Iwould know the answer to that
question, but, you'd be doing mea huge favor if you could share
with folks, if there are anyplans in place for future
growth,
Dr. Hightower (45:01):
certainly.
One of the other things thatCOVID has exacerbated, if you've
not been hindered bydistribution, uh, I would say
you haven't even know where todo anything from Amazon.
Like.
Right, but because distributionand calls have gone up
tremendously.
I know residential andcommercial building has gone up
tremendously.
We're really looking more.
(45:21):
We are about to go into aSPLOST, season.
We will have a referendum on theballot.
We believe our board willapprove that and, push that
forward.
Robert Tidwell (45:32):
And just for the listeners benefit a SPLOST as a
special purpose local sales taxthat is earmarked for a
particular purpose, right?
Dr. Hightower (45:39):
Correct.
And some districts have anadvantage with a SPLOST vote
where they basically collecttheir pennies during the year
that additional penny on thesales tax, they collect that
they put it in savings Countyand then they build with it.
That would be really more in aslow growth district or one
where the penny brings a lot ofmoney, a lot of revenue, uh,
(45:59):
we're not in that kind of asituation.
So we collect the penny, butthen we also bond against it on
the front end so that we canbuild, when I was first in the
district, we had less than14,000 kids.
Now we sit at 43.
Most of that growth happened in,began in the early two
thousands.
So there were years where wegrew the 3000 kids.
(46:20):
And so with that kind ofexplosive growth, I mean, that's
a huge high school.
I mean, you know, really that'sbigger than any high school that
we have and you grow them numberof kids and one year.
So when you're in that kind ofposture, you really have to
build rapidly.
So over a 15 year span, we built20 schools or had major
renovations or additions.
So with that comes day at, youknow, there is a mortgage,
(46:43):
right?
You've got to pay, pay thePiper.
And so really my tenure that myfive years we've really worked
hard to work on that.
And we've not built a lot.
We've had renovations, we've hadrepurposes, we've added some
wings right now on the campuswhere your children are.
We were adding, instructionalunits on the middle school, but
also adding a second gym for thehigh school.
(47:05):
Another fun thing people wouldsay, why are you paying
attention to gyms?
You're a sports guy, right?
You like outdoors, but tryhaving, Oh, the high school
side.
You know, 25, 2,700 kids andhave one gymnasium for PE, it
just doesn't work.
So we've gone in and been tryingto add in second gymnasium.
So ultimately I guess I'mrolling forward to the fact that
(47:25):
we're looking at a new SPLOST,uh, as of next November, and
within that, we've got somegreat builds, some great
additions.
We are going to be conservativein the fact that we are going to
limit the building of a lot ofschools and we're looking at
where we can build additions.
It does pump up the, that I useand the footprint and the
(47:45):
occupancy of a building.
But ultimately, we know thatlike several of our middle and
elementary, they need anadditional wing.
We're going to try to pull thatoff versus a new, build, a new
build right now.
For our middle school isprobably looking at$50 million
and that's just a middle school,high school.
Bill's probably going to go 80to a hundred million dollars at
(48:06):
this point.
Now we'll tell you that thepremier build within the next
boss will be a replacementCherokee.
They're currently in a building63 years old.
By the time we could even get itbuilt, it would be almost 70.
It'll be a big one.
It'll probably be a 3000 FTEbuilding.
Um, but also when you're in thiskind of a low where.
(48:27):
You don't have as much explosivegrowth.
We do have the continued growththat you spoke to.
We need to not exploding andyou're having to build three
elementaries.
There is a window where you canlook at a replacement building
for one of your aging buildings.
Unfortunately, for us, ithappens to be, you know, a high
dollar build, but we're going tolimit it to that high dollar
build.
Maybe one more replacementelementary living in our County.
(48:50):
Yeah.
So now there's a huge roadproduct pro project running East
and West.
Uh, that project basically, he'sgoing to be in the front door of
one of our smaller, olderelementary.
So we're currently on the prowllooking at some replacement
property, some, a landacquisition that would give us
the opportunity to get thatschool off of that main highway.
And when I say it's in his frontdoor, it literally is in his
(49:12):
front door.
So you do some of those billsbecause you have it.
Uh, but ultimately we want toanswer the bail and.
And create capacities at all ofour buildings.
We're proud of our buildingprogram.
If you've been in, in of ourschools, if our listeners have,
have visited any of our schoolsin Cherokee, they'll see a clean
well lit nice building.
It's probably new because ofthat building project that we
(49:36):
went through in the early twothousands.
But we pride ourselves in ourbuilding program and we will
continue to answer the bailreally based on the voter saying
we believe that that the schoolsare an important piece.
We do think, uh, to be a littlebit selfish, that we're an
economic driver.
We believe that when people lookat moving to Cherokee, They look
(49:57):
at the school district.
They look at a vulnerability towork sites in Atlanta.
They look at public health, theylook at quality of life.
They look at your parks.
There are a lot of things Ithink that play into it.
But to know that that schoolsare close to the top is a point
of pride, but also a point ofresponsibility.
So we, we will continue to workthat program.
(50:18):
And again, that's, that goes tothe generosity of our voters,
our taxpayers to vote that taxin it is a tax.
It's a penny sales tax.
I can tell you that we're notalone in that arena.
Uh, All but four districts inthe state of Georgia have a
SPLOST have a penny.
And, so we pushed to that.
I will say to our voters and ourtaxpayers that, uh, at our
(50:42):
recent state of the County, thatwe were able to participate in
and provide some of our metrics.
Uh, the County commissionreported again for about the
fourth straight year thatCherokee has the lowest tax
burden of any County, uh, in theMetro area.
And so that's a point that Ithink gives it a little bit of
context, even within the growththat we've had.
There is a little bit of aheavier, um, piece that rests on
(51:06):
residential tax, but still ourtax burden is the lowest in the
Metro area.
Robert Tidwell (51:11):
I mean, that's incredible when your parent next
to the 72% AP passage rate, thehighest, graduation rates that
we've ever had, the kidssucceeding so well and you.
You know, stand that next to,the lowest tax burden in all of
Metro Atlanta.
That's pretty impressive Allright.
Let me ask you just a couple ofpersonal questions.
So during the shelter in place,period, we all sort of found
(51:35):
ourselves, uh, locked in, notleaving unless it was necessary.
Uh, for me, I personally startedcooking a lot more barbecue and
I have a.
Almost a new wardrobe of largerclothes to show for it.
Uh, did you take up any hobbies?
Hopefully something a little bithealthier, uh, while we were
sheltering in place.
Dr. Hightower (51:56):
I will say that it, it put a serious cramp and,
uh, my hiking, uh, simplybecause all the national parks
also closed down and they brokeam people off of the 80.
And, uh, so you really had tofind cool little state parks to
go out and enjoy the sunshineand the fresh air.
I like to a kid with my wife,Susan.
Yeah.
We had the prettiest yard thatnobody saw.
(52:19):
Uh, we bought more flowers andmore shrubs that bloomed.
And we enjoyed them.
We did a lot of back decksitting and a lot of night
entertaining in small groupsduring that time.
Like I had told you we didcontinue to work, so we
wouldn't, it wasn't long, longdays at home, but it was kind of
long weekends at home.
And, but, you know, I read alot, there were a lot that I
(52:41):
felt like I had to learn.
We all did some binge watchingNetflix, uh, you know, uh, prime
Hulu.
Uh, we had a dog go and I thinkI've got five subscriptions at
this point.
So I'm really running out ofshows.
