Orange County Schools Board of Education: Will Atherton

Name: Will Atherton

Age: 53

Party affiliation: Democrat

Campaign website: https://www.willforschools.com/

Occupation and employer: IT / The Clorox Company

1. What is your past or current involvement with Orange County Schools? What makes you qualified for this job?

During my 8 years as a Orange County School (OCS) board member, I have focused on being present in our schools, knowledgeable about our student’s activities, and learning from our students, families, teachers, subject coaches, staff and community. This involvement allows me to support our students based on needs and acquiring the resources required. Compiled data from many sources help drive decisions and ensure equitable outcomes. Understanding the impact of the board’s decisions help mitigate and anticipate the impacts of those decisions.

I regularly visit various programs throughout the district to better understand the needs of the school communities and the challenges our educators face in these environments. Critical programs, such as EC for example, require different levels of support and it is critical that we understand the various needs.

Key roles in the district also require the support of the board. I ensure I am regularly visit with all areas of support, such as Transportation, bus drivers, maintenance, Finance, HR, and our IT departments. They all play critical roles in supporting our teachers, staff and students. 

I have held a variety of leadership roles within the school board. Including many resolutions and policies to protect and support our students, staff, families and community.

Over 37 Resolutions – Resolutions can be found on the OCS website (Starting July 2018 to current).

Polices in support of our students, staff, and families: Equity in Education, Code of conduct (focusing on restorative practices and consistency), Ombuds (supporting staff with confidentiality), Gender support guidelines, and many other updates protecting our students, staff and families.

Relevant experience:
• Orange County Schools board member for ~8 years (including as chair)
• Community and Technical Education (CTE) Committee (including as chair)
• Finance & Capital Needs Committee (including as chair)
• Policy Committee (including as chair)
• Orange County Community Engagement Committee
• Student Achievement Committee
• Orange Partnership community coalition
• Joint Leadership Committee of Orange County Schools, Chapel Hill Carrboro Schools and Board of Commissioners
• Liaison for Orange County Schools Business Advisory Board
• Liaison for OSNAC (Orange County Special Needs Advisory Council)
• Liaison for Artificial Intelligence (AI) District Committee
• North Carolina School Boards Association (NCSBA) Annual Delegate
• NCSBA Academy of School Boardsmanship Recognition – Certificate of Achievement for over 101 hours of training – developing skills in governance, policy, ethics, and community engagement through programs and workshops.
• Employee Advocate Committee (creation of Ombuds)
• Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity – The Color of Education conference / Education 
• UNC School of Government – Leading the Way to Board Excellence
• Yearly equity training with the full board

Active PTA member in supporting our teachers and schools.

Visit my Facebook page to see some more experiences and activities around our district or my website (in English or Spanish with Accessibility support).

2. What are the three main issues that you believe the board of education needs to address in the upcoming year?

1) Fiscal Challenges – We see funding cuts at all levels, without warning in addition to decline in student population, we must be making every decision with accountability and our students’ best interests at heart.
2) Teacher and staff Support and Retention – As we see a statewide shortage of diverse teachers we need to show we value our educators through competitive compensation, professional support, recognition and attaching new teachers ensuring every school and classroom is a safe, welcoming, inclusive space for learning and growth
3) Orange County Schools Bond Projects – Ensuring we are being transparent about all projects, seeking community feedback and being good stewards of our tax dollars in all projects and ensuring we are protecting our environment as well.

3. For incumbents, what has been your greatest accomplishment on the board? For newcomers, what change would you bring to the board?

There are many great accomplishments, from our equity work, policies, and programs ensuring our schools are a place that is safe, welcoming and inclusive, to all teachers, students and families with supports to ensure each and every student has the opportunity dream, learn, grow and be successful. 

Orange County School has achieved notable success in many areas for the first time in our district’s history of standardized testing. Our outstanding growth results place us in a tie with two other districts, ranking the top performers out of 115 school districts statewide. We had 100% of our schools that met or exceed growth vs 70.7% state wide. 92.3% of our schools earned C or better vs 68.5% statewide. The Grade Level proficiency composite is 3.4 points above the state average. Growth in every subgroup with our minority students scoring higher than all other subgroups. This is a testament to the hard work of our staff in OCS (Teachers, learning coaches, staff, nutritionists, bus drivers, family liaison, custodians, etc) supporting our students, family and community. It is also an important testament to our student’s hard work showing with their tenacity to grown, learn and succeed! We still have work to do, but this shows we can improve all students’ outcomes and must continue the hard work and continue to build on our success!

4. Nearly every public school district in the state saw a decrease in enrollment this year. With kids leaving for charter and private schools, what can OCS do to convince parents that this is the best option for their students?

