Wake County Schools Partner With Rural Charter Leader for Principal Training

Dr. Robert Taylor, superintendent of Wake County Public Schools, reached back to a place he once led to find the leadership model he wanted for his principals: a small charter school in rural Bladen County where he once hired a young educator named Dr. Jason Wray.

That school, Paul R. Brown Leadership Academy, sits far outside Wake County's orbit in nearly every measurable way. It is a small public charter serving a rural community, not the largest school district in North Carolina with all the resources that implies. Yet Taylor invited Wray to share leadership lessons with Wake County principals, a collaboration the North Carolina Coalition for Charter Schools highlighted this week in a press release written by the Coalition's public relations consultant, Pat Ryan, who interviewed Wray for the account.

Wray said the invitation stopped him in his tracks. "A small charter leader coming to the largest school district in the state... I was really in awe of it," he said.

The connection between the two men predates this partnership. Taylor previously led Bladen County's school system and hired Wray to lead one of his schools several years ago. When Taylor moved to Wake County and took over the state's largest district, he kept track of what Wray was building at Paul R. Brown Leadership Academy.

EducationNC reported the collaboration as an initiative addressing leadership needs amid unspecