Robert Tidwell 0:20

welcome to the peach buzz brought to you by Tidwell's Strimban injury lawyers, Woodstock Georgia's personal injury law firm. The peach buzz is a podcast dedicated to showcasing people, making a positive impact in our communities here in North Georgia. Today, we are very excited to have a very special guest with us. Dr. Brian Hightower, who is the superintendent of the Cherokee County school district. Welcome to The Peach Buzz, Dr. Hightower.

Dr. Hightower 0:46

Well, thank you, Robert. I appreciate the invitation and I look forward to just spending some time with you and talking about the school district and our community at large Cherokee really is a great place to be.

Robert Tidwell 0:57

Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent and I'll just be a little transparent here. I'm pretty excited about having you with us today. I've had an opportunity to, to meet you a few times over the years, and I follow you on social media and, you know, quite frankly, I think you're a pretty interesting guy and I'm very much looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better here today.

Dr. Hightower 1:16

I will tell you, my family would tell you you've set your bar way too low, but I do look forward to talking about our County and our school district. Uh, uh, I know that you've resided here in Cherokee, a good while now I've been here a good while and it is great place to plug into, to work and live and raise a family, go to church. Uh, Enjoy the, the civic arena around here and obviously to, to work and to contribute. Great, great place to be.

Robert Tidwell 1:46

Right. Sort of as a point of interest, a lot of people might not know this, but you are a bit of an outdoors guy, is that right?

Dr. Hightower 1:52

Uh, I do love to be outdoors. That's right. We're sitting here looking out a window that shows a pretty blue sky today.

Robert Tidwell 1:59

Yeah, it's tempting. Isn't it?

Dr. Hightower 2:00

It is very tempting.

Robert Tidwell 2:01

I see, sometimes you are hiking like the Appalachian trail, um, other places. What are, what are some of your favorite places you've had a chance to visit?

Dr. Hightower 2:10

Thank you. I, I do love to get out and enjoy the scenery. A friend and I have been working a little bit on the trail. Uh, mostly weekends we're definitely do it in sections. If you read anything about the ATVs folks unplugged from their lives for four or five, six months, we're following a guy right now on social media. That's in his ninth month. And I think he's just basically living on the trail, but, uh, that that's always fun. There are lots of stories from the trail. There's a lots of interesting people on the AT, so we've, enjoyed that. We're literally sitting at mile four 22, gonna run up next weekend and do another, another big section to knock it out. For the we're almost in Virginia, we're knocking on the door. And so we do enjoy that.

Robert Tidwell 2:55

That is very cool. I have a younger brother, that long story, not quite as long, we didn't have the opportunity of growing up together. He grew up in Maine and I grew up in South Carolina. he is currently in the army. He is a major in the army. he and I have an agreement that once he retires, we're going to do the Appalachian trail together. And it's kind of symbolic seeing how he grew up in Maine at the top end of the trail. I grew up in South Carolina at the almost bottom end of the trail. And so he and I have a plan to split it up over a couple of summers whenever he retires

Dr. Hightower 3:28

what a great adventure, you know, especially to spend some time with family and friends, so that, that 2000 miles you get to know each other. You may not have grown up with him, but I guarantee you'll know everything about him by the end of that. So it really is interesting when you self-reflect. You enjoy the scenery. It's a tough go, you know, and I think that's really another piece that really draws me to that is I like the challenge. I like the training, loved the views and there are a lot of views on the T that they don't give away for free. You have to work real hard for them, but that's, that's kinda, for me, that's really neat. And we've done some time in Colorado and Arizona, Utah, if you're a hiking enthusiast, that's just a must. You just got to spend some time. I read an article just this week. 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 4:23

Beautiful out there. I agree.

Dr. Hightower 4:25

Great therapy.

Robert Tidwell 4:26

Yes. So you mentioned a minute ago that, you've been here in Cherokee County for a while. How long has it been?

Dr. Hightower 4:32

So I came to Reinhardt as a college freshman. I grew up nearby in Cartersville just to the West of us and, came to Reinhart, a two year school and never left. They offered me a position over housing. as a, here I am, I'm nineteen 10 years old. And I'm trying to tell guys how to behave in the dorms. So you can imagine the adventure that was. I would drive down to Kennesaw in the morning and work on my ed degree. Come back and do housing all evening, met my wife there. She's an education major as well. So we, we knocked out the Kennesaw thing. We were married young because Reinhart, they didn't necessarily pay me a lot of money, but I had free housing and I ate for free and she had to pay a dollar in the cafeteria. So, I mean, again, the 1980s, right. But, we got married. We were in love and we're about to 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's just a great place to be. And in a fast growth district professionally, it's really great because in a school district that gives you opportunities. And so, you know, for sure. For young professionals that are upwardly mobile, there are great places to plug in. And so, uh, I'm currently in my 35th year with the school district and loving every minute.

