Sharon Adams-Taylor: A Persuasive Advocate for Children and Equity

RETIREMENT TRIBUTE

Sharon Adams-Taylor, an associate executive director of AASA, will retire this month after 31 years of advocating for children at the association. But she claims she’s never actually had a job.

“I tell anyone who works with me this: If you work your passion, you never really have a job, and that’s what I’ve done all my life,” she says.

That passion has touched children and adults in schools across the United States and beyond. Her various projects as leader of the association’s Children’s Programs Department have ranged from child hunger to obesity, asthma, teen pregnancy, sex education, school discipline, dropout prevention, after-school programs and more.

Adams-Taylor, 70, says all of her work stems from the conviction that improving children’s lives requires that they all be treated equitably, regardless of their race, gender or social standing.

“I am a black woman who grew up poor, and so it’s part of who I am,” she says. “I believe that we can never realize our vision of a just and vibrant world unless we advocate for equity. All of my work involves equity — all of it.”

In early 2018, as the country was torn by increasing racial divisions, she was among those who advocated for putting equity at the heart of AASA’s reconstituted mission statement. The statement, spurred by Executive Director Dan Domenech and approved by AASA’s Executive Committee, now begins, “AASA, The School Superintendents Association advocates for equitable access for all students to the highest quality public education …”

It is no surprise for her to take a principled and spirited stand on an issue, says Bryan Joffe, a project director on Adams-Taylor’s staff.

“She’s always someone who is going to speak loudly and forthrightly about justice and equity and what’s right for kids,” he says. “She’s a small woman who takes up seven feet by seven feet when she comes in the room and makes her presence felt.”

Domenech goes further. “I consider her to be our conscience at AASA,” he says. “I can count on Sharon to be the one to remind us of our mission, and our mission is to provide all children with an equitable and excellent education.”

A Rising Star

The roots of Adams-Taylor’s passion for equity are not hard to find.

Her father was a sharecropper in Arkansas until moving to Kansas City, Mo., to work as a laborer for the Santa Fe Railroad, where he advocated for more jobs for Black people.

“My daddy was a race man,” she says. “He strongly advocated for the rights of Black people,” following leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Adams-Taylor was born in Kansas City, the youngest of 10 children and the only one born in a hospital. She attended segregated schools until 12th grade.

Her mother, whom she says “cleaned white people’s houses,” had a simple dictum. “Let me tell you, baby,” she told her daughter, “the door to opportunity is marked ‘Push’.”

Despite the family’s poverty, Adams-Taylor thrived in school and in her close-knit, all-Black neighborhood.

She was accepted by Yale, but she decided instead to attend Howard University. “I wanted folks just like I had in high school, who sup-ported me, where they would push me but also nurture me, and that’s what I got at Howard,” she says.

Several years later, she was accepted at Harvard to pursue a master’s in public health. After learning of the school busing riots in Bos-ton, she once again eschewed an Ivy League school, opting instead for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Holistic Supports

Among her favored projects at AASA was one that helped schools offer free breakfasts for children in their classrooms. The data showed that few children showed up for school breakfast in the cafeteria, partly because of the stigma of being poor, but they did enjoy breakfast in the classroom. The program not only provided nutrition for children but reduced absenteeism and improved behavior and academic performance.

Another project she singles out was a partnership with the Children’s Defense Fund to connect schools with community agencies to identify students without health insurance and help them obtain coverage. The program was picked up by U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell who promoted it as a national model.

Adams-Taylor not only directs the projects in her department but finds funding for them as well. She has procured some $30 million in grants over her tenure.

After the Effie H. Jones Humanitarian Award was created by the Minority Affairs Committee and the Women’s Committee in honor of Adams-Taylor’s mentor at AASA, she administered it. The award honors AASA members who show a commitment to the advancement and mentorship of women and minorities into positions of educational leadership and a commitment to provide an equitable education and opportunities for at-risk youth.

She also is a co-founder of Women Leading Education Across Continents, a global network examining the status of women in educational leadership. Its conference is held in a different country every two years. It’s one of the many passion projects she won’t give up easily and that she will count on others to carry on.

For all that, she believes her legacy will be as a mentor. “The way that I move through the world, my whole orientation toward this work and toward my life, is ‘each one teach one,’” she says. “You have to reach out and reach down and strengthen others because you’re only as strong as your weakest link. I care about my folks not only doing a good job but reaching their greatest potential. And that’s what it’s all about.”