Uh, I got gigged into a coupleby my kids that I, you know, I
had to, I had to go back andwatch it, I'd say, but they're
(53:02):
72 episodes.
I can't dedicate that much time.
And in COVID hits and guess whatI saw them, you know?
So there was some definitebinge-watching late at night.
That's outstay.
What was your favorite show thatyou binge watched?
Oh, you know, I had not watched,sons of anarchy.
I hadn't seen breaking bad.
I just refused.
I had refused.
(53:23):
So yeah, I'm all there now.
Robert Tidwell (53:25):
Gosh.
Well, I cannot thank you enoughfor joining us today, Dr.
Hightower, this has been anabsolute pleasure.
I really appreciate everythingyou're doing here in Cherokee
County.
I'm very grateful for yourleadership and I cannot thank
you.
And all of the teachers and thestaff at the schools and
Cherokee County, just for the,just the incredible job they've
(53:48):
done dealing with.
Difficult circumstances dealingwith the stress of uncertainty,
but doing it in such a way thatthe entire County owes a debt of
gratitude to you and the folkswho work in the school district.
And so.
Thank them.
And thank you so much forjoining us today on the peach
buzz.
Dr. Hightower (54:08):
Thank you.
Spot pleasure.
And, and on their behalf, I willsay thank you as well.
We appreciate the support, uh,and, uh, the togetherness and
the family feel that we get fromour community.
We believe that that, uh, theeducation of our kids, it's,
it's much bigger than us, uh,and it involves community
partnerships.
And, uh, so we appreciate yourkind words today.
(54:29):
We appreciate the invite.
And again, I believe that ourteachers have just been
tremendous this year.
We, we believe in our teams.
Uh, we believe we have organizedourselves as a team of team of
teams and it showing itselfthrough a worldwide pandemic.
And so we're glad that thatfolks notice that we've been
working hard and doing goodthings for kids and, uh, your
(54:51):
invitation to the time we've hadto just talk that one through a
little bit is, is greatlyappreciated.
Robert Tidwell (54:56):
Okay, well again, thank you very much.
And this has been the peach buzzbrought to you by Tidwell's
Strimban injury lawyers.
We look forward to joining younext time.
welcome to the peach buzz brought to you by
Tidwell's Strimban injurylawyers, Woodstock Georgia's
personal injury law firm.
The peach buzz is a podcastdedicated to showcasing people,
making a positive impact in ourcommunities here in North
Georgia.
Today, we are very excited tohave a very special guest with
us.
Dr.
Brian Hightower, who is thesuperintendent of the Cherokee
(00:44):
County school district.
Welcome to The Peach Buzz, Dr.
Hightower.
Dr. Hightower (00:46):
Well, thank you, Robert.
I appreciate the invitation andI look forward to just spending
some time with you and talkingabout the school district and
our community at large Cherokeereally is a great place to be.
Robert Tidwell (00:57):
Yeah, I agree.
A hundred percent and I'll justbe a little transparent here.
I'm pretty excited about havingyou with us today.
I've had an opportunity to, tomeet you a few times over the
years, and I follow you onsocial media and, you know,
quite frankly, I think you're apretty interesting guy and I'm
very much looking forward togetting to know you a little bit
better here today.
Dr. Hightower (01:16):
I will tell you, my family would tell you you've
set your bar way too low, but Ido look forward to talking about
our County and our schooldistrict.
Uh, uh, I know that you'veresided here in Cherokee, a good
while now I've been here a goodwhile and it is great place to
plug into, to work and live andraise a family, go to church.
(01:37):
Uh, Enjoy the, the civic arenaaround here and obviously to, to
work and to contribute.
Great, great place to be.
Robert Tidwell (01:46):
Right.
Sort of as a point of interest,a lot of people might not know
this, but you are a bit of anoutdoors guy, is that right?
Dr. Hightower (01:52):
Uh, I do love to be outdoors.
That's right.
We're sitting here looking out awindow that shows a pretty blue
sky today.
Robert Tidwell (01:59):
Yeah, it's tempting.
Isn't it?
Dr. Hightower (02:00):
It is very tempting.
Robert Tidwell (02:01):
I see, sometimes you are hiking like the
Appalachian trail, um, otherplaces.
What are, what are some of yourfavorite places you've had a
chance to visit?
Dr. Hightower (02:10):
Thank you.
I, I do love to get out andenjoy the scenery.
A friend and I have been workinga little bit on the trail.
Uh, mostly weekends we'redefinitely do it in sections.
If you read anything about theATVs folks unplugged from their
lives for four or five, sixmonths, we're following a guy
right now on social media.
That's in his ninth month.
(02:30):
And I think he's just basicallyliving on the trail, but, uh,
that that's always fun.
There are lots of stories fromthe trail.
There's a lots of interestingpeople on the AT, so we've,
enjoyed that.
We're literally sitting at milefour 22, gonna run up next
weekend and do another, anotherbig section to knock it out.
For the we're almost inVirginia, we're knocking on the
(02:52):
door.
And so we do enjoy that.
Robert Tidwell (02:55):
That is very cool.
I have a younger brother, thatlong story, not quite as long,
we didn't have the opportunityof growing up together.
He grew up in Maine and I grewup in South Carolina.
he is currently in the army.
He is a major in the army.
he and I have an agreement thatonce he retires, we're going to
do the Appalachian trailtogether.
And it's kind of symbolic seeinghow he grew up in Maine at the
(03:18):
top end of the trail.
I grew up in South Carolina atthe almost bottom end of the
trail.
And so he and I have a plan tosplit it up over a couple of
summers whenever he retires
Dr. Hightower (03:28):
what a great adventure, you know, especially
to spend some time with familyand friends, so that, that 2000
miles you get to know eachother.
You may not have grown up withhim, but I guarantee you'll know
everything about him by the endof that.
So it really is interesting whenyou self-reflect.
You enjoy the scenery.
It's a tough go, you know, and Ithink that's really another
(03:50):
piece that really draws me tothat is I like the challenge.
I like the training, loved theviews and there are a lot of
views on the T that they don'tgive away for free.
You have to work real hard forthem, but that's, that's kinda,
for me, that's really neat.
And we've done some time inColorado and Arizona, Utah, if
you're a hiking enthusiast,that's just a must.
You just got to spend some time.
(04:11):
I read an article just thisweek.
Colorado has 58.
14,000 footers.
For folks to try to manage.
So it's prime country out there.
And so a lot of fun.
Robert Tidwell (04:23):
Beautiful out there.
I agree.
Dr. Hightower (04:25):
Great therapy.
Robert Tidwell (04:26):
Yes.
So you mentioned a minute agothat, you've been here in
Cherokee County for a while.
How long has it been?
Dr. Hightower (04:32):
So I came to Reinhardt as a college freshman.
I grew up nearby in Cartersvillejust to the West of us and, came
to Reinhart, a two year schooland never left.
They offered me a position overhousing.
as a, here I am, I'm nineteen 10years old.
And I'm trying to tell guys howto behave in the dorms.
So you can imagine the adventurethat was.
(04:53):
I would drive down to Kennesawin the morning and work on my ed
degree.
Come back and do housing allevening, met my wife there.
She's an education major aswell.
So we, we knocked out theKennesaw thing.
We were married young becauseReinhart, they didn't
necessarily pay me a lot ofmoney, but I had free housing
and I ate for free and she hadto pay a dollar in the
(05:13):
cafeteria.
So, I mean, again, the 1980s,right.
But, we got married.
We were in love and we're aboutto celebrate 37 years and loved
every minute of it.
But we, we decided to stay here,plug into the school district
here for our jobs.
