Superintendent Denise Watts, Ed. D., knows first-hand that education can mean the difference between life and death. She spent 45 years of her life in the foothills of rural North Carolina. “My mom was a single parent. And school was a refuge for me in a lot of ways,” Watts said.
A refuge Watts’ sister did not find.
“People will ask me all the time about my ‘why’, and I can't talk about that without talking about my sister, who did not find school to be a refuge and a productive place to be and as a result of that, dropped out of high school, had lots of life challenges, and passed away when she was thirty-one. In fact, her birthday was October 10,” she said.
For Watts, the question—"what made the difference?”—seems to have a simple answer.
“I can emphatically say education was a difference maker and because of that, I have a moral obligation and a moral imperative to pay it forward. Because I know it can literally mean the difference between life and death. And it can also be the difference between a limited life and a choice-filled life, and I have had the honor, pleasure, joy and privilege to lead a choice-filled life because of education.”
Watts remembers wanting to be a teacher at a young age. Her third-grade teacher, Mrs. Hall, read “Judy Blume” books to her class after lunch, “so that was as an eight-year-old, fast forward, to be able to realize that dream and attribute it back to very early literacy memories is, I think, significant.”
She spent much of her early career working in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and in 2019 went on to work at the Houston Independent School District as the Chief of Schools. On a vacation to Savannah Watts took with her husband in 2020, right before Covid-19, she didn’t know her future would be in the Hostess City. They hoped, at some point, to get back to the Southeast, closer to family. “We just remember Savannah being our last vacation, but it was also a point in time where my husband said, ‘You know, I can see us retiring here.’ And of course, we never thought in a million years.” The opportunity, however, surfaced and on July 1, 2023, Watts became the twenty-fifth superintendent of the Savannah Chatham County Public School System and the third African American female to hold the position.
Before starting, Watts knew the challenges in Chatham County would be similar to those of other urban districts—transportation, declining enrollment and workforce development making the list. “But then when you get into the job,” she said, “that's when you start peeling back the onion and there are lots of other issues that you have to address. Some of those are micro issues, and some of those are macro issues. One of the biggest ones, obviously, is literacy, and coming into the community, that was one of the things that I heard loud and clear.”
According to the Georgia Department of Education, about 43 percent of third graders in Savannah Chatham County tested below reading level in the Spring 2023 Georgia Milestones, End of Grade Assessment.
To address this Watts said that over the next two years, every kindergarten through fifth grade teacher will be trained in the science of reading. “We’re going back to basics,” she said. “There is a science, the key prescriptive way in which reading must be taught. There is a systematic way that it must be done.” Watts believes that across the country, not just in Chatham County, the pendulum for how to teach reading swung too far one way towards Balanced Literacy, an approach developed by Lucy Calkins, the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University.
SCCPSS recently approved funds to support an 18-month course, Lexia Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS), that will train educators in the science of reading. “I'm really excited about that. That training is not just for teachers, it's going to be for principals and district office leaders. I really want us to calibrate as an organization around what I'm calling the north star.”
To move the needle on literacy, Watts said there’s three main components—training K-5 teachers, aligning community partners, and strategically working with parents. Everyone plays their individual role, she said, “If you're a business entity, what role do you play in offering an internship or mentoring a youth as he or she matriculates through school - helping them have access and opportunity?” By supporting education, she said, we are helping create a community we can be proud of, a place we all want to live. “As go our school districts so go our economy, so go crime rates, so go the health, the general health and well-being of our city and our country. You have to be invested whether you have a child in public education or some other educational entity or not, because everything that is happening in our schools is the future, and the future is shared.”
When it comes to knowing whether the initiatives are successful, Watts explained, it takes a variety of metrics. Student achievement data is an important indicator, but she also wants broader, more diverse data to measure student outcomes including surveys on parent perception and behavior. “The other group of people we need to survey and understand is how kids feel, right? When you think about a kid who cannot read—and I have experienced those children as a teacher—those children tend to not fare well, they're my sister right?” A student’s experience, feelings and perception, Watts believes, are all metrics that can signify future success.
“Often, the test data, the achievement data is the lagging indicator. The leading indicator is changes in behavior, changes in thought, the way people think, mindsets. When you change those things, the test data is going to be fine. We have to measure both things to really make sure we have a comprehensive set of metrics around how we know we're being successful,” she said.
Savannah’s growth has not been lost on Watts who wants to prepare students “so that we can be ready for this new future that is being built literally in our backyard. I'm just so excited and I feel honored to have the opportunity to do this with the community.”
