Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
When she was growing up in Neola, Dr. Leatha Williams experienced many moments throughout her education that ignited a spark in her. All those moments were times when teachers helped her along the way.
“There was always a teacher that took me under their wing and made a difference in my life,” she said. “I thought, ‘you know what, I want to give back to other people what has been given to me’ and that, specifically, was hope.
Hope that you can be more than your upbringing; be more than where you come from. Education really eliminates those barriers because when you give a child the gift of knowledge, no one can ever take that away.”
Williams went on to get a degree in education at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and began her teaching career in North Carolina.
She took a sabbatical from education to manage a Peeble’s store and Walmart, but it wasn’t long before the education system came calling again.
While she was teaching, Williams earned her master’s degree and soon advanced her career path to the administrative side. She was assistant principal at Eastern Greenbrier Middle School for four years and moved on to be principal at Rupert Elementary.
From there, she advanced again to work for the West Virginia Department of Education as a coordinator in school improvement.
“I traveled the entire state,” she said. “There is no county in this state that I have not been to.”
When it came time for her youngest son to enter high school, Williams said she and her husband wanted to find a school where he could excel with his wrestling skills.
This landed the family in Braxton County. While her son, Jordon, was becoming the first wrestling state champion at Braxton County High School in 19 years, she was working at the central office as director of several departments, including child nutrition, technology, communications and assessments.
Williams was at Braxton County for nine years when the superintendent position at Pocahontas County Schools opened. It was then she realized it was time to come home – or at least close to home.
“My husband’s family still lives in White Sulphur Springs,” she said. “It was time to go home.
“I’m truly excited to be here.”
The opening came at a difficult time for Pocahontas County, with the high school under a state of emergency and the special education department in need of assistance, but Williams said she was confident that her background in school improvement would help her hit the ground running with the staff here.
“My school improvement background and my diversity as a leader is proven,” she said. “There’s no job in this county office that I haven’t had a role in in some way or collaborated with in my old job. Instruction is my specialization, so I feel real confident that we are going to move off this state of emergency.”
Williams added that she has already constructed a plan for the special education department that she has presented to the West Virginia Department of Education, and she believes it will implement well this year.
“They want to do a partial state intervention over special ed,” she said. “I went down and met with them at the beginning of July and I developed a plan and I proposed that plan. They accepted it.”
Williams said the plan is very similar to what the DOE would have constructed, so she is confident it will be accepted by the state board of education and instead of having a partial state intervention, the county will be given a chance to implement her plan.
“Part of the plan is a principal’s academy and a teacher’s academy to get everybody on the same page,” she said. “I’ve really focused on those things right now and the things that they want for our board of education.”
The board of education recently had a training session to go over protocols and procedures, and Williams said it went well. The board was able to have a more personalized training and have questions answered immediately.
“It was beneficial, to me,” she said. “I think our board members are just fantastic people, and I really feel like once we get everybody pulling together and everything going in the same direction, I think Pocahontas County is going to come back to the top, because you guys used to be and we can get back there.”
Other areas of focus for Williams are the reading and math skills on all levels. She said there are some deficits, and it is important to make sure students are proficient in both skills.
“Handwriting – the concept of print has fallen to the wayside in a lot of communities,” she said. “I’m really going to hit that hard with our staff here. For the longest time, the school system has ostracized themselves from the community and the community thinks we’re doing new math. There’s no new math, but there’s another approach to teaching math.
“Here in Pocahontas County, we have pockets of great scores,” she continued. “But as we go through the system, by the time we get to the high school, we’re under thirty percent proficient in math. So, we’ve got to look at that.”
There is also an issue with chronic absences, meaning there are students who are missing too much school.
“If you’re one of those kids that’s not there forty-four percent of the time, then you really haven’t had access to the knowledge you need to excel in anything,” Williams said.
Getting students and staff excited to be at school is a goal for Williams and she said making sure that first day back is important to get the enthusiasm high for the rest of the year.
“Everybody knows that first day of school – the charisma, the environment, the relationships you establish on that day carry through the whole year,” she said. “If it’s a bad first day, it’s a bad year. I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years. I know. I’ve had a lot of first days.”
For the opening day for staff, Williams has asked speaker Larry Bell to talk about the relationships every person in the school system has with the students and how those relationships tie together.
Making those connections and ensuring that all the students are welcome, comfortable and ready to learn is a big goal. There’s a lot of obstacles to get through, but Williams is ready for them.
“It’s going to be a busy year, but good work is hard work, and I’ve been working really hard since I got here,” she said. “We want to get out from under the state of emergency, and we do not want a state intervention. That will only happen if not just the school system is pulling together, but the community members are pulling together and the school board’s pulling together. This is a together activity.”