And, ultimately I mentioned it'sjust a great place to be.
And in a fast growth districtprofessionally, it's really
(05:35):
great because in a schooldistrict that gives you
opportunities.
And so, you know, for sure.
For young professionals that areupwardly mobile, there are great
places to plug in.
And so, uh, I'm currently in my35th year with the school
district and loving everyminute.
Robert Tidwell (05:51):
That's awesome.
I was looking through your CVand I saw that from 2000 to
2003, you were the principal atET booth middle school.
And that's right at the timethat Lori and I moved here, we
moved here in Oh two and, youknow, Lori and I cut up all the
time about just how much growthwe've seen in this area.
I can only imagine how much moreyou've seen.
(06:12):
I mean, what was it like as yougo downtown Lake Parkway?
Now, if you ever drive back byET Booth
Dr. Hightower (06:18):
I do.
I was there.
I actually, we had a little jokerun and I was out there four
straight weeks for variousreasons, honoring employees,
seeing kids.
I'm a pretty activesuperintendent.
I like to plug in this morning.
I spent some time honoring oursupport staff employees of the
year.
We named three last night.
So I dropped in on them thismorning.
(06:39):
And, uh, so I am at booth andall around Woodstock.
And in the early days, Iactually spent 16 years at booth
as a teacher, and then wasfortunate enough to be named as
an assistant principal and thenultimately was named as
principal.
So, 16 years in a middle school,I, you know, I consider that
hazard somewhat and, probablyshould be double credited on my
(07:00):
years.
I took up golf right about thetime I, had finished my time at
booth and people, would maybelike, okay, my back swing and
they'd apologize.
Take another swing.
I was talking to them, you know,I ate in a middle school
cafeteria for 16 years.
I didn't even know you were onthe course with us, so it's just
tune it out.
That's right.
(07:21):
That's right now the great days,what a way to, to start a great
career.
Robert Tidwell (07:26):
Well, what were some of the things that
motivated you to get intoeducation as a career?
Dr. Hightower (07:30):
Well, I think probably most educators would
say that there, there areteachers that impacted their
lives and were positiveinfluences.
And I really very early, evenwhen I was at Reinhardt and
those first two years, a lot oftimes you're working core those
first two years.
And you don't even declare amajor maybe.
I was really working thatdirection.
(07:51):
Uh, wanted to be around.
Kids, wanted to coach, wanted todo some of those kinds of
things.
I get a lot of energy.
I would rather be around someonequite honestly, that's younger
than me.
Maybe that somebody that's more,that's older or more sedentary,
uh, you know, with kids andyou've got to have your own.
They either keep you young orthey make you old.
(08:11):
And I've always chosen to pluginto their energy.
And I, don't always, I'm notalways up on vernacular.
You know, I get corrected by mygrown children now on my
vernacular and, my usage.
But I'm telling you, I love theenergy.
I love the activity.
I wanna, I want to be active,even after my days with the
school district.
Robert Tidwell (08:33):
Well, did you ever have any teachers coming up
that you look back on and say,Hey man, that, that person
really just had a big impact onme, maybe even bigger than they
realize
Dr. Hightower (08:42):
I do.
And I've tried to honor them andI will say my first year as
superintendent.
Uh, when it came to a teacherappreciation, I actually wrote
for our website and honored oneof my long time educators Dot
Frazier, female in BartowCounty.
She was the first femaleprincipal.
I had her as an eighth gradereading teacher.
(09:05):
She was everybody's mama.
In fact, a lot of people stillcall her mama Dodge.
She's still alive.
She's 83.
Uh, she still active in theirdistrict.
She taught and administrativefor 40 years and then rolled
that right into being theirexecutive director for the
school districts foundation.
And so she's still active andthey have big giveaways and she
sends me notes and I send hernotes.
(09:26):
And so I try to.
Really honor her with my careeras as much, you know, you do
things for yourself and for yourfamily, but you also try to do
them in a manner that honors thepeople that, that have been a
part of, of your experience.
And, you know, we all havementors.
We hear them speak to us whenwe're trying to think of a way
to work our way through maybe adifficult situation or a new
(09:48):
situation.
You hear those voices and theythey've spoken into your life.
And I've got those all the waythrough Ms.
Frazier was middle school.
I had a high school teacher,similar type of experience, even
into college, in my graduatestudies, I can, I had this small
Eastern European Gail, Dr.
Armento, uh, we called her thequeen of rewrite.
(10:10):
You never turned in anythingonce, so it just didn't happen.
And she would just in that, youknow, that heavy Slavic language
language would say to us, I didmy dissertation with a
typewriter.
And in other words, Stopwhining, you know, so those
folks have been great.
And, and I had some peoplepushing me into the
administrative piece and in mydays at booth, uh, one mentor,
(10:33):
Phil Grambling, who I get tovisit.
And he now lives in Colorado andhikes and fishes and golfs every
day.
He's still sharp, sharp, sharp,and still speaks into my life.
And so those folks, uh, youknow, we often are kind of an
amalgamation of the people whohave been around us.
The Bible even says, you know,if you want to see into your
(10:53):
soul, look at your friends,because those people are pouring
into it and you're spending timewith them.
So, great influences for me, Istill hear them speak, I still
talk about channeling an innerPhil Grambling or an inner Randy
Martin when I face a problem.
And I knew they faced it andwere successful.
Robert Tidwell (11:12):
And that's outstanding.
One of the traditions that Ilove that I've seen here in
Cherokee County, the seniorswriting notes to some of the
teachers that they had coming upthrough the school district,
sort of, you know, commenting onhow much that teacher meant to
them.
I had a chance to see my owndaughter's, notes that she had
written to some of the teachersthat impacted her.
(11:33):
And I love that.
I think that's a great, greatway to remind the kids that Hey,
you're here because of theeffort of a lot of people and
also to show the teacher someappreciation, because I'm sure
just like anything else when youdo it all the time, sometimes
you lose sight of the impactyou're having.
Dr. Hightower (11:50):
It is.
It's easy, uh, to do that.
And, we do have, different typesof initiatives that we take on.
And we, we sit sitting,sometimes you're sitting around
with senior staff and you're ina cabinet meeting and you may be
asked the question, what is itthat we want our kids to learn?
And obviously the, you know, thecore content that that's a
(12:11):
softball, right.
But from there, what aboutgratitude?
What about perseverance?
What about resiliency?
Uh, in my own life as a father,uh, one of the best things I
could ever work with my childrenon my own children is for them
to be resilient because life canbe tough.
It can throw you curve balls.
This last year has taught usthat, that you've got to be
(12:34):
flexible.
You've gotta be able to pivot,but beyond all of that, you
know, as you face those thingsface them, you know, rich
Froning a big CrossFitter, uh,has a great company and their
slogan is into the storm and heraises Buffalo and does exotic
jerky.
But I love the concept behind itis those Buffalo.
When a storm comes, they turntoward the storm, they face the
(12:56):
storm and they walk into thestorm.
Well, what a year to thinkthrough that kind of a
philosophy, when we face aworldwide pandemic, let's face
the storm.
Let's be together.
Let's work together and let's beresilient.
Yeah.
Robert Tidwell (13:09):
I like that a lot.
You know, I, I tell people allthe time that, pretty much any
type of professionalaccomplishment I get to
experience, I can trace back toeducators who have had a large
impact on me over the years.
Two that jump out justimmediately.
One is, uh, my elementaryschool, Sunday school teacher,
Ms.
Mogley, without a doubt, theabsolute sweetest woman that has
(13:33):
ever existed in the state ofSouth Carolina.
