AJC Get Schooled

06/05/2026

Spelman College will soon have a new president. The board of trustees announced that Ayanna Howard, a PhD in electrical engineering and dean at The Ohio State University, will be the college's 12th president.

Howard spoke with AJC education reporter Martha Dalton about leading one of the country's top-performing HBCUs.

"We ... have to think about, ‘How do you build on that legacy to address this rapidly changing world?’ That’s going to be a challenge, and there is no rule book," she said.

Read more about Howard below 👇and share your thoughts in the comments.

Spelman College announces engineering educator Ayanna Howard will be the next president of the all-female Atlanta HBCU.

06/05/2026

Spelman College’s board of trustees has tapped Ayanna Howard, a dean of engineering at The Ohio State University, to serve as the school’s 12th president.

Howard attended Brown University as an undergraduate, then earned master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering from the University of Southern California. She also has an MBA from Claremont Graduate University.

An engineer by trade, Howard has worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and held several different positions at Georgia Tech. While there, she founded a trainee program in healthcare robotics and recruited college students outside of Georgia Tech to participate.

Howard became the first outside funder of the SpelBots, Spelman’s award-winning robotics team. She also launched Zyrobotics, a company that develops assistive technology for people with disabilities.

In an interview with the AJC, Ayanna Howard shares more on her background and plans for Spelman in her new role. Read more: https://bit.ly/4vvp83F

🖋️ : Martha Dalton / AJC
📸 : Natrice Miller for the AJC

06/03/2026

Did you see the Atlanta Press Club debate for the GOP state school superintendent? Three-term incumbent Richard Woods was narrowly pushed into a runoff with Candler County Superintendent Fred "Bubba" Longgrear during the May 19 primary.

During the debate, Woods argued his 12 years leading the education department makes him the clear choice in the race. Longgrear said results have been flat during Woods' tenure and promised he'd "collaborate, work with others, and really take Georgia to a bright future" if elected. The winner of the June 16 contest will face Democratic nominee Lydia Powell in November. She's an assistant principal in Henry County.

If you missed it, view the debate here. 👇 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeD1iQ-ViPQ

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Georgia State School Superintendent - Republican I Atlanta Press Club Debates

05/27/2026

DeKalb County student Sarv Dharavane is competing in the Scripp’s National Spelling Bee this week for the third year in a row.

Sarv, a sixth-grader at Peachtree Middle School, came in third place in the national contest in 2025. Shortly after last year’s contest, Sarv told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he was already looking ahead to the 2026 competition.

Now it’s time to see if his hard work has paid off. Sarv studied hundreds — if not thousands — of words to prepare, and selected a few that he thinks are the mark of an expert speller. Read more: https://bit.ly/4nPHABy

Watch the competition online or on TV through Ion.
📅 Semifinals: 8-10 p.m on Wednesday
📅 Finals: 8-10 p.m. on Thursday

Here are the answers:

1. b; 2. c; 3. a; 4. c

Think you could hold your own in a state or national spelling bee? Take our full quiz at the link in the comments below.

🖋️ : Cassidy Alexander

05/22/2026

Should Atlanta Public Schools agree to continue to divert millions in property tax revenue to fund the city’s $5.5 billion Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative?

The school board has been wrestling with that question since Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens unveiled a plan this week to extend six of the city’s eight Tax Allocation Districts.

TADs work by "freezing" the property tax base in specific areas; as property values rise, the resulting surplus is directed to redevelopment rather than the general fund. Dickens wants to extend six TADs until 2056, a move that requires approval from APS, the Atlanta City Council and the Fulton County Commission.

Atlanta Board Chair Jessica Johnson weighed in on the feasibility of the mayor’s plan in an op-ed for the AJC.
Read her take here👉 https://tinyurl.com/545et9je and share your thoughts in the comments.

Future partnerships with the city of Atlanta must include stronger accountability, a revisit of pilot payments and a deeper analysis of existing caps on corridor TADs.

05/18/2026

If you're a Georgia teacher who is on the State Health Benefits Plan (SHBP) and your healthcare costs have spiked in recent years, we want to hear from you. If you're willing to talk to a reporter for a story, please comment below or message AJC education reporter Martha Dalton at [email protected].
(photo credit: AJC staff)

05/18/2026

Morehouse and Spelman colleges held their graduation ceremonies hours apart Sunday. Speeches included themes about anti-DEI efforts and a chilled corporate climate.

Two of America’s storied historically Black colleges celebrated Sunday as they collectively graduated more than 1,000 students. To commemorate the day, Morehouse College hosted 12-time NBA All-Star Chris Paul as its keynote speaker while, hours later, Spelman College hosted political commentator S...

05/18/2026

From associate professor Matthew Boedy:
As some students head into commencement season, other students in Georgia’s public universities face the traditional task of signing up for fall classes. This fall, all syllabuses for all classes will be publicly available.

This is a good moment to explain to the public how AI is affecting professors as they labor over the semester schedule of reading and writing.

For that reason, this fall for the first time I am organizing my syllabus around this central question: should this class exist in our AI era?

How should college students use AI? A Georgia professor outlines his curriculum in the ear of AI.

05/15/2026

A group of high school students wanted to know why Black girls are disciplined at higher rates than their peers. Black girls and white girls make up the same share of Georgia's school population, but Black girls are six times more likely to be referred to juvenile court and 2.5 times more likely to be expelled.
The students spent months examining data and conducting focus groups to find out why Black girls are disciplined at higher rates and how that impacts their school performance.
Read the full story to see what they discovered, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Story here 👉

A group of Atlanta high school students studied the impact of ‘exclusionary’ discipline practices on Black girls,

05/15/2026

Meet the seven valedictorians graduating this weekend from Spelman College, Atlanta's all-women’s historically Black college. They are future doctors, lawyers, filmmakers and storytellers. Having so many students graduating with perfect GPAs is “nothing short of extraordinary,” said one Spelman official.

These future doctors, lawyers, filmmakers and storytellers are part of a historic class of seven valedictorians at Atlanta’s all-women’s historically Black Spelman College.