Robert Tidwell 5:51

That's awesome. I was looking through your CV and I saw that from 2000 to 2003, you were the principal at ET booth middle school. And that's right at the time that Lori and I moved here, we moved here in Oh two and, you know, Lori and I cut up all the time about just how much growth we've seen in this area. I can only imagine how much more you've seen. I mean, what was it like as you go downtown Lake Parkway? Now, if you ever drive back by ET Booth

Dr. Hightower 6:18

I do. I was there. I actually, we had a little joke run and I was out there four straight weeks for various reasons, honoring employees, seeing kids. I'm a pretty active superintendent. I like to plug in this morning. I spent some time honoring our support staff employees of the year. We named three last night. So I dropped in on them this morning. And, uh, so I am at booth and all around Woodstock. And in the early days, I actually spent 16 years at booth as a teacher, and then was fortunate enough to be named as an assistant principal and then ultimately was named as principal. So, 16 years in a middle school, I, you know, I consider that hazard somewhat and, probably should be double credited on my years. I took up golf right about the time I, had finished my time at booth and people, would maybe like, 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 on the course with us, so it's just tune it out. That's right. That's right now the great days, what a way to, to start a great career.

Robert Tidwell 7:26

Well, what were some of the things that motivated you to get into education as a career?

Dr. Hightower 7:30

Well, I think probably most educators would say that there, there are teachers that impacted their lives and were positive influences. And I really very early, even when I was at Reinhardt and those first two years, a lot of times you're working core those first two years. And you don't even declare a major maybe. I was really working that direction. Uh, wanted to be around. Kids, wanted to coach, wanted to do some of those kinds of things. I get a lot of energy. I would rather be around someone quite honestly, that's younger than me. Maybe that somebody that's more, that's older or more sedentary, uh, you know, with kids and you've got to have your own. They either keep you young or they make you old. And I've always chosen to plug into their energy. And I, don't always, I'm not always up on vernacular. You know, I get corrected by my grown children now on my vernacular and, my usage. But I'm telling you, I love the energy. I love the activity. I wanna, I want to be active, even after my days with the school district.

Robert Tidwell 8:33

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 on me, maybe even bigger than they realize

Dr. Hightower 8:42

I do. And I've tried to honor them and I will say my first year as superintendent. Uh, when it came to a teacher appreciation, I actually wrote for our website and honored one of my long time educators Dot Frazier, female in Bartow County. She was the first female principal. I had her as an eighth grade reading teacher. She was everybody's mama. In fact, a lot of people still call her mama Dodge. She's still alive. She's 83. Uh, she still active in their district. She taught and administrative for 40 years and then rolled that right into being their executive director for the school districts foundation. And so she's still active and they have big giveaways and she sends me notes and I send her notes. And so I try to. Really honor her with my career as as much, you know, you do things for yourself and for your family, but you also try to do them in a manner that honors the people that, that have been a part of, of your experience. And, you know, we all have mentors. We hear them speak to us when we're trying to think of a way to work our way through maybe a difficult situation or a new situation. You hear those voices and they they've spoken into your life. And I've got those all the way through Ms. Frazier was middle school. I had a high school teacher, similar type of experience, even into college, in my graduate studies, I can, I had this small Eastern European Gail, Dr. Armento, uh, we called her the queen of rewrite. You never turned in anything once, so it just didn't happen. And she would just in that, you know, that heavy Slavic language language would say to us, I did my dissertation with a typewriter. And in other words, Stop whining, you know, so those folks have been great. And, and I had some people pushing me into the administrative piece and in my days at booth, uh, one mentor, Phil Grambling, who I get to visit. And he now lives in Colorado and hikes and fishes and golfs every day. He's still sharp, sharp, sharp, and still speaks into my life. And so those folks, uh, you know, we often are kind of an amalgamation of the people who have been around us. The Bible even says, you know, if you want to see into your soul, look at your friends, because those people are pouring into it and you're spending time with them. So, great influences for me, I still hear them speak, I still talk about channeling an inner Phil Grambling or an inner Randy Martin when I face a problem. And I knew they faced it and were successful.

Robert Tidwell 11:12

And that's outstanding. One of the traditions that I love that I've seen here in Cherokee County, the seniors writing notes to some of the teachers that they had coming up through the school district, sort of, you know, commenting on how much that teacher meant to them. I had a chance to see my own daughter's, notes that she had written to some of the teachers that impacted her. And I love that. I think that's a great, great way to remind the kids that Hey, you're here because of the effort of a lot of people and also to show the teacher some appreciation, because I'm sure just like anything else when you do it all the time, sometimes you lose sight of the impact you're having.

Dr. Hightower 11:50

It is. It's easy, uh, to do that. And, we do have, different types of initiatives that we take on. And we, we sit sitting, sometimes you're sitting around with senior staff and you're in a cabinet meeting and you may be asked the question, what is it that we want our kids to learn? And obviously the, you know, the core content that that's a softball, right. But from there, what about gratitude? 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 children on my own children is for them to be resilient because life can be tough. It can throw you curve balls. This last year has taught us that, that you've got to be flexible. You've gotta be able to pivot, but beyond all of that, you know, as you face those things face them, you know, rich Froning a big CrossFitter, uh, has a great company and their slogan is into the storm and he raises Buffalo and does exotic jerky. But I love the concept behind it is those Buffalo. When a storm comes, they turn toward the storm, they face the storm and they walk into the storm. Well, what a year to think through that kind of a philosophy, when we face a worldwide pandemic, let's face the storm. Let's be together. Let's work together and let's be resilient. Yeah.