She was just a beautiful ladyand just loved on us and taught
us so much, not just aboutSunday school, but also just
about life in general.
Wonderful, wonderful lady, missher terribly, and then, I had a
professor in college, Dr.
Silverman and Dr.
Silverman.
I could spend an entire showtalking about how much out of
(13:55):
his way he went to make surethat, I went back to school
after I joined the army and tomake sure that, I finished up
and, he sort of launched me offto law school and, you know,
just a great, great guy.
I still reach out to him everychance I get.
He, he's now retired in PawleysIsland, South Carolina, which is
a bit of a dream of mine, maybeone day, but a great guy.
(14:19):
And you know, I'm just veryappreciative of him and the
other educators over there theyears.
Dr. Hightower (14:24):
I think really Robert, what it shows you is
when people lead and.
Whether they're leadingchildren, they have their own
or, or someone else's that ithappens through relationship.
And we talk a lot in ourdistrict about rigor and
relevance.
Those are important conceptswhen you start designing
educational programs andestablishing curriculum
(14:46):
standards, but the third arethere is relationship.
We've really tapped into that.
We belong to an organization,that's the international center
for leadership in education.
And so they send us coaches, forour teachers and we go and speak
at their model schoolsconference.
We have a great relationshipwith them.
One of their leaders, WesternKeach, Nick, and I enjoy his
podcast.
(15:06):
He and his wife do a podcastcalled teaching Keating and,
they attack a lot of differentthings.
And so, and he, and I've becomefriends over the years.
He wrote a book called breakingbold, and it was about rigor and
relevance and how we've got tobreak out of the normal high
school.
We see that, American highschools, a lot of times lagged
behind some of our Asian andEuropean neighbors.
(15:28):
But, he wrote this book aboutthe fact that we got to have
rigor in our classrooms and wegot to make it relevant and make
connections with our kids.
He basically went back andrewrote the book and added the
third arm.
And we were appreciative ofthat.
Well, that was something that wewere really preaching with our
folks, you lead throughrelationships and you find ways
to connect and in your you'rehumble and you serve.
(15:51):
And along with that, we saw agreat quote and I ended up
putting it on the wall for alittle while.
And it basically was this, uh,I'll be glad when we stopped
talking about servantleadership, but because that's
the only leadership style andthat really resonates with our
leaders, we want them to leadfrom a point of we're connecting
with our kids.
We're building great schools.
(16:11):
Ultimately we're serving ourcommunity
Robert Tidwell (16:15):
on that topic of rigor.
One of the things that hasalways amazed me with the
Cherokee County school district,Is the advanced placement
offerings.
And not only just the sheervolume of classes that are
available for the students, butI'm also amazed at the success
the students have with the APexams.
(16:35):
I graduated with 56 people in asmall rural high school, and we
had one AP course and some of uspassed it.
Dr. Hightower (16:45):
I understand that completely.
Robert Tidwell (16:46):
So it amazes me to see, my freshmen daughter,
she's already taking AP classes.
There are so many thereavailable and the students do so
well.
I don't think a lot of peopleoutside of Cherokee County are
fully aware of just howsuccessful this district is.
What are some of the secretsthat sets Cherokee County apart
from other districts?
Dr. Hightower (17:07):
Well, as part of that build and I was, I was in
the, the build in the earlydays, uh, we looked for
obviously a rigorous programthat would Excel our kids and
push them and really get themcollege ready.
We've we've talked about it, youand I before, but ultimately we
want to build a system where akid could have enough rigor
that.
As they graduated, they hadchoices.
(17:30):
The AP program is tied veryclosely to act and sat, which
are college indicators for manyof our students.
And it compliments those twometrics.
So well, uh, that we jumped inreally with both feet and have
been known as a quasi,unofficial AP district.
There are districts around usthat have AP, some have IB,
(17:52):
which is internationalbaccalaureate.
The IB program.
We, when we researched it wasvery expensive, it was very
extensive and it necessarily,for us, we didn't think we would
get any better results.
It's also AP gives us theopportunity to move teachers in
and out and have young teacherstake the coursework, start
teaching those courses.
And it gives them a little bitof a career ladder too.
(18:13):
If you can imagine that, youknow, Getting to teach AP world
history.
You teach maybe a differentmotivated kid or a talented kid
versus like a regular worldhistory.
So it gives them someopportunities to teach kids
across the board, as far as thelevel of rigor.
And of course we jumped in againwith both feet.
(18:33):
And so all of our skills havelots of AP.
We range from school to schooland within our six day high
schools from 25 to 32.
AP courses.
So if you're in the AP realm andyou want to go to school and
about 79% of our parentsindicate early on that they want
their child in a collegeuniversity.
(18:54):
We just feel like that was agood marriage.
And so we've kind of led the wayin the Metro area, our rates for
kids taking the courses and thentaking a final exam, an exit
exam where they have thepotential to earn some college
credits.
It's just been a great marriagefor us, and we've seen the kids
thrive in that.
We've seen that our ICT and satscores have reflected that, not
(19:16):
only are we really leading theMetro area in AP, have some of
the highest passage rate on thattest, we lead the nation.
We have about 72% of our kidstake the AP exam, turn around
and pass it with a three, getthe college credit, the national
average there, where we're at a72%, they're at a 59 in the
nation.
(19:37):
Just this past year.
We gave over 4,500 tests.
We had about 2,500 kidsparticipating in an AP course.
So when you, you think throughthe scale of that, we've got
lots of kids reaching out anddoing that for a parent.
It's great.
They're getting the collegecredit.
We've had a lot of kids walk inalready as a second semester
(19:59):
freshmen or a course or twoaway, really from sophomore
status just based on theircourses.
We're heading toward the springtime of the year.
We'll ultimately honor, our Valand sales at each of our
schools.
We do a little banquet with themand honor their parents in them.
And they bring a favoriteteacher and we, we laugh and
tell stories on each other thatnight, but, and ingrained or
(20:20):
embedded in a lot of thosestories from the teachers or
their experience with thatchild, where they saw them
during a year where they hadfour and five AP courses on
their schedule.
So these are kids that arelooking at rigor because
ultimately they want to havesome choices.
We send kids all up and down theEast coast, Ivy league, and I,
lot of the prestigious privateschools, I saw a note, just
(20:43):
yesterday on one of our softballplayers has been accepted to
Harvard.
And so you talking about givingkids choices in the end with our
sat, which we also do.
A lot of times lead the, theMetro area and our sat scores.
We mailed to, uh, sat andresumes for applications to over
420, uh, colleges anduniversities last year.
(21:07):
So to me, that's saying we'vegot a system is vibrant.
Our kids are going a little bitof everywhere.
Uh, East coast, West coast,Midwest they've got choices.
And so for me that's a point ofpride.
I'm almost like a proud father.
When you see the opportunitiesthat our kids have, have
basically been afforded throughtheir education.
Robert Tidwell (21:27):
That's outstanding, a 72% passage rate
on the AP exams.
And just in case anybodylistening is looking for a, a
critique of that stat.
I want to make it clear thatanyone who wants to take the
class can take the class, right?
It's not like the County ischerry picking certain students
to take AP classes to bolsterthat 72% pass rate.
(21:51):
It's just wide open youregister, you take it.
And 72% of the kids here arepassing.
Dr. Hightower (21:56):
That's correct.
And what we actually do, wereally feel, that there is a
definite push in our nation andin the Southeast to pay more
attention to diversity equityand inclusivity, the charge for
me as a superintendent is tomake sure that we.
The students that would normallybe unrepresented or under
served, have those kinds ofopportunities.