We must continue to work with the Superintendent on all items and ensure that every student feels a sense of belonging, getting the supports they need, and all of our schools are welcoming for all families, and that every classroom remains a safe space for learning and growth. This includes student surveys, to get feedback and understand where we can improve and what we are doing well.

We must also provide programs that families are looking for such as our IB, FFA, our arts, Band, Chorus, Drama, Athletics, Minority Achievers Program (MAP), and our many CTE programs that give student hands on learning while getting industry standard certification or college credit though our Career and College Promise (CCP) Program. We know all these programs are important to families, as we saw our enrollment increase last year at high school increase by about 80 students from students that did not start school at OCS, but chose to finish here. We need to get families in our schools at the start in Pre-k or K.

We need to look at expanding our programs in middle schools and elementary schools by working closely with our Superintendent, Staff, parents, and students. I believe we have to look at expanding our STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) and CTE programs in elementary and middle schools, which will also help attract and keep students and families in our schools. 
We also must show that our students are being successful, as mentioned in question 3. Showing that OCS is meeting or exceeding growth in all schools and our students are showing proficiency. Growth in every subgroup as well, removing the “Opportunity Gap”.

We must continue to work with the Superintendent to look at cohort data to track and ensure we are seeing that students are continuing to grow at each grade and if they are not, determine what are the barriers or what we can do different to support our students and famile. Such as we determined last year that our math curriculum was not aligned with the state standards and was not meeting our strong core goal to meet our student’s needs.

Stability matters and we want diverse schools where teachers and staff stay, relationships grow, and students succeed. By recruiting and retaining staff as diverse as our community, we will build strong connections and a foundation for lifelong learning (see question 7). Allowing us to attract more families to OCS.

5. What’s the best or most important thing the OCS board has done in the past year? Additionally, name a decision you believe the board should have handled differently. Please explain your answers.

I would say there are many important things OCS board has done in the past year from new math curriculum aligned to the state standards, support of our immigrant families, ensuring the air quality of all our schools with capital improvements and testing, to working on the $300 million bond Orange County voters approved, which $125 million of that bond will go to OCS. 

I will focus on the bond, based on the community impact and improvement this will have our district. The board approved to move forward with a greenfield new school as the first project of this bond with a total cost of $55 Million. The new school for our community is one of the largest investments for our community. It will ensure we have a school that has an environmentally friendly footprint, while leveraging having a middle school within walking distance to create a collaborative k-8 like environment. This will be a modern learning environment, such as state of the art classrooms, technology integration, safe and secure from the start in the design, net zero goals with energy efficient designs allowing for lower utility cost and lower impact to our environment. This should allow for flexible spaces for collaborative, STEM focused learning, and outdoor learning spaces. Once we open the school and complete redistricting, we believe it can help reduce transportation challenges. Throughout this process we must include our community ensuring we hear from our teachers, staff, students and all our families. Getting ideas and recommendations to ensure we have a safe, inclusive, welcoming environment for our students, families, teachers, staff and community.

The item I believe the board could have handled better was the redistricting effort that occurred. There was some confusion about the reasons for redistricting, options, and timing to implement from the feedback sessions. At the same time, we had changes in staff, which caused information to not be shared, or all questions to be answered or information shared back, which caused frustration and some confusion. After getting feedback directly from our families and staff about this, we stopped the process, then stepped back, reviewed the data, feedback and concerns then went through all the lessons learned from this process. This will help us when we open our new elementary school and will need to redistrict to and we need to ensure we hear and include all voices and feedback.

6. With state and federal funding declining, the Orange County Board of Commissioners fell short in 2025 of funding the district’s continuation request. OCS is committed to equity in education, but the “achievement gap” between white students and students of color persists. How can the district better fulfill its most basic mission of educating every child?

It was very frustrating with the county not being able to fund our continuation budget by $200K this year, at the same time the state has not passed a budget as well.
We have been reviewing all programs with the superintendent to gauge efficacy of the programs impact and results with our student population. We must ensure we have equitable programs that ensure every student’s needs are being meet and we are using culturally relevant materials. 

Some of the approaches in our district:
Strong core instruction
Small group interventions
Learning Coaches 
MTSS – Multi Tiered support System
Small group tutoring 

We have made significant progress in implementing and utilizing effective assessment tools—such as DIBELS 8/mCLASS and AimswebPLUS at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. This data is then used to ensure that teachers, students, families, and administrators clearly understand each student’s areas for growth and how best to support their success.

When students, families, teachers, staff, and principals have a clear understanding of their data, we can collaborate effectively and focus on providing the targeted supports needed to foster growth.

Last year, our district achieved outstanding results, tying for first place in growth statewide tied with two other districts, out of a total of 115 public school districts. This accomplishment reflects the strength of our collaborative efforts and commitment to student success.

We must continue to monitor, educate and update our code of conduct so we are ensuring students are getting core instruction and stay focused on restorative practices keeping students in the classroom and it is applied with fidelity. We have updated our code of conduct multiple times over my term on the school board, and we have seen decreases suspensions, but we must continue to ensure students are in our classrooms and we are not unproportionally disciplining any subgroup.

There are many potential possible reasons, and we must continue to identify and understand and address them:

-Food insecurities (you can’t learn if you’re hungry)
-Do students and families feel welcome
-Limited belief about students ability or readiness, implicit bias, and racism
-Lack of resources (equality rather than equity-based funding and staffing)
-Lack of Professional development on culturally responsive teaching practices
-Internalized beliefs about ability
-Inconsistent process for tracking, special education, gifted, advanced placement
-Inconsistent knowledge of assessment or proper interventions for struggling students
-Lack of staff diversity
-Stereotyping
-Lack of understanding of social and emotional needs
-Lack access to same enrichment experiences
-School / District culture, policy, practices and climate
-Discipline / Suspension policies and practices

Our district must continue to collaborate with parents, students, community members, community partners, teachers, staff, and our Equity Task Force to identify barriers, concerns, and opportunities for improvement across the district. Once solutions are implemented, it is essential to establish clear metrics to evaluate their effectiveness and ensure continuous progress.

We have made good progress as we see by our results, and we must continue the work and review the data to ensure we are making positive progress for our students and families.

7. North Carolina recently received an “F” grade from the Education Law Center, which reported that the state is second to last in average funding per student. As of January 2025, the state legislature hasn’t passed a budget, leaving educators without a cost-of-living adjustment. What can the OCS board do to help student outcomes with a state government that seems uninterested in supporting public schools?

We must recognize and celebrate how we value our teachers and staff. We must ensure we have a diverse positive climate and culture.

The funding challenges are real, and the lack of a state budget makes it even harder for our educators, staff as their benefits cost rise while they pay is reduced. It makes it even more difficult to convince future educators to join the profession.

While the OCS board can’t control state decisions, we can lead locally. 

First, work with the Superintendent to maximize every dollar we have by prioritizing classroom resources and leveraging our wonderful partnerships with our businesses and nonprofits to help fill gaps. Second, we support teachers through professional development, mentorship, and creative retention strategies and climate to keep morale high. Third, we’ll invest in student centered programs like tutoring, mental health support, and early literacy initiatives that drive long-term success. Finally, we’ll advocate relentlessly and push for fair funding, while looking at increasing our local supplement with support from our Orange County commissioners. We can’t wait for the state to act. See question 6 on how we continue to support our students.

8. Across the Triangle, thousands of students have stayed home from school during federal immigration enforcement sweeps. What can the board realistically do to make OCS a welcoming and safe environment for all students, regardless of immigration status?

Working with our Superintendent we first prioritize open dialogue between our schools and families to understand what matters most to them and how they would like us to support them by working together with community organizations and partners, we ensure families have access to essential resource, whether that’s information, meals, clothing, or homework help.

We must continue to ensure our teachers, families and students are working together, making sure students are getting the support they need, and they do not fall behind.

We also must continue to ensure our school administrators are trained on what to do if law enforcement or immigration enforcement comes to our schools, reviewing any their paperwork and ensuring any warrant is signed as a judicial warrant and not an administrative warrant working with our legal team, prior to entering in a school.

It is very important that the school board is letting our immigrant families know that we support them, such as our resolution to “Protect English Language Learner Students” in January of 2022 and “Support for Immigrant Students and Families” which was read aloud at our meeting in February 2025 and reaffirmed by vocal recognition again this past December. This acknowledges and reinforces our support and what the district actions are in support of our immigrant families such as:

1. Welcoming, safe and Inclusive Environment – OCS welcomes and supports all students and families, regardless of immigration status, and values their involvement in school communities. 
2. Equal Access to Education – OCS affirms that every child has the right to attend public schools in their district, regardless of where they live or their immigration status. 
3. Protection of Student Privacy – OCS honors commitments under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), ensuring that information about students and families is not disclosed without consent, except as required by law,
4. Limiting Immigration Enforcement on Campus – OCS has process that immigration enforcement actions should not occur at schools unless legally required, and school officials are not required to collect or share information about immigration status.
5. Mental Health and Emotional Support – OCS recognizes the emotional and psychological challenges faced by immigrant families, our teachers and staff including trauma and mental health issues and insuring we are providing support and resources to address these barriers. 
6. Family and Community Engagement – OCS encourages participation of all families in school activities and decision-making, ensuring that immigrant families are included and supported.
7. Advocacy and Policy Commitment – The Board of Education advocates for policies that protect the rights of immigrant students and families and opposes any actions that would separate families or create barriers to education.
8. Community resources and support – The district is working with many community and county resources and in contact with our families so they are aware of these resources and has access to them while being available to answer any questions they may have.

