The Dougherty County Board of Education voted Monday to hire a veteran educator with a track record of boosting under-performing schools as the district’s director of School Improvement.

Dr. Lakeisha Hudson previously served as an assistant principal at Dougherty Comprehensive High School. Since joining the district in 1998, she’s served as a teacher, instructional coach, instructional specialist and administrator. She was instrumental in securing a School-Improvement Grant, SIG, for the district. She also was part of the initial team of instructional technologists who helped develop and deploy the district’s 1:1 technology project which put tablets and laptops into the hands of more than 14,000 students.

“Dr. Hudson has a comprehensive grasp of the school improvement process. She has worked at a SIG school and was a key part of the SIG writing process at Dougherty High School and has been a part of the monitoring for that school so she knows the process intimately,” Dr. Paulette Hart, associate superintendent for District Effectiveness said. “She also knows the role of the instructional specialists so who better to guide the work of our instructional specialists, school improvement specialists and overall school improvement in the district?”

Dr. Hudson holds a doctorate of Education with a focus on Teaching and Learning from Argosy University, a master’s of Education from Georgia Southwestern State University and a bachelor’s of Science in Education from Valdosta State University.