Robert Tidwell 13:09

I like that a lot. You know, I, I tell people all the time that, pretty much any type of professional accomplishment I get to experience, I can trace back to educators who have had a large impact on me over the years. Two that jump out just immediately. One is, uh, my elementary school, Sunday school teacher, Ms. Mogley, without a doubt, the absolute sweetest woman that has ever existed in the state of South Carolina. She was just a beautiful lady and just loved on us and taught us so much, not just about Sunday school, but also just about life in general. Wonderful, wonderful lady, miss her terribly, and then, I had a professor in college, Dr. Silverman and Dr. Silverman. I could spend an entire show talking about how much out of his way he went to make sure that, I went back to school after I joined the army and to make sure that, I finished up and, he sort of launched me off to law school and, you know, just a great, great guy. I still reach out to him every chance I get. He, he's now retired in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, which is a bit of a dream of mine, maybe one day, but a great guy. And you know, I'm just very appreciative of him and the other educators over there the years.

Dr. Hightower 14:24

I think really Robert, what it shows you is when people lead and. Whether they're leading children, they have their own or, or someone else's that it happens through relationship. And we talk a lot in our district about rigor and relevance. Those are important concepts when you start designing educational programs and establishing curriculum standards, but the third are there 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, for our teachers and we go and speak at their model schools conference. We have a great relationship with them. One of their leaders, Western Keach, Nick, and I enjoy his podcast. He and his wife do a podcast called teaching Keating and, they attack a lot of different things. And so, and he, and I've become friends over the years. He wrote a book called breaking bold, and it was about rigor and relevance and how we've got to break out of the normal high school. We see that, American high schools, a lot of times lagged behind some of our Asian and European neighbors. But, he wrote this book about the fact that we got to have rigor in our classrooms and we got to make it relevant and make connections with our kids. He basically went back and rewrote the book and added the third arm. And we were appreciative of that. Well, that was something that we were really preaching with our folks, you lead through relationships and you find ways to connect and in your you're humble and you serve. And along with that, we saw a great quote and I ended up putting it on the wall for a little while. And it basically was this, uh, I'll be glad when we stopped talking about servant leadership, but because that's the only leadership style and that really resonates with our leaders, we want them to lead from a point of we're connecting with our kids. We're building great schools. Ultimately we're serving our community

Robert Tidwell 16:15

on that topic of rigor. One of the things that has always amazed me with the Cherokee County school district, Is the advanced placement offerings. And not only just the sheer volume of classes that are available for the students, but I'm also amazed at the success the students have with the AP exams. I graduated with 56 people in a small rural high school, and we had one AP course and some of us passed 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 there available and the students do so well. I don't think a lot of people outside of Cherokee County are fully aware of just how successful this district is. What are some of the secrets that 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 early days, uh, we looked for obviously a rigorous program that would Excel our kids and push them and really get them college ready. We've we've talked about it, you and I before, but ultimately we want to build a system where a kid could have enough rigor that. As they graduated, they had choices. The AP program is tied very closely to act and sat, which are college indicators for many of our students. And it compliments those two metrics. So well, uh, that we jumped in really with both feet and have been known as a quasi, unofficial AP district. There are districts around us that have AP, some have IB, which is international baccalaureate. The IB program. We, when we researched it was very 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 the opportunity to move teachers in and out and have young teachers take the coursework, start teaching those courses. And it gives them a little bit of a career ladder too. If you can imagine that, you know, Getting to teach AP world history. You teach maybe a different motivated kid or a talented kid versus like a regular world history. So it gives them some opportunities to teach kids across the board, as far as the level of rigor. And of course we jumped in again with both feet. And so all of our skills have lots of AP. We range from school to school and within our six day high schools from 25 to 32. AP courses. So if you're in the AP realm and you want to go to school and about 79% of our parents indicate early on that they want their child in a college university. We just feel like that was a good marriage. And so we've kind of led the way in the Metro area, our rates for kids taking the courses and then taking a final exam, an exit exam where they have the potential to earn some college credits. It's just been a great marriage for us, and we've seen the kids thrive in that. We've seen that our ICT and sat scores have reflected that, not only are we really leading the Metro area in AP, have some of the highest passage rate on that test, we lead the nation. We have about 72% of our kids take the AP exam, turn around and pass it with a three, get the college credit, the national average there, where we're at a 72%, they're at a 59 in the nation. Just this past year. We gave over 4,500 tests. We had about 2,500 kids participating in an AP course. So when you, you think through the scale of that, we've got lots of kids reaching out and doing that for a parent. It's great. They're getting the college credit. We've had a lot of kids walk in already as a second semester freshmen or a course or two away, really from sophomore status just based on their courses. We're heading toward the spring time of the year. We'll ultimately honor, our Val and sales at each of our schools. We do a little banquet with them and honor their parents in them. And they bring a favorite teacher and we, we laugh and tell stories on each other that night, but, and ingrained or embedded in a lot of those stories from the teachers or their experience with that child, where they saw them during a year where they had four and five AP courses on their schedule. So these are kids that are looking at rigor because ultimately they want to have some choices. We send kids all up and down the East coast, Ivy league, and I, lot of the prestigious private schools, I saw a note, just yesterday on one of our softball players has been accepted to Harvard. And so you talking about giving kids choices in the end with our sat, which we also do. A lot of times lead the, the Metro area and our sat scores. We mailed to, uh, sat and resumes for applications to over 420, uh, colleges and universities last year. So to me, that's saying we've got a system is vibrant. Our kids are going a little bit of everywhere. Uh, East coast, West coast, Midwest they've got choices. And so for me that's a point of pride. I'm almost like a proud father. When you see the opportunities that our kids have, have basically been afforded through their education.

