ALTO – “If everybody would please take their seats, then we are going to begin the best thing that’s ever happened at Lee Arrendale State Prison,” Warden Kathleen Kennedy said. The crowd’s response was, as no surprise, immediate.
The Mountain Education Charter High School “branch-behind- bars” was about to give out the first diplomas in the history of the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Nineteen women had completed requirements for a Georgia high school diploma.
Having handed out more than a few diplomas in his career, Dr. L.C. “Buster” Evans, former Superintendent of Forsyth County Schools, was asked last year by Governor Nathan Deal to lead education initiatives within the DOC.
Evans accepted the Governor’s offer and Thursday morning stood before the nineteen female inmates as the keynote speaker for their graduation ceremony.
“This truly is one of the highlights of my professional career,” Evans stated.
“The nineteen graduates…represent over 1250 female inmates in the Georgia DOC who do not have a high school diploma or a GED,” he continued, “but we’re going to change that number; we’re going to reduce that number and create reality and hope in lives of others.”
“To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that there’s ever been a high school graduation where…students received a diploma as a part of the Georgia DOC," Evans added.
But the success of the nineteen graduates reaches far beyond the twin rows of 12-feet high fencing woven with razor-wire just outside the auditorium; their success would be the catalyst for expanding the program to other DOC facilities.
“We will continue with this charter school programming here at Lee Arrendale State Prison. (And) because of your success, next month, in a partnership with Foothills Education Charter School, we will begin at…the Burruss Correctional Training Center (in Monroe County) for our males, where we will have sixty males…who will be able to have this same type of programming.”
“But you know what?” Evans asked rhetorically. “The only reason they get to do it is because the girls did it first.”