(22:18):
And so we, we believe that justover the last couple of years,
we've even enhanced our policiesto encourage kids that are
traditionally underserved intothose, get them into those
classes, get them enrolled andgive them opportunities.
You shared a little bit of yourstory with me earlier about
opportunities and through ascholarship, had a great
opportunity to stretch yourselfand go to a great school and add
(22:41):
a lot, agree, same thing here.
If we can create doors for someof our kids that really gives
you a sense of it.
Accomplishment.
Robert Tidwell (22:49):
Yeah.
That's outstanding.
And sometimes some of these kidsare, are not in an environment
where they're encouraged or evenexpected.
To Excel.
So they have that opportunity totaste some success and it just
sort of fuels that desire to goand do more in here.
You know, the schools inCherokee County seem to be
giving those kids everyopportunity to go and do more
Dr. Hightower (23:09):
sure.
And with it comes challenges.
You know, when I say that thereare 79% of our kids.
Are wanting to go to college anduniversity.
You know, the logical questionis, well, what do you do with
the other 21?
And so we've really, I think ofher my five years as a
superintendent upped our game inthe arena of college and career
are, and creating more CTAclass, pathways.
(23:32):
We've got lots of pathwaycompleters and, believe it or
not the, in the pathways andwhether they're going to look at
something that's like, say anautotech or an HPAC or a
welding, or even an academicpathway.
The numbers on the graduationrate for those students.
She w we did just achieve ourhighest graduation rate ever as
(23:54):
a County, under the cohortmodel, we were one percentage
point behind Fayette.
And if you know, Peachtree cityand our Metro area, they're a
smaller district about 21,000students where we're sitting at
43,000.
It's a little more fluid thanus.
I, and so, but we compete withthem.
I call their superintendentregularly, uh, and we aggravate
one another because if I passhim, you know, on an AP score or
(24:17):
an ICT, I let him know it.
So we look at them and, ourgraduation rate is really
getting solid.
We really feel good about it.
I do want to say to anyone whowould be listening.
Don't confuse our graduationrate with a dropout rate.
It doesn't mean that 10% of ourkids are dropping out.
It really just speaks to thefact that they're graduating on
time meeting the requirements oftheir pathway.
(24:39):
A drop out rate is much, muchlower.
We usually are between three and4%.
That's kind of a, a standardacross the suburban districts
around us.
Cobb Fulton.
For PSI, we see those same kindof numbers.
It's just that we're beatingthem a little bit on the
graduation rate and we let themknow that we're, we're proud of
our kids and, you know, ourteachers work so hard and pay so
(25:02):
much attention to pushing thatkid across the finish line.
And so as we get to the springand we're starting to plan
graduations already, there's anexcitement.
You know, I go to all of them.
I did have to treat myself for alittle carpal tunnel last year.
It was really funny.
My family gave me a lot of griefabout dad.
Can't squeeze my hand for amonth after graduations.
(25:23):
But we want everybody toparticipate.
My cabinet participates theboard participates.
For us, it's a celebration, youknow, that it has been working
for 13 years to get there.
Those kids, especially, youtalked about your daughter, take
an APS.
Those kids walk across withthose AP honor.
Chords.
And we, we just, as part of our,our metric, we just looked
really a long and hearted.
(25:45):
All of our AP scores, 343 kidslast year were declared by the
NA national organization as APscholars.
Wow.
So 343 kids.
Now we're talking, they reallygot to go on out.
They're really accomplishingthings.
Those kids I'm telling you canwrite their check almost to a
school for a parent.
You've got two daughters, one inschool and whatnot.
(26:06):
It's, there's always a, let'shave some choices, but also show
me some money.
Right.
So we want to get them there.
And, we traditionally say ourkids earn lots, lots of
scholarship dollars.
Robert Tidwell (26:18):
Yeah.
I don't think I've ever heard aparent say, golly, that tuition
is too low.
I wish I was writing a biggercheck.
Dr. Hightower (26:24):
That's right.
That's right.
Robert Tidwell (26:28):
I guess it would probably be safe to say that out
of all of your years ineducation this past year has had
to have been the mostchallenging.
Is that, is that fair to say?
Dr. Hightower (26:37):
That's so safe.
That's so safe that you'retossing me a softball.
Robert, um, it has, is trulybeen challenging for Alma.
A couple of fronts.
One, we knew that we wanted toopen face to face and your
listeners may not know, butCherokee was really one of the
largest school districts in thenation to open early.
We opened on Monday, August 3rd.
(26:59):
Uh, per our calendar, uh, weheard from our, our constituents
and from our board, we want youthere.
We want you to open.
We want some face to face.
There was a big, big disconnectfollowing the March 13th closure
last year, uh, when our governordeclared schools close and put
us into a sheltering in placemode, uh, you know, the world
(27:20):
kind of stopped for a, for abit.
Now I will tell you that wekept, we kept teaching and
learning.
We did.
We modified our calendar just alittle bit to end our school
year by, by Memorial day.
By that time folks were done.
They were tired.
It had been a real big push, butwe weren't all spring and summer
long days during that time to,to design, uh, what we believed
(27:42):
would be a face-to-face modelthat everybody good plug into an
also at the same time, uh, pivotand have a digital model.
We started the year with about9,000 of our kids in digital.
Uh, and that's a big lift.
We really are running a dualsystem this year.
So you've got that piece, butthen you also have the building
(28:03):
facility piece and we did takesteps very early to change some
of our things to improve thecleanliness of our building.
We wrote into our existingcustodial contract.
We enhanced it by over$2 millionto add in a hundred additional
custodians.
We threw money at people toclean and disinfect.
We did some other things withinour building.
(28:25):
We took out our water coolers,put in water bottle.
Fillers.
Uh, we changed out our filters.
They raid out there's thissystem where you write a filter
in it's a Merv one Denine.
And we were at about a six.
We bumped that all the way downto four, got in a filter that
our, ultimately our hand airhandlers could, could get push.
(28:45):
Uh, but we just fill out, we'vegot cleaner, healthier
buildings.
Our flu and cold numbers arelike, they just hit off the prep
precipice.
They're gone down.
Uh, we have not had really acold and flu season and our
district that year.
Uh, but because we believe ofthe steps that we've taken, so
you've got academics, you've gotbuilding.
(29:07):
And then of course the lastpiece is just the health piece.
We have become public healthadministrators, whether you
wanted to do that or not, areour administrators and
counseling staff and schoolnurses will tell you that they
spend a lot of time working withkids that have potential
symptoms, doing contact tracing,as required by our DPH to stay
open.
(29:27):
A lot of our parents when theirkids get caught up in, uh, in a
quarantine because of closecontact or they're frustrated,
this kid has to sit out they'rehealthy, they don't get the
illness and they, they feel likethey, we forced them to have
this disconnect from theirschool, but that's really the
price that we've had to pay tostay open, uh, is to live by
(29:48):
those rules.
Add a couple of school districtsthat got a little bit out ahead
of the governor and just said,we're not going to close
quarantine, healthy kidsanymore.
And, uh, they got a real quickCSUN to see us and got back in
line on that.
So I had received, emailed dailyabout that.
Parents are frustrated with thatpiece.
(30:09):
It is the price of doingbusiness and in a worldwide
pandemic.
And I just try to say again, weneed flexibility.
We need grace in this kind ofenvironment and we've stayed
open.
We can had to close individualschools.
We created a reopening planetand, it was shared statewide.
And then actually nationwide.
It made its way to the whitehouse.
The white house took a peek atour plan.
(30:30):
They liked it.