Robert Tidwell 21:27

That's outstanding, a 72% passage rate on the AP exams. And just in case anybody listening is looking for a, a critique of that stat. I want to make it clear that anyone who wants to take the class can take the class, right? It's not like the County is cherry picking certain students to take AP classes to bolster that 72% pass rate. It's just wide open you register, you take it. And 72% of the kids here are passing.

Dr. Hightower 21:56

That's correct. And what we actually do, we really feel, that there is a definite push in our nation and in the Southeast to pay more attention to diversity equity and inclusivity, the charge for me as a superintendent is to make sure that we. The students that would normally be unrepresented or under served, have those kinds of opportunities. And so we, we believe that just over the last couple of years, we've even enhanced our policies to encourage kids that are traditionally underserved into those, get them into those classes, get them enrolled and give them opportunities. You shared a little bit of your story with me earlier about opportunities and through a scholarship, had a great opportunity to stretch yourself and go to a great school and add a lot, agree, same thing here. If we can create doors for some of our kids that really gives you a sense of it. Accomplishment.

Robert Tidwell 22:49

Yeah. That's outstanding. And sometimes some of these kids are, are not in an environment where they're encouraged or even expected. To Excel. So they have that opportunity to taste some success and it just sort of fuels that desire to go and do more in here. You know, the schools in Cherokee County seem to be giving those kids every opportunity to go and do more

Dr. Hightower 23:09

sure. And with it comes challenges. You know, when I say that there are 79% of our kids. Are wanting to go to college and university. You know, the logical question is, well, what do you do with the other 21? And so we've really, I think of her my five years as a superintendent upped our game in the arena of college and career are, and creating more CTA class, pathways. We've got lots of pathway completers and, believe it or not the, in the pathways and whether they're going to look at something that's like, say an autotech or an HPAC or a welding, or even an academic pathway. The numbers on the graduation rate for those students. She w we did just achieve our highest graduation rate ever as a County, under the cohort model, we were one percentage point behind Fayette. And if you know, Peachtree city and our Metro area, they're a smaller district about 21,000 students where we're sitting at 43,000. It's a little more fluid than us. I, and so, but we compete with them. I call their superintendent regularly, uh, and we aggravate one another because if I pass him, you know, on an AP score or an ICT, I let him know it. So we look at them and, our graduation rate is really getting solid. We really feel good about it. I do want to say to anyone who would be listening. Don't confuse our graduation rate with a dropout rate. It doesn't mean that 10% of our kids are dropping out. It really just speaks to the fact that they're graduating on time meeting the requirements of their pathway. A drop out rate is much, much lower. We usually are between three and 4%. That's kind of a, a standard across the suburban districts around us. Cobb Fulton. For PSI, we see those same kind of numbers. It's just that we're beating them a little bit on the graduation rate and we let them know that we're, we're proud of our kids and, you know, our teachers work so hard and pay so much attention to pushing that kid across the finish line. And so as we get to the spring and we're starting to plan graduations already, there's an excitement. You know, I go to all of them. I did have to treat myself for a little carpal tunnel last year. It was really funny. My family gave me a lot of grief about dad. Can't squeeze my hand for a month after graduations. But we want everybody to participate. My cabinet participates the board participates. For us, it's a celebration, you know, that it has been working for 13 years to get there. Those kids, especially, you talked about your daughter, take an APS. Those kids walk across with those AP honor. Chords. And we, we just, as part of our, our metric, we just looked really a long and hearted. All of our AP scores, 343 kids last year were declared by the NA national organization as AP scholars. Wow. So 343 kids. Now we're talking, they really got to go on out. They're really accomplishing things. Those kids I'm telling you can write their check almost to a school for a parent. You've got two daughters, one in school and whatnot. It's, there's always a, let's have some choices, but also show me some money. Right. So we want to get them there. And, we traditionally say our kids earn lots, lots of scholarship dollars.

Robert Tidwell 26:18

Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard a parent say, golly, that tuition is too low. I wish I was writing a bigger check.

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 in education this past year has had to have been the most challenging. Is that, is that fair to say?

