MARIETTA — The new officers of the Marietta Board of Education, Chairman Jeff DeJarnett and Vice Chairman Jason Waters, sat down with the MDJ this week to discuss their vision for the year ahead, touching on literacy, school safety, bullying and library books.
DeJarnett, 65, has been on the board since 2022 while Waters, 48, has served since 2014. They were both elected by the school board to their respective positions on Jan. 9. This is DeJarnett’s first time as chair, and Water’s fourth time in the vice chair role.
DeJarnett, a former music educator, graduated from Marietta High School. Waters, born and raised in Austell, has three children enrolled in the school district.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MDJ: What’s your favorite part of serving the students, staff, and parents of MCS?
DeJarnett: I think my favorite part is actually being able to see the results that you can hopefully have some influence over whether, obviously, the thing that we’ve discussed mainly over the last year or two is literacy, and to be able to see, even over just one year’s time, the kind of success we can have in raising the level of how many kids are reading on level. And knowing that, if you can open those doors to them, that’s life changing for them. So it’s good to be able to make some decisions and then see that it can really bring about positive change for the kids. So I like that.
Waters: I agree. I would say, just looking back over time and matching the data for time, it’s great to see continuous improvement that we’ve had and attribute that, really to the staff we have. But the graduation rate has had a massive increase over the last 10 years. And what’s happened with literacy now is going to be game changing for these kids’ lives forever. So not only will that increase the graduation rate, that’s a great…
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