Chattanooga, TN, November 8, 2018—Teach For America and Hamilton County School District will partner to bring additional education and leadership talent to Chattanooga public schools. The Hamilton County Board of Education voted in support of a four year agreement with Teach For America, beginning in the 2019-2020 school year, to help bolster the teacher candidate pool and build a pipeline of diverse promising leaders to expand educational opportunity for all children.

Teach For America teachers, known as corps members, will be eligible for open positions in Hamilton County School District, with particular attention on priority schools in the Opportunity Zone.

“I look forward to building a partnership with Teach For America to help provide the best possible teaching talent for our classrooms,” said Keith Fogleman, chief talent officer for Hamilton County Schools. “Teach For America will add another tool to the many valuable resources used by our district to locate and hire the very best teachers for our children.”

To lead operations, Eric Dailey will serve as Deputy Executive Director of Teach For America NashvilleChattanooga. In this role, Dailey will expand the footprint of Teach For America in southeast Tennessee. Most recently, Dailey served as the National Managing Director of The Collective at Teach For America supporting over 16,000 Teach For America alumni of color to lead, connect, and accelerate the work of ending educational inequity. Previously, Dailey spent three years as a public school principal in North Little Rock, Arkansas serving 350 students. He began his career as a middle literacy teacher in the Mississippi Delta. Dailey received a bachelor’s of arts degree in political science from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN and a master’s of education in educational leadership from the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California.

“Today is the beginning of a valuable partnership to support the work of district and community leaders in placing quality teachers in classrooms in Hamilton County Schools,” said Eric Dailey. “I am looking forward to meeting and learning from students, teachers, leaders and others in Chattanooga as we collectively pursue greater opportunities for all students in our schools.”

Currently, Teach For America has school partnerships in Nashville and Memphis with more than 400 corps members and almost 1,300 alumni combined. For the eighth year in a row, the Tennessee State Report Card identified Teach For America teachers to be among the most effective teachers in the state. Teach For America recruits top college graduates and career-changing professionals who make a commitment to teach for a minimum of two years in under-resourced public schools. From there, corps members continue a lifelong commitment to educational equity by continuing to work from within or outside of schools to shape the academic and personal growth of students.