The seed that an Alabama elementary school teacher planted has grown into DPS’ newest superintendent.
“That’s probably where I got the spark from,” Dr. Anthony Lewis said in an Oct. 15 interview with The Pirates’ Hook. “Ms. Lawrence was the first teacher that told me I was smart.”
Lewis stuttered as a child and got pulled out of classes for speech sessions.
“That was somewhat embarrassing,” he said. “But to feel like you’re not normal because you stutter and to have a teacher still say ‘you’re smart, you’re bright’, just the power of those words really kind of validated that our words matter to students.”
Originally from Talladega, Alabama, growing up, Lewis had family members working at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind.
“There’s a campus for students who are deaf and there’s a campus for students who are blind, and then there’s a campus for students who have, at the time they were calling it multiple handicap,” said Lewis. “We just don’t use those terms anymore, but it was the Helen Keller School for students who are deaf and blind or had multiple exceptionalities.”
Lewis visited the campus over the summer as a child and noticed that adults were more focused on students’ disabilities rather than their abilities.
“My mind was blown away because they were playing sports, they were playing instruments, and I’m like ‘how?’” he said.
This inspired him to officially begin his career as a special education teacher at a high school in Montgomery, Alabama.
“I had a self-contained class of students with autism,” he said. “[They were] some of the best years of my life.”
Lewis then went on to become assistant principal, then principal of an elementary school in Montgomery.
His success in Montgomery prompted Kansas City, Missouri, one of the lowest performing districts in the nation, to reach out to him about an assistant superintendent job. He took on the role and the Kansas City public schools made remarkable academic strides, including receiving full accreditation in 2022 and meeting state-wide educational standards.
After serving in Kansas City, he went on to work as a superintendent in Lawrence, Kansas, the seventh largest school district in the state.
His leadership opportunities kept growing, but spending 13 years in the Midwest made him miss the South.
“My family’s still back in Alabama,” said Lewis. “My wife’s family in Alabama, so we knew, eventually, we’ll need to come back closer home one day.”
From there, Durham found him.
“I remember a couple other districts reached out to me and I would just go to their website and, for example, type in the word ‘equity,’ and get zero hits; not a school district for me,” says Lewis. “Then, I typed in ‘equity’ on Durham Public School’s website, and got tons of hits there and began to research the district.”
Lewis found Durham when the district posted an opening last spring. Former superintendent Pascal Mubenga resigned last February after payroll issues resulted in classified staff getting paid less than they were promised and the district $9 million over budget due to miscommunications within his administration.
“I just believe that I could add value to the district, from the standpoint of understanding where the district has been through this past year, but also kind of leveraging the success that the district has in term of academics over the past few years,” said Lewis. “I have this unwavering belief that children can excel when given the right supports and systems in place and I wanted to be a part of a district the shares that similar belief, and also a district that I believe my kids can thrive in too, because I would be moving my kids in this system, and I want them to graduate from Durham Public schools.”
Lewis already has five main goals in his entry plan, but he has priorities for the next 100 days.
“Immediate priorities are repairing some of the harm, particularly with our classified staff, rebuilding trust with our staff in this community, focusing on systems that are not in place to our systems in place, but also accessing the organization and getting input,” said Lewis.
He hosted multiple public listening sessions, where he and his team heard directly from DPS families, staff, students, and Durham community members about their experiences and ideas. He held a session at Riverside on Oct. 15 in the media center.
“I can come in here with some great ideas, but the people that have been here and steeped in this school system, in this community, I have to listen to them, too,” says Lewis.
When it comes to longer term priorities, Lewis has high expectations for the district.
“Long term priorities are for this district to be the premier school district in the state and in the country,” he said. “We owe it to you all, to our students. I’m really excited about the work that lies ahead.”