Dr. Hightower 26:37

That's so safe. That's so safe that you're tossing me a softball. Robert, um, it has, is truly been challenging for Alma. A couple of fronts. One, we knew that we wanted to open face to face and your listeners may not know, but Cherokee was really one of the largest school districts in the nation to open early. We opened on Monday, August 3rd. Uh, per our calendar, uh, we heard from our, our constituents and from our board, we want you there. We want you to open. We want some face to face. There was a big, big disconnect following the March 13th closure last year, uh, when our governor declared schools close and put us into a sheltering in place mode, uh, you know, the world kind of stopped for a, for a bit. Now I will tell you that we kept, we kept teaching and learning. We did. We modified our calendar just a little 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, but we weren't all spring and summer long days during that time to, to design, uh, what we believed would be a face-to-face model that everybody good plug into an also at the same time, uh, pivot and have a digital model. We started the year with about 9,000 of our kids in digital. Uh, and that's a big lift. We really are running a dual system this year. So you've got that piece, but then you also have the building facility piece and we did take steps very early to change some of our things to improve the cleanliness of our building. We wrote into our existing custodial contract. We enhanced it by over $2 million to add in a hundred additional custodians. We threw money at people to clean and disinfect. We did some other things within our building. We took out our water coolers, put in water bottle. Fillers. Uh, we changed out our filters. They raid out there's this system 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 down to four, got in a filter that our, ultimately our hand air handlers could, could get push. Uh, but we just fill out, we've got cleaner, healthier buildings. Our flu and cold numbers are like, they just hit off the prep precipice. They're gone down. Uh, we have not had really a cold and flu season and our district that year. Uh, but because we believe of the steps that we've taken, so you've got academics, you've got building. And then of course the last piece is just the health piece. We have become public health administrators, whether you wanted to do that or not, are our administrators and counseling staff and school nurses will tell you that they spend a lot of time working with kids that have potential symptoms, doing contact tracing, as required by our DPH to stay open. A lot of our parents when their kids get caught up in, uh, in a quarantine because of close contact or they're frustrated, this kid has to sit out they're healthy, they don't get the illness and they, they feel like they, we forced them to have this disconnect from their school, but that's really the price that we've had to pay to stay open, uh, is to live by those rules. Add a couple of school districts that got a little bit out ahead of the governor and just said, we're not going to close quarantine, healthy kids anymore. And, uh, they got a real quick CSUN to see us and got back in line on that. So I had received, emailed daily about that. Parents are frustrated with that piece. It is the price of doing business and in a worldwide pandemic. And I just try to say again, we need flexibility. We need grace in this kind of environment and we've stayed open. We can had to close individual schools. We created a reopening planet and, it was shared statewide. And then actually nationwide. It made its way to the white house. The white house took a peek at our plan. They liked it. When we've had to close say a class or we've had to close a school, people had said, Oh, look, you're playing. It's a failure. But our plan actually talked about how we would deal with, with outbreaks or clusters as defined by our DPH system. And we've said, we're going to close. Classes and schools to keep everybody healthy when it's needed. And so there've been pieces where we've had schools pop out. Your daughter was probably caught up in a, in a closure of her high school. Uh, we looked at one just yesterday 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-day vaccination event for our teachers, we'll be vaccinating over 3000 people in these two days. And to pull that kind of a thing off, we needed all of our teachers accessible we're vaccinating, literally 200 an hour, three yesterday. Got my shot. Visited with our teachers saw what was there and I'm telling you it was quite an event, and organized, you know, we, we had all the right pieces in place, but it did mean that we needed to unplug for a couple of days back it up to a weekend. In case we had teachers with symptoms, I feel like, again, we've done the right. Things in the right way. Uh, it meets with some criticism because even to have kids in face-to-face during a worldwide pandemic, you know, is somewhat controversial, but we believe, uh, in the end that our kids have, not only survived, but they've grown. And that was a real challenge. Last year, I mentioned to you earlier, I got to sit in and be a panelist and a wise ed K-12 podcast. And the, the originary is, as you would have guessed, Wazniak Steve Wozniak. Uh, but they were looking at how to open and, I was the only one of the three Atlanta panelists. That was going to open. And so it was a mixed bag that day. And, uh, but I, what I, I guess what I can say is that we've been real aggressive about that piece, but we've also had a plan that, that really scripted out what we would do when we would have cases. And we have had cases, we've had closures, but we're really healthy. Now. We're really feeling good about where we are and our case loads. And, uh, we, we think we've gotten on top of this thing and it really helps obviously for there to be a national rollout of vaccines. Uh, that's a piece of the structure that we needed to have happen, but, uh, we, we are ready or putting steps out there to look at reopening to. For next year. Uh, we don't think the pandemic's necessarily going away just because we have vaccines in place. We've got a lot of folks that will not for one reason or another, uh, take the vaccine. Maybe they can't take the vaccine. Uh, we know that that's what probably wrap around into the next year, but we believe we've got the basis for a good system going forward and we just continue to work. It it's long hours. Uh, there wasn't a lot of spring and summer vacation. And for the, I can