When we've had to close say aclass or we've had to close a
school, people had said, Oh,look, you're playing.
It's a failure.
But our plan actually talkedabout how we would deal with,
with outbreaks or clusters asdefined by our DPH system.
And we've said, we're going toclose.
Classes and schools to keepeverybody healthy when it's
(30:52):
needed.
And so there've been pieceswhere we've had schools pop out.
Your daughter was probablycaught up in a, in a closure of
her high school.
Uh, we looked at one justyesterday where we had to decide
if the numbers really relegated.
It we're fortunate right now,you know, we're in two days
remote while we do a big two-dayvaccination event for our
teachers, we'll be vaccinatingover 3000 people in these two
(31:15):
days.
And to pull that kind of a thingoff, we needed all of our
teachers accessible we'revaccinating, literally 200 an
hour, three yesterday.
Got my shot.
Visited with our teachers sawwhat was there and I'm telling
you it was quite an event, andorganized, you know, we, we had
all the right pieces in place,but it did mean that we needed
to unplug for a couple of daysback it up to a weekend.
(31:37):
In case we had teachers withsymptoms, I feel like, again,
we've done the right.
Things in the right way.
Uh, it meets with some criticismbecause even to have kids in
face-to-face during a worldwidepandemic, you know, is somewhat
controversial, but we believe,uh, in the end that our kids
have, not only survived, butthey've grown.
(31:58):
And that was a real challenge.
Last year, I mentioned to youearlier, I got to sit in and be
a panelist and a wise ed K-12podcast.
And the, the originary is, asyou would have guessed, Wazniak
Steve Wozniak.
Uh, but they were looking at howto open and, I was the only one
of the three Atlanta panelists.
That was going to open.
(32:19):
And so it was a mixed bag thatday.
And, uh, but I, what I, I guesswhat I can say is that we've
been real aggressive about thatpiece, but we've also had a plan
that, that really scripted outwhat we would do when we would
have cases.
And we have had cases, we've hadclosures, but we're really
healthy.
Now.
We're really feeling good aboutwhere we are and our case loads.
(32:40):
And, uh, we, we think we'vegotten on top of this thing and
it really helps obviously forthere to be a national rollout
of vaccines.
Uh, that's a piece of thestructure that we needed to have
happen, but, uh, we, we areready or putting steps out there
to look at reopening to.
For next year.
Uh, we don't think thepandemic's necessarily going
away just because we havevaccines in place.
(33:01):
We've got a lot of folks thatwill not for one reason or
another, uh, take the vaccine.
Maybe they can't take thevaccine.
Uh, we know that that's whatprobably wrap around into the
next year, but we believe we'vegot the basis for a good system
going forward and we justcontinue to work.
It it's long hours.
Uh, there wasn't a lot of springand summer vacation.
And for the, I can
Robert Tidwell (33:20):
imagine, I can imagine.
And some of the folks listeningmight not know this, but at the
beginning of the school year, inAugust, uh, the Cherokee County
school district announced thatparents would have an option.
If they wanted to send theirchildren to face to face
learning, they could, if theywanted, instead to keep the
children home, to do digitallearning, they could do that, do
(33:43):
that as well.
And that's sort of what you weretalking about a few moments ago
when you said that there aredual systems learning systems
here in the County for the year.
Um, my question is.
How difficult was itlogistically when it's may June,
July shelter in place ordersabound.
(34:06):
We're not really sure what'sgoing on how this thing is being
transmitted.
Who's safe, who isn't safe andyou're trying to coordinate the
school district and the seventhlargest County in the state of
Georgia to create this dualsystem.
And have it in place in time foran August 3rd start date.
W what was that even like?
Dr. Hightower (34:28):
So, so you can imagine the stress level, but
because while we try to joke andwe don't take ourselves so
seriously, we try to keep all ofour leadership roles in context,
we take our job very seriously,and we believe we answer to our
community and for our community,uh, our community, I'm telling
you, made it very, very clear tous that they wanted their kids
(34:50):
in school.
So as we pivoted in spring.
And we were, we were sitting,the kids were at home.
Our teachers were home.
Uh, leadership was not at home.
We considered ourself essential,uh, much like the governor, uh,
kind of outlined that, uh, hewanted shelter in place except
for essential employees.
We considered our taskessential.
So, we weren't out and aboutrunning around.
(35:12):
We didn't do vacations thissummer.
We worked a lot of 10, 12, 14hour days to ready it because we
wanted to, to do it and to do itwell.
And so we immediately reallyearly spring, we plugged in to
work a lot groups and I, I'm apart of three different national
collaboratives withsuperintendents and hold a
fellowship with one.
(35:32):
Ultimately it gave me greatopportunities to tap into the
vision and the leadership ofother folks and see how they
were dealing with it.
But somewhere really about lateApril, we started pivoting and
started talking about reopeningplans.
So we really spent April, may,June, July.
Fine-tuning that piece, that thedifficult piece, as you design a
(35:53):
digital out program, isdesigning it with teachers that
are off contract and are stillobserving shelter in place.
So that was a little bit of apush.
And when our board basicallysaid, we want you to open on
time that that was limitingsomewhat from the teacher
training piece.
And we just basically said,okay, just understand as we
we've readied the ship now, andas we take this air ship down
(36:16):
the runway, there's still goingto be some building parts
because teachers still have sometraining to get to them.
And so early on, whenever wepopped out.
Of a school or a class.
We took that opportunity totarget that school or that class
to do more teacher trainingright there.
It's important to know that forthe 9,000 students that chose to
go digital, they were affordedopportunities and led by
(36:40):
teachers or proctored byteachers who were at school.
They were working out of theirclassroom using the resources
and the bandwidth that we had,they were plugged in and doing
duties like they would, if theywere a normal teacher, they have
taken this, our teachers just asa hero, they've just really
stepped up.
They've been at work every daythat they could, we have
encouraged them.
(37:00):
There is a lot of discourse outthere not just nationwide.
I mean, you can come all the wayback to within our zip codes.
We've had folks that haven'tagreed with the way that we've,
we've conducted our plan andconducted school that year.
There's nationwide discourseover whether you should be in
face or, or digital, whetherkids should have my ask or not
(37:21):
where their employee should havemasked or not.
When we ran, we ask our, statesuperintendents association to
run some.
Surveys for us.
I was part of a group thatreally kind of pushed forward
with that.
We found out very early in theyear, late summer to early year,
that only about 50% of thedistricts were having their
(37:43):
adults wear mask.
And only about 30% were havingtheir kids, wear masks.
Now we, we stepped out, wewanted our adults in masks.
We knew our employees needed tobe masked.
We did not create a mask mandatefor kids.
We saw that as problem.
Yeah.
Attic, uh, it's.
It can be done.
We didn't feel like it posturedus very well within our given
(38:05):
community, uh, to, to be able topull that off.
Uh, we felt like that we weregoing to have right daily
battles with our adult kids.
We would have daily complianceissues with our younger kids.
You know, how do you have athird grader?
Keep a mask on all day.
There's some logistical, commonsense issues there.
We did encourage them.
It's not that we don't believein mask.
We, we believe in the science.
(38:25):
We believe that any way that wecan limit the spread or the
outbreak we want our folks to dothat.
So we kind of postured ourselvesaround strongly encouraging,
strongly recommending those.
And, we've worked that systemnow, again, if you agree or
disagree, you know, you and Icould sit and talk that one
through all day long, I willtell you that I still get masked
(38:47):
emails and we're at, you know,March 12th.
Uh, this would have been theFriday a year ago that we would
have had our last day in thebuilding.