We require our school front offices to have bilingual staff to ensure that every visitor receives the support they need and their questions are answered effectively. Additionally, I believe it is essential to add a dedicated family liaison at each school to strengthen communication and engagement with our diverse families.

As elected officials, we can demonstrate our support by using our voices to express solidarity, Share concerns, and speak up during meetings. Additionally, I proudly joined many other leaders across North Carolina in signing the “Latine Leaders Joint Statement in Solidarity with Our Immigrant Community Access North Carolina”. This commitment reflects my ongoing dedication to inclusion, equity, and support for students, staff, families, and our community.

9. Many districts are struggling with teacher recruitment. What are your ideas for recruiting and retaining educators?

Diverse teacher recruitment and retention is challenging in North Carolina as we continue to see the state not investing in our teachers and staff, while the pipeline and number of available candidates is getting smaller.

We must work with our Superintendent and I believe we must focus on raising our local supplement pay and improve our benefits to be competitive, continue to build on our very successful ‘grow your own’ pipelines (with alternative licensing), and continues to modernize recruitment with technology (physical and virtual job fairs), thoughtful outreach and teacher direct feedback. I believe in us fostering a supportive positive school climate and culture, investing in professional development, and offering clear career pathways and continue looking at Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR). It is important to also support our new beginning teachers with continued mentoring from experienced teachers as well. We should also continue to look at ways to reduce unnecessary barriers to becoming a teacher and use data and feedback to guide our efforts. By combining these strategies, I believe we can continue to recruit and retain while showing how we value, support and appreciate all of our talented professional educators.

1. Competitive Compensation and Benefits
Work with the county to increase our local supplements so we can be competitive, Continue to implement signing bonuses for hard to fill positions, and potential stipends for advanced degrees or certifications. Continue to work with the chamber and local business to offer discounts to our staff.

2. Grow-Your-Own and Local Partnerships
Continue to grow, encourage and provide support, and education to our teaching assistants and staff to make the next step to get their license, which we have had a lot of success every year. We started this year with 77 beginning teachers, with 51.90% of those teachers, coming from our alternate licenses.

We received the NC Teaching Fellow grant, where Orange County Schools will receive $55,000 for the 2025-26 school year, with the option to renew at the end of the year. The NC Teaching Fellow pilot is to promote Teaching Fellows and the teaching profession with 3 major focus areas for OCS: 

Focus Area 1: Grow Your Own Teacher Pipeline for High School Students with future teachers of OCS student clubs.

The clubs will engage in teacher exploration through:
– Regular meetings with the advisor,
– Field visits to local elementary and middle schools
– Campus tours of colleges/universities with NC Teaching Fellows programs
– Family Academy Nights with NC Teaching Fellows program staff
– Options to pursue education based paid internships during summer programming.

Focus Area 2: Professional Development for Future Teachers
Teacher Prep Pathways Professional Development
OCS Stars of Education Conference
NC Teaching Fellows Site Visits
NC Teaching Fellows Summer Experience

Focus Area 3: Beginning Teacher Support 
Professional Development at NCCAT (North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching)
National Board Certification for Beginning Teachers – Reimbursement to complete applications at the end of their 3rd year

Continue to encourage our senior/retired community, our families and our nonprofit partners to volunteer in our schools, giving teachers breaks at lunch and help in the classroom during the day. This is one area that our staff greatly appreciates it.

3. Modernize Recruitment Strategies

Use virtual job fairs, targeted social media campaigns, and partnerships with teacher preparation programs for our grow your own programs. Highlight district strengths such as supportive leadership, innovative programs, and all of our community support and involvement in our recruitment materials.

4. Supportive School Culture and Working Conditions

Continue to emphasize the importance of strong mentorship for new teachers, manageable class sizes, and opportunities for teacher voice in decision making. Address workload and ensuring we provide teachers with their valuable planning time. Continue to review the district teacher working conditions ensure we are improving our climate and culture and getting feedback for improvement. The Superintendent’s Teacher of the Year monthly round tables, that gets feedback from each school’s teacher of the year and the team’s recommendations on solutions.

