Chatham County Schools students returned to classrooms on Tuesday, with the district’s 20 schools welcoming back their campus communities and starting the 2025-26 academic year.
This marks the fifth year of Superintendent Anthony Jackson’s tenure with Chatham County. He joined 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey the day before instruction began to discuss returning to class along with his administration’s priorities and goals for the upcoming year.
Below is a transcript of Jackson’s conversation with Stuckey, which has been shortened from the full segment and lightly edited for clarity.
Superintendent Anthony Jackson addresses the crowd of educators and students at the district’s Convocation event on Aug. 19, 2025. (Photo via Chatham County Schools.)
Stuckey: As we’re talking the night before school starts for Chatham County Schools, is there anything that you would specifically wanna tell families or folks in the community prior to the school year officially getting underway?
Jackson: Well, we are ready to start! Our staff started last week, we had a very busy week with our convocation, professional development and open houses — meeting our parents and acclimating them to new systems and expectations around the new coming school year. As always, [parents should] know that we are here to partner with you. We are ready to really continue our forward push to ensure that every student and every family has the opportunity to achieve their hopes and dreams while working with us here in Chatham County. Our teachers are ready, our schools are ready. We’ve worked very hard all summer to ensure that we are ready for our students tomorrow and that we are poised for another good school year.
Stuckey: Along those lines, you said staff has been back since last week — and as a former classroom teacher, I know most districts kind of have some sort of theme or focus that they go into the year with. What is Chatham’s?
Jackson: Our theme this year is “Elevate Chatham,” and our focus this year is really lifting up and celebrating the things that we do well. [We will be] lifting up and tackling challenges for us, and embracing and celebrating [successful] things that we have done over the past few years. And [I am] wanting to take the time this year to absolutely stop and do an assessment on the return on investment for the investments we’ve made over in terms of student outcomes, in terms of staff retention, in terms of program development. So this year… our goal is to elevate and lift up one another, and celebrate the good work that we’re doing — as well as to take a real, hard look at things we have done to ensure that we are still focused on the right things.
Stuckey: I know one thing that’s been a reoccurring theme in education lately for public schools is teacher retention. That’s something folks in the community are thinking about quite a bit as well. How is the district feeling about staffing as the school year starts, and what kind of things have been happening in the area of teacher recruiting and retention?
Jackson: Yeah. Immediately after the pandemic, we all saw a big, huge gap of [workforce] availability. I’m pleased to report this year that we are looking at less than 15 vacancies at the start of the year — as opposed to immediately after the pandemic [when it was] somewhere around 70, 80. Last year we had about 40, but this year we’re under 15. We really feel good that every classroom will be covered before the first 10 days of school with a qualified teacher….that’s been a great accomplishment for us. And so we feel really, really good. We’ve worked very hard to, one, start our recruitment processes earlier than normal. But second: we believe that we have activated and deputized our best recruiters — our teachers and our families — to be the voices for encouraging individuals to choose Chatham County Schools as the place where they want to work, grow professionally and serve students in a community.
Stuckey: Going into year five here in Chatham County, you’ve been through the process, you’ve done the whole calendar several times. Is there anything this year in particular that you’re looking forward to for the upcoming school year?
Jackson: Well, I always look forward to the first day of school because I get to ride the school bus with a kindergartner, and see the joy and the magic of public schools through the eyes of a five-year-old. That keeps me fresh, that keeps me encouraged, and that also keeps me on my toes.
[I am also] just looking forward to — very shortly — celebrating some great news on our student outcomes. And as I always do at the beginning of the year, I want to encourage all of our community members to keep your eyes open for buses and for students looking for buses so that we can get off to a safe start. As tied with our theme and the work that we are doing, we have looked at “The Wizard of Oz” and I tell everybody, “All the things that we really need to be successful are already here.” We just need to elevate one another and activate those things so that our students can benefit from the work that we do every day. Thank you for the opportunity to share that with our community.
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