Robert Tidwell 33:20

imagine, I can imagine. And some of the folks listening might not know this, but at the beginning of the school year, in August, uh, the Cherokee County school district announced that parents would have an option. If they wanted to send their children to face to face learning, they could, if they wanted, instead to keep the children home, to do digital learning, they could do that, do that as well. And that's sort of what you were talking about a few moments ago when you said that there are dual systems learning systems here in the County for the year. Um, my question is. How difficult was it logistically when it's may June, July shelter in place orders abound. We're not really sure what's going on how this thing is being transmitted. Who's safe, who isn't safe and you're trying to coordinate the school district and the seventh largest County in the state of Georgia to create this dual system. And have it in place in time for an 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 and we don't take ourselves so seriously, we try to keep all of our 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 to us that they wanted their kids 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, he wanted shelter in place except for essential employees. We considered our task essential. So, we weren't out and about running around. We didn't do vacations this summer. We worked a lot of 10, 12, 14 hour days to ready it because we wanted to, to do it and to do it well. And so we immediately really early spring, we plugged in to work a lot groups and I, I'm a part of three different national collaboratives with superintendents and hold a fellowship with one. Ultimately it gave me great opportunities to tap into the vision and the leadership of other folks and see how they were dealing with it. But somewhere really about late April, we started pivoting and started talking about reopening plans. So we really spent April, may, June, July. Fine-tuning that piece, that the difficult piece, as you design a digital out program, is designing it with teachers that are off contract and are still observing shelter in place. So that was a little bit of a push. And when our board basically said, we want you to open on time that that was limiting somewhat from the teacher training piece. And we just basically said, okay, just understand as we we've readied the ship now, and as we take this air ship down the runway, there's still going to be some building parts because teachers still have some training to get to them. And so early on, whenever we popped out. Of a school or a class. We took that opportunity to target that school or that class to do more teacher training right there. It's important to know that for the 9,000 students that chose to go digital, they were afforded opportunities and led by teachers or proctored by teachers who were at school. They were working out of their classroom using the resources and the bandwidth that we had, they were plugged in and doing duties like they would, if they were a normal teacher, they have taken this, our teachers just as a hero, they've just really stepped up. They've been at work every day that they could, we have encouraged them. There is a lot of discourse out there not just nationwide. I mean, you can come all the way back to within our zip codes. We've had folks that haven't agreed with the way that we've, we've conducted our plan and conducted school that year. There's nationwide discourse over whether you should be in face or, or digital, whether kids should have my ask or not where their employee should have masked or not. When we ran, we ask our, state superintendents association to run some. Surveys for us. I was part of a group that really kind of pushed forward with that. We found out very early in the year, late summer to early year, that only about 50% of the districts were having their adults wear mask. And only about 30% were having their kids, wear masks. Now we, we stepped out, we wanted our adults in masks. We knew our employees needed to be masked. We did not create a mask mandate for kids. We saw that as problem. Yeah. Attic, uh, it's. It can be done. We didn't feel like it postured us very well within our given community, uh, to, to be able to pull that off. Uh, we felt like that we were going to have right daily battles with our adult kids. We would have daily compliance issues with our younger kids. You know, how do you have a third grader? Keep a mask on all day. There's some logistical, common sense issues there. We did encourage them. It's not that we don't believe in mask. We, we believe in the science. We believe that any way that we can limit the spread or the outbreak we want our folks to do that. So we kind of postured ourselves around strongly encouraging, strongly recommending those. And, we've worked that system now, again, if you agree or disagree, you know, you and I could sit and talk that one through all day long, I will tell you that I still get masked emails and we're at, you know, March 12th. Uh, this would have been the Friday a year ago that we would have had our last day in the building. And from that day forward, we've gotten discourse on every issue that we faced. Our two day event that I mentioned earlier, I got some hate mail yesterday from parents that were not happy that their kids were remote yesterday. And you just have to keep it in context. You want to be responsible. You always want to self evaluate, you know, the effectiveness of your organization as a leader. Uh, but at the same time, just know that the discourse is going to be there. I had pretty thick skin before this 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 by everybody. And I don't know if it's because of the nature of our career, where we're always talking to an audience hoping for a specific outcome, but, uh, you know, we're, we're notoriously thin skinned. We want to be liked by everybody. So when I saw some of the national criticism that was being levied against the Cherokee County school district for reopening, it bothered me. And I've always wondered, how did it affect you? What did it feel like when you would see, some, in my opinion, some unfair criticisms that you would see on television or national media outlets, what was that like?

Dr. Hightower 40:12

Well, that's a, that's a real fair question. I appreciate you even broach that topic because we were large and we were out there and we were open. Nobody else in Atlanta really was open, uh, Forsyth. Our neighbor to the East was going to pop in about a week, a week and a half later. Uh, we were really out there by ourselves, and we had a couple of unfortunate pictures, seniors like to gather and picture, give vets, that's a traditional round here. The girls wear their black dresses 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's not something that we can down and we endorsed, uh, they, in fact, in one situation, took a picture with a mask and then took them all off and took their, you know, their portrait. They wanted something to remember each other by, and, that kind of stuff never gets covered, but that got passed around, you know, when you're on the TMZ, Papa Razzi shows, national shows in the evening, that's never fun. I think probably the only part that stung was that critics took that opportunity to, to whack us over the head with that. So that's never very comfortable. We got past that, but we got beyond that school started opening. What is really amazing and I've found through my collaboratives, uh, nationwide is that we still have a lot of systems not open one of our big Metro districts to the South. Just opened this week. We've got another district that would serve where the airport is and everybody flies through Atlanta airport. Right. That County is under who attempt to open, face to face after spring break. So at that point, we'd been in all year and have seven weeks to go we're we're at the finish line almost right. They're just starting to introduce face to face. Another Metro County downtown County, started opening staggered over the last couple of weeks, but they've already also mandated that their kids are going to go to summer school all summer. So you don't open all year, but then the kids have to go all summer. And so that for us, we just took a different approach and I'm not being critical, I guess I'm, I'm comparing ourselves and really saying we locked our system better. It, it did come with its trade-offs you mentioned some of the national attention. We did have a New York times story that popped out about a month ago. He sent us questions for about four months. We answered it. We sent him lots and lots of materials and uh, we felt like the story was slanted, but it was the New York times. So it's gotta be right. You know, we, we're out on back, we asked for about nine. Corrections and edits. He refused as a rider. Uh, he, he did one cause he had named a school wrong. So that was an easy, no brighter. We wrote again, we got a day editor involved and the story was, was corrected for the record. 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 does is it does give you a lot of heat. From across the nation I've heard from, you know, not just Woodstock, Georgia, but I've heard from Tacoma, Washington at this point, you know? So, uh, that, that's not a whole lot of fun. It really detracts from the things that you need to be spending your time on. But ultimately, I think our team and our board great leaders, every one of them, can know that they've stepped up for our community and, had a good year. And, uh, I've, I've, uh, tried to mention this a couple of times and it leaks away from me as I talk. But one of the things that we talked about as a cabinet senior leadership last spring was okay. There are really these, these pieces that you go through when you're faced with a national health crisis. One is fear, obviously there's, there's fear of the unknown there's fear that, that you're going to contract this. You, you, you know, we saw the media, we saw the dance, we saw the worldwide. Contact numbers somewhere in there. You've got to determine if you can move beyond that and learn about it, get knowledgeable and give it some constructs, give it some framework so that you can start 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 in any direction without seeing multiple neighborhoods. And other things going up, which is exciting, but it also brings in a lot of students and our high schools are, are big. And, we're approaching that maximum capacity, even with 9,000 kids learning from home, um, our schools are still getting kind of full. Are there any plans for any future growth, any additional schools or high schools or anything like that? Because I get asked that a good bit. I don't know why people think I would know the answer to that question, but, you'd be doing me a huge favor if you could share with folks, if there are any plans in place for future growth,

Dr. Hightower 45:01

certainly. One of the other things that COVID has exacerbated, if you've not been hindered by distribution, uh, I would say you haven't even know where to do anything from Amazon. Like. Right, but because distribution and calls have gone up tremendously. I know residential and commercial building has gone up tremendously. We're really looking more. We are about to go into a SPLOST, season. We will have a referendum on the ballot. We believe our board will approve that and, push that forward.

Robert Tidwell 45:32

And just for the listeners benefit a SPLOST as a special purpose local sales tax that is earmarked for a particular purpose, right?