5. Professional Development and Career Growth
Offer ongoing, high quality professional development tailored to teacher needs. Create leadership pathways such as lead teacher, instructional coach, or department chair roles and Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR).

Support for National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) this not only allows teachers to get a additional 12% supplement from the state, it has numerous research backed results showing that students of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) consistently outperform peers taught by non-certified teachers. OCS first starts recruiting teachers in January, then provides information sessions at multiple events in the district and we also provide candidates with some reimburse as well.

6. Reduce Barriers to Entry

Advocate for alternative licensure pathways, support and guidance for passing required exams, recognition of out of state credentials and we do training and education on what the steps needed to get alternative licensure.

7. Leverage Data Driven Decision Making

Collect and analyze data on teacher turnover, exit interviews, and recruitment efforts to identify what’s working and where improvements are needed. Continue to review the district teacher working conditions ensure we are improving our climate and culture and getting feedback for improvement. The Superintendent’s Teacher of the Year monthly round tables, that gets feedback from each school’s teacher of the year and the team’s recommendations on solutions. Hearing for teachers directly.

8. Provide the required supplies

Ensure teachers have the materials they need to teach and support their classes, where they are not having to spend their personal money. Ensure that teachers have access to get support from our families and community members though programs like DonorsChoose for any additional items they feel they need to enhance the learning experience of our students.

9. Continue to recognize

Our teachers and staff at all levels deserve to be recognized as the professionals they are and know how much we appreciate them. Currently, we have recognition at the school level and the district level. Showing not only the appreciation we have for our teachers and staff, but what peers, students, and families appreciate about them as well. We also have a recognition events for our teachers of the year and our retiring teachers and staff as well. Because after retirement we want them to consider after the state required 6 month waiting period to be a substitute or part in our schools.

I believe we must also continue to collaboratively work with teachers and staff to understand what our teachers and staff truly need and how we can best support them.

10. It takes about two minutes to get a free AI chatbot to write a book report, respond to an essay question, or generate a slide deck for a presentation. Regardless of classroom or district policies, students are using AI to complete assignments. How can the OCS board best support teachers who are trying to make sure that students are still learning the basics and thinking critically?

While we can’t ignore that students are using or have access to these technologies, our responsibility is to ensure that every student continues to master foundational skills and develop critical thinking, while having a plan to support teachers and staff with development plants, tools and time to learn. Working with the Superintendent we have created an AI District Committee to help look at all the challenges and to help make recommendations on how we can approach. I was fortunate to be the board Liaison for Artificial Intelligence (AI) committee, given my technology background. We have agreed to leverage the DPI standards for Responsible and ethical use of generative AI in public education and go slow to make sure we give a little time for professional development and feedback from teachers and our community/families. 

Here’s some key items the Orange County Schools (OCS) board can do working with the Superintendent:

1. Clear Guidance and Professional Development

We should provide teachers with ongoing training on AI literacy to help them understand what these tools can do, how students might use them, and how to design assignments that encourage original thought. This includes sharing best practices for creating questions and projects that require analysis, synthesis, and personal reflection of ideas that AI can’t easily replicate.

2. Emphasize Critical and Creative Thinking vs Final Product

We can support teachers in thinking of how assignments can focus on the steps in the assignment. For example, requiring students to show drafts, outlines, or reflections on their approach and thinking, which helps ensure they’re having more thought provoking ideas with the material, not just submitting a potential AI generated final work.

3. Academic Integrity, and Policies

The board must continue to work with the Superintendent to develop and maintain 
guidelines that detail the acceptable and responsible use of generative AI by school system employees and students, making expectations around AI use clear. This includes teaching students when and how it’s appropriate to use AI as a tool, and when it’s not.

4. Provide Resources and Collaboration Time for Teachers and Staff

Teachers and staff need time, training, resources, and opportunities to ask questions. This collaborative planning time for teachers is important to share strategies and learn from each other about approaches, things that have worked, did not work, recommendations, sample lesson plans and tools that can leverage to help them.
It’s important that we ensure that, even as technology evolves, our district continues to have plans, training, professional development, space and time for teacher to understand and they can ensuring our students are critical thinkers, that understands the technology as we prepare them for a future.

5. Risk and Potential Pitfalls

We need to ensure we know and acknowledge the pitfalls of AI such as: Implicit bias, Inaccuracies (which is often called hallucinations or wrong information), Data Privacy concerns (using it and how is consumes data), Academic Integrity, and Overreliance on Technology.

We need to keep being transparent with our community, families, teachers and staff as we go along this journey and continue to seek feedback.

11. If there is anything else you would like to address, please do so here.  

I would just like to thank our community for their ongoing support of our schools.