And from that day forward, we'vegotten discourse on every issue
that we faced.
Our two day event that Imentioned earlier, I got some
hate mail yesterday from parentsthat were not happy that their
(39:07):
kids were remote yesterday.
And you just have to keep it incontext.
You want to be responsible.
You always want to selfevaluate, you know, the
effectiveness of yourorganization as a leader.
Uh, but at the same time, justknow that the discourse is going
to be there.
I had pretty thick skin beforethis started, but I didn't know
COVID would make it thick.
Robert Tidwell (39:27):
Trial attorneys, we are notoriously thin skinned.
We have this need to be liked byeverybody.
And I don't know if it's becauseof the nature of our career,
where we're always talking to anaudience hoping for a specific
outcome, but, uh, you know,we're, we're notoriously thin
skinned.
We want to be liked byeverybody.
(39:48):
So when I saw some of thenational criticism that was
being levied against theCherokee County school district
for reopening, it bothered me.
And I've always wondered, howdid it affect you?
What did it feel like when youwould see, some, in my opinion,
some unfair criticisms that youwould see on television or
(40:08):
national media outlets, what wasthat like?
Dr. Hightower (40:12):
Well, that's a, that's a real fair question.
I appreciate you even broachthat topic because we were large
and we were out there and wewere open.
Nobody else in Atlanta reallywas open, uh, Forsyth.
Our neighbor to the East wasgoing to pop in about a week, a
week and a half later.
Uh, we were really out there byourselves, and we had a couple
(40:32):
of unfortunate pictures, seniorslike to gather and picture, give
vets, that's a traditional roundhere.
The girls wear their blackdresses and they get together
and a group of a hundred,they're going to get their pig.
And they did that.
You know, obviously, uh, it'snot something that we can down
and we endorsed, uh, they, infact, in one situation, took a
(40:53):
picture with a mask and thentook them all off and took
their, you know, their portrait.
They wanted something toremember each other by, and,
that kind of stuff never getscovered, but that got passed
around, you know, when you're onthe TMZ, Papa Razzi shows,
national shows in the evening,that's never fun.
I think probably the only partthat stung was that critics took
(41:13):
that opportunity to, to whack usover the head with that.
So that's never verycomfortable.
We got past that, but we gotbeyond that school started
opening.
What is really amazing and I'vefound through my collaboratives,
uh, nationwide is that we stillhave a lot of systems not open
one of our big Metro districtsto the South.
Just opened this week.
(41:34):
We've got another district thatwould serve where the airport is
and everybody flies throughAtlanta airport.
Right.
That County is under who attemptto open, face to face after
spring break.
So at that point, we'd been inall year and have seven weeks to
go we're we're at the finishline almost right.
They're just starting tointroduce face to face.
Another Metro County downtownCounty, started opening
(41:56):
staggered over the last coupleof weeks, but they've already
also mandated that their kidsare going to go to summer school
all summer.
So you don't open all year, butthen the kids have to go all
summer.
And so that for us, we just tooka different approach and I'm not
being critical, I guess I'm, I'mcomparing ourselves and really
saying we locked our systembetter.
It, it did come with itstrade-offs you mentioned some of
(42:19):
the national attention.
We did have a New York timesstory that popped out about a
month ago.
He sent us questions for aboutfour months.
We answered it.
We sent him lots and lots ofmaterials and uh, we felt like
the story was slanted, but itwas the New York times.
So it's gotta be right.
You know, we, we're out on back,we asked for about nine.
(42:41):
Corrections and edits.
He refused as a rider.
Uh, he, he did one cause he hadnamed a school wrong.
So that was an easy, nobrighter.
We wrote again, we got a dayeditor involved and the story
was, was corrected for therecord.
Of course it was buried.
You know how that is?
People read the story one time,
Robert Tidwell (43:02):
front page story, fourth page correction.
Dr. Hightower (43:04):
That's right.
And so, you know, what that doesis it does give you a lot of
heat.
From across the nation I'veheard from, you know, not just
Woodstock, Georgia, but I'veheard from Tacoma, Washington at
this point, you know?
So, uh, that, that's not a wholelot of fun.
It really detracts from thethings that you need to be
spending your time on.
(43:24):
But ultimately, I think our teamand our board great leaders,
every one of them, can know thatthey've stepped up for our
community and, had a good year.
And, uh, I've, I've, uh, triedto mention this a couple of
times and it leaks away from meas I talk.
But one of the things that wetalked about as a cabinet senior
leadership last spring was okay.
(43:45):
There are really these, thesepieces that you go through when
you're faced with a nationalhealth crisis.
One is fear, obviously there's,there's fear of the unknown
there's fear that, that you'regoing to contract this.
You, you, you know, we saw themedia, we saw the dance, we saw
the worldwide.
Contact numbers somewhere inthere.
You've got to determine if youcan move beyond that and learn
(44:07):
about it, get knowledgeable andgive it some constructs, give it
some framework so that you canstart to work and survive within
that framework.
Robert Tidwell (44:18):
It's obvious this County is growing by leaps
and bounds.
You can't drive five miles inany direction without seeing
multiple neighborhoods.
And other things going up, whichis exciting, but it also brings
in a lot of students and ourhigh schools are, are big.
And, we're approaching thatmaximum capacity, even with
9,000 kids learning from home,um, our schools are still
(44:43):
getting kind of full.
Are there any plans for anyfuture growth, any additional
schools or high schools oranything like that?
Because I get asked that a goodbit.
I don't know why people think Iwould know the answer to that
question, but, you'd be doing mea huge favor if you could share
with folks, if there are anyplans in place for future
growth,
Dr. Hightower (45:01):
certainly.
One of the other things thatCOVID has exacerbated, if you've
not been hindered bydistribution, uh, I would say
you haven't even know where todo anything from Amazon.
Like.
Right, but because distributionand calls have gone up
tremendously.
I know residential andcommercial building has gone up
tremendously.
We're really looking more.
(45:21):
We are about to go into aSPLOST, season.
We will have a referendum on theballot.
We believe our board willapprove that and, push that
forward.
Robert Tidwell (45:32):
And just for the listeners benefit a SPLOST as a
special purpose local sales taxthat is earmarked for a
particular purpose, right?
Dr. Hightower (45:39):
Correct.
And some districts have anadvantage with a SPLOST vote
where they basically collecttheir pennies during the year
that additional penny on thesales tax, they collect that
they put it in savings Countyand then they build with it.
That would be really more in aslow growth district or one
where the penny brings a lot ofmoney, a lot of revenue, uh,
(45:59):
we're not in that kind of asituation.
So we collect the penny, butthen we also bond against it on
the front end so that we canbuild, when I was first in the
district, we had less than14,000 kids.
Now we sit at 43.
Most of that growth happened in,began in the early two
thousands.
So there were years where wegrew the 3000 kids.
(46:20):
And so with that kind ofexplosive growth, I mean, that's
a huge high school.
I mean, you know, really that'sbigger than any high school that
we have and you grow them numberof kids and one year.
So when you're in that kind ofposture, you really have to
build rapidly.
So over a 15 year span, we built20 schools or had major
renovations or additions.
So with that comes day at, youknow, there is a mortgage,
(46:43):
right?
You've got to pay, pay thePiper.
And so really my tenure that myfive years we've really worked
hard to work on that.
And we've not built a lot.
We've had renovations, we've hadrepurposes, we've added some
wings right now on the campuswhere your children are.
We were adding, instructionalunits on the middle school, but
also adding a second gym for thehigh school.
(47:05):
Another fun thing people wouldsay, why are you paying
attention to gyms?