Dr. Hightower 45:39

Correct. And some districts have an advantage with a SPLOST vote where they basically collect their pennies during the year that additional penny on the sales tax, they collect that they put it in savings County and then they build with it. That would be really more in a slow growth district or one where the penny brings a lot of money, a lot of revenue, uh, we're not in that kind of a situation. So we collect the penny, but then we also bond against it on the front end so that we can build, when I was first in the district, we had less than 14,000 kids. Now we sit at 43. Most of that growth happened in, began in the early two thousands. So there were years where we grew the 3000 kids. And so with that kind of explosive growth, I mean, that's a huge high school. I mean, you know, really that's bigger than any high school that we have and you grow them number of kids and one year. So when you're in that kind of posture, you really have to build rapidly. So over a 15 year span, we built 20 schools or had major renovations or additions. So with that comes day at, you know, there is a mortgage, right? You've got to pay, pay the Piper. And so really my tenure that my five years we've really worked hard to work on that. And we've not built a lot. We've had renovations, we've had repurposes, we've added some wings right now on the campus where your children are. We were adding, instructional units on the middle school, but also adding a second gym for the high school. Another fun thing people would say, why are you paying attention to gyms? You're a sports guy, right? You like outdoors, but try having, Oh, the high school side. You know, 25, 2,700 kids and have one gymnasium for PE, it just doesn't work. So we've gone in and been trying to add in second gymnasium. So ultimately I guess I'm rolling forward to the fact that we're looking at a new SPLOST, uh, as of next November, and within that, we've got some great builds, some great additions. We are going to be conservative in the fact that we are going to limit the building of a lot of schools and we're looking at where we can build additions. It does pump up the, that I use and the footprint and the occupancy of a building. But ultimately, we know that like several of our middle and elementary, they need an additional wing. We're going to try to pull that off versus a new, build, a new build right now. For our middle school is probably looking at $50 million and that's just a middle school, high school. Bill's probably going to go 80 to a hundred million dollars at this point. Now we'll tell you that the premier build within the next boss will be a replacement Cherokee. They're currently in a building 63 years old. By the time we could even get it built, it would be almost 70. It'll be a big one. It'll probably be a 3000 FTE building. Um, but also when you're in this kind of a low where. You don't have as much explosive growth. We do have the continued growth that you spoke to. We need to not exploding and you're having to build three elementaries. There is a window where you can look at a replacement building for one of your aging buildings. Unfortunately, for us, it happens to be, you know, a high dollar build, but we're going to limit it to that high dollar build. Maybe one more replacement elementary living in our County. Yeah. So now there's a huge road product pro project running East and West. Uh, that project basically, he's going to be in the front door of one of our smaller, older elementary. So we're currently on the prowl looking at some replacement property, some, a land acquisition that would give us the opportunity to get that school off of that main highway. And when I say it's in his front door, it literally is in his front door. So you do some of those bills because you have it. Uh, but ultimately we want to answer the bail and. And create capacities at all of our buildings. We're proud of our building program. If you've been in, in of our schools, if our listeners have, have visited any of our schools in Cherokee, they'll see a clean well lit nice building. It's probably new because of that building project that we went through in the early two thousands. But we pride ourselves in our building program and we will continue to answer the bail really based on the voter saying we believe that that the schools are an important piece. We do think, uh, to be a little bit selfish, that we're an economic driver. We believe that when people look at moving to Cherokee, They look at the school district. They look at a vulnerability to work sites in Atlanta. They look at public health, they look at quality of life. They look at your parks. There are a lot of things I think that play into it. But to know that that schools are close to the top is a point of pride, but also a point of responsibility. So we, we will continue to work that program. And again, that's, that goes to the generosity of our voters, our taxpayers to vote that tax in it is a tax. It's a penny sales tax. I can tell you that we're not alone in that arena. Uh, All but four districts in the state of Georgia have a SPLOST have a penny. And, so we pushed to that. I will say to our voters and our taxpayers that, uh, at our recent state of the County, that we were able to participate in and provide some of our metrics. Uh, the County commission reported again for about the fourth straight year that Cherokee has the lowest tax burden of any County, uh, in the Metro area. And so that's a point that I think gives it a little bit of context, even within the growth that we've had. There is a little bit of a heavier, um, piece that rests on residential tax, but still our tax 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, the highest, graduation rates that we've ever had, the kids succeeding so well and you. You know, stand that next to, the lowest tax burden in all of Metro Atlanta. That's pretty impressive All right. Let me ask you just a couple of personal questions. So during the shelter in place, period, we all sort of found ourselves, uh, locked in, not leaving unless it was necessary. Uh, for me, I personally started cooking a lot more barbecue and I have a. Almost a new wardrobe of larger clothes to show for it. Uh, did you take up any hobbies? Hopefully something a little bit healthier, 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, simply because all the national parks also closed down and they broke am people off of the 80. And, uh, so you really had to find cool little state parks to go out and enjoy the sunshine and the fresh air. I like to a kid with my wife, Susan. Yeah. We had the prettiest yard that nobody saw. Uh, we bought more flowers and more shrubs that bloomed. And we enjoyed them. We did a lot of back deck sitting and a lot of night entertaining in small groups during that time. Like I had told you we did continue to work, so we wouldn't, it wasn't long, long days at home, but it was kind of long weekends at home. And, but, you know, I read a lot, there were a lot that I felt like I had to learn. We all did some binge watching Netflix, uh, you know, uh, prime Hulu. Uh, we had a dog go and I think I've got five subscriptions at this point. So I'm really running out of shows. Uh, I got gigged into a couple by my kids that I, you know, I had to, I had to go back and watch it, I'd say, but they're 72 episodes. I can't dedicate that much time. And in COVID hits and guess what I saw them, you know? So there was some definite binge-watching late at night. That's outstay. What was your favorite show that you binge watched? Oh, you know, I had not watched, sons of anarchy. I hadn't seen breaking bad. I just refused. I had refused. So yeah, I'm all there now.

Robert Tidwell 53:25

Gosh. Well, I cannot thank you enough for joining us today, Dr. Hightower, this has been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate everything you're doing here in Cherokee County. I'm very grateful for your leadership and I cannot thank you. And all of the teachers and the staff at the schools and Cherokee County, just for the, just the incredible job they've done dealing with. Difficult circumstances dealing with the stress of uncertainty, but doing it in such a way that the entire County owes a debt of gratitude to you and the folks who work in the school district. And so. Thank them. And thank you so much for joining us today on the peach buzz.

Dr. Hightower 54:08

Thank you. Spot pleasure. And, and on their behalf, I will say thank you as well. We appreciate the support, uh, and, uh, the togetherness and the family feel that we get from our community. We believe that that, uh, the education of our kids, it's, it's much bigger than us, uh, and it involves community partnerships. And, uh, so we appreciate your kind words today. We appreciate the invite. And again, I believe that our teachers have just been tremendous this year. We, we believe in our teams. Uh, we believe we have organized ourselves as a team of team of teams and it showing itself through a worldwide pandemic. And so we're glad that that folks notice that we've been working hard and doing good things for kids and, uh, your invitation to the time we've had to just talk that one through a little bit is, is greatly appreciated.

Robert Tidwell 54:56

Okay, well again, thank you very much. And this has been the peach buzz brought to you by Tidwell's Strimban injury lawyers. We look forward to joining you next time.