Read more about reporter Nicole Carr's pursuit of the story. After multiple additional requests, Lewis agreed to an interview, her first regarding what happened to her in Georgia, seeing it as a way for her experience to help people understand what educators are facing in these times. Lewis then declined to comment in March, citing safety and privacy concerns. For several months, she did not respond to requests for an interview. and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it!” How We Got the InterviewĬecelia Lewis initially was reluctant to talk about her experience in Georgia. Before her last day as principal of her middle school, her staff created a legacy wall in her honor, plastering a phrase above student lockers that Lewis would say to end the morning messages each day: “If no one’s told you they care about you today, know that I do. But leaving the place where she’d been raised - and where, aside from her undergrad years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she’d spent most of her adult life - wasn’t going to be easy. It reminded her of her community in southern Maryland, where everyone knew one another. Hightower’s ad hoc committees formed this school year to focus on the topic.”) Hightower acknowledged “both her impressive credentials and enthusiasm for the role” and pointed out that, “In four days, she had a DEI action plan for us.”ĭuring her early visits, Lewis found Cherokee County to be a welcoming place. (The announcement noted that the creation of the DEI administrator role “stems from input from parents, employees and students of color who are serving on Dr. “We’re so excited to add Cecelia to the CCSD family,” Superintendent Brian Hightower said in the district’s March 2021 announcement about all of its new hires. She believed the job would allow her, as she put it, to analyze the district’s “systemic and instructional practices” in order to better support “the whole child.” But she had served on the District Equity Leadership Team in her Maryland county and felt prepared for this new challenge. In her current district, these responsibilities were split among several people, and she’d never held a position dedicated to anything as specific as that before. The purpose of such jobs typically is to provide a more direct path for addressing disparities stemming from race, economics, disabilities and other factors.Īt first, the scope of the role gave Lewis pause. But district leaders were so impressed by her interview that they encouraged her to apply instead for a new opening they’d created: their first administrator focused on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.ĭEI-focused positions were becoming more common in districts across the country, following the 2020 protests over the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Lewis, a middle school principal, initially applied for a position that would bring her closer to the classroom as a coach for teachers.

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that includes an upcoming documentary. They’d visited several times in recent years to see their son, who attended Georgia Tech. While the north Georgia county was new to the couple, the Atlanta area was not. It was a short drive to her soon-to-be office at the Cherokee County School District and less than a half hour to her husband’s new corporate assignment. Lewis and her husband had settled on a rental home in Woodstock, a small city with a charming downtown and a regular presence on best places to live lists. In April of 2021, Cecelia Lewis had just returned to Maryland from a house-hunting trip in Georgia when she received the first red flag about her new job.

This story and accompanying videos were co-published by ProPublica and FRONTLINE as part of an ongoing collaboration.

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