You're a sports guy, right?
You like outdoors, but tryhaving, Oh, the high school
side.
You know, 25, 2,700 kids andhave one gymnasium for PE, it
just doesn't work.
So we've gone in and been tryingto add in second gymnasium.
So ultimately I guess I'mrolling forward to the fact that
(47:25):
we're looking at a new SPLOST,uh, as of next November, and
within that, we've got somegreat builds, some great
additions.
We are going to be conservativein the fact that we are going to
limit the building of a lot ofschools and we're looking at
where we can build additions.
It does pump up the, that I useand the footprint and the
(47:45):
occupancy of a building.
But ultimately, we know thatlike several of our middle and
elementary, they need anadditional wing.
We're going to try to pull thatoff versus a new, build, a new
build right now.
For our middle school isprobably looking at$50 million
and that's just a middle school,high school.
Bill's probably going to go 80to a hundred million dollars at
(48:06):
this point.
Now we'll tell you that thepremier build within the next
boss will be a replacementCherokee.
They're currently in a building63 years old.
By the time we could even get itbuilt, it would be almost 70.
It'll be a big one.
It'll probably be a 3000 FTEbuilding.
Um, but also when you're in thiskind of a low where.
(48:27):
You don't have as much explosivegrowth.
We do have the continued growththat you spoke to.
We need to not exploding andyou're having to build three
elementaries.
There is a window where you canlook at a replacement building
for one of your aging buildings.
Unfortunately, for us, ithappens to be, you know, a high
dollar build, but we're going tolimit it to that high dollar
build.
Maybe one more replacementelementary living in our County.
(48:50):
Yeah.
So now there's a huge roadproduct pro project running East
and West.
Uh, that project basically, he'sgoing to be in the front door of
one of our smaller, olderelementary.
So we're currently on the prowllooking at some replacement
property, some, a landacquisition that would give us
the opportunity to get thatschool off of that main highway.
And when I say it's in his frontdoor, it literally is in his
(49:12):
front door.
So you do some of those billsbecause you have it.
Uh, but ultimately we want toanswer the bail and.
And create capacities at all ofour buildings.
We're proud of our buildingprogram.
If you've been in, in of ourschools, if our listeners have,
have visited any of our schoolsin Cherokee, they'll see a clean
well lit nice building.
It's probably new because ofthat building project that we
(49:36):
went through in the early twothousands.
But we pride ourselves in ourbuilding program and we will
continue to answer the bailreally based on the voter saying
we believe that that the schoolsare an important piece.
We do think, uh, to be a littlebit selfish, that we're an
economic driver.
We believe that when people lookat moving to Cherokee, They look
(49:57):
at the school district.
They look at a vulnerability towork sites in Atlanta.
They look at public health, theylook at quality of life.
They look at your parks.
There are a lot of things Ithink that play into it.
But to know that that schoolsare close to the top is a point
of pride, but also a point ofresponsibility.
So we, we will continue to workthat program.
(50:18):
And again, that's, that goes tothe generosity of our voters,
our taxpayers to vote that taxin it is a tax.
It's a penny sales tax.
I can tell you that we're notalone in that arena.
Uh, All but four districts inthe state of Georgia have a
SPLOST have a penny.
And, so we pushed to that.
I will say to our voters and ourtaxpayers that, uh, at our
(50:42):
recent state of the County, thatwe were able to participate in
and provide some of our metrics.
Uh, the County commissionreported again for about the
fourth straight year thatCherokee has the lowest tax
burden of any County, uh, in theMetro area.
And so that's a point that Ithink gives it a little bit of
context, even within the growththat we've had.
There is a little bit of aheavier, um, piece that rests on
(51:06):
residential tax, but still ourtax burden is the lowest in the
Metro area.
Robert Tidwell (51:11):
I mean, that's incredible when your parent next
to the 72% AP passage rate, thehighest, graduation rates that
we've ever had, the kidssucceeding so well and you.
You know, stand that next to,the lowest tax burden in all of
Metro Atlanta.
That's pretty impressive Allright.
Let me ask you just a couple ofpersonal questions.
So during the shelter in place,period, we all sort of found
(51:35):
ourselves, uh, locked in, notleaving unless it was necessary.
Uh, for me, I personally startedcooking a lot more barbecue and
I have a.
Almost a new wardrobe of largerclothes to show for it.
Uh, did you take up any hobbies?
Hopefully something a little bithealthier, uh, while we were
sheltering in place.
Dr. Hightower (51:56):
I will say that it, it put a serious cramp and,
uh, my hiking, uh, simplybecause all the national parks
also closed down and they brokeam people off of the 80.
And, uh, so you really had tofind cool little state parks to
go out and enjoy the sunshineand the fresh air.
I like to a kid with my wife,Susan.
Yeah.
We had the prettiest yard thatnobody saw.
(52:19):
Uh, we bought more flowers andmore shrubs that bloomed.
And we enjoyed them.
We did a lot of back decksitting and a lot of night
entertaining in small groupsduring that time.
Like I had told you we didcontinue to work, so we
wouldn't, it wasn't long, longdays at home, but it was kind of
long weekends at home.
And, but, you know, I read alot, there were a lot that I
(52:41):
felt like I had to learn.
We all did some binge watchingNetflix, uh, you know, uh, prime
Hulu.
Uh, we had a dog go and I thinkI've got five subscriptions at
this point.
So I'm really running out ofshows.
Uh, I got gigged into a coupleby my kids that I, you know, I
had to, I had to go back andwatch it, I'd say, but they're
(53:02):
72 episodes.
I can't dedicate that much time.
And in COVID hits and guess whatI saw them, you know?
So there was some definitebinge-watching late at night.
That's outstay.
What was your favorite show thatyou binge watched?
Oh, you know, I had not watched,sons of anarchy.
I hadn't seen breaking bad.
I just refused.
I had refused.
(53:23):
So yeah, I'm all there now.
Robert Tidwell (53:25):
Gosh.
Well, I cannot thank you enoughfor joining us today, Dr.
Hightower, this has been anabsolute pleasure.
I really appreciate everythingyou're doing here in Cherokee
County.
I'm very grateful for yourleadership and I cannot thank
you.
And all of the teachers and thestaff at the schools and
Cherokee County, just for the,just the incredible job they've
(53:48):
done dealing with.
Difficult circumstances dealingwith the stress of uncertainty,
but doing it in such a way thatthe entire County owes a debt of
gratitude to you and the folkswho work in the school district.
And so.
Thank them.
And thank you so much forjoining us today on the peach
buzz.
Dr. Hightower (54:08):
Thank you.
Spot pleasure.
And, and on their behalf, I willsay thank you as well.
We appreciate the support, uh,and, uh, the togetherness and
the family feel that we get fromour community.
We believe that that, uh, theeducation of our kids, it's,
it's much bigger than us, uh,and it involves community
partnerships.
And, uh, so we appreciate yourkind words today.
(54:29):
We appreciate the invite.
And again, I believe that ourteachers have just been
tremendous this year.
We, we believe in our teams.
Uh, we believe we have organizedourselves as a team of team of
teams and it showing itselfthrough a worldwide pandemic.
And so we're glad that thatfolks notice that we've been
working hard and doing goodthings for kids and, uh, your
(54:51):
invitation to the time we've hadto just talk that one through a
little bit is, is greatlyappreciated.
Robert Tidwell (54:56):
Okay, well again, thank you very much.
And this has been the peach buzzbrought to you by Tidwell's
Strimban injury lawyers.
We look forward to joining younext time.
Popular Podcasts
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!