DeKalb hires two more school administrators

DeKalb County School District Superintendent Steve Green announced the hires of two more administrators who will join the district later in the year.

Lisa Lynne Martin will start as the chief academic and accountability officer on June 1. She will make $168,158.18. Chezia Calloway will join the district as the executive director for exceptional education on Aug. 22. She will make $110,000.

Green has overseen the hiring of a new level of administrative staff in his efforts to continue the progress DeKalb schools have made after nearly losing their accreditation.

The latest hires come on the heels of news that the district spent up to $150,000 to hire Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to find and vet candidates for six administrative positions. Five of the people who got those jobs were put into the pipeline by Green and district administrators. Three of them had worked with Green at his previous district in Kansas City and were hired by him on an interim basis, until they were named as the final candidates in March.

The search firm helped find the latest two hires.

Martin has held various teaching and administrative positions on the grade-school and collegiate levels in more than 20 years of professional experience, including stints in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. She is the associate superintendent for K-12 instruction and professional development for Moore County Schools in North Carolina.

According to her resumé, Calloway, the assistant director of student services for the Ministry of Education in St. Davids, Bermuda, spent the majority of her nearly 15-year career in education services in Maryland, both with a hospital system and the Maryland Department of Education.

“The leadership is now in place for us to return rigor, relevancy and relationships to the classroom, where the work to prepare our students for college and careers gets done,” Green said in announcing the hires.

Green defended the search firm's hiring, saying it was doing more than simply finding candidates for those six posted jobs. Martin was found as a good candidate for the academic and accountability post through the search process for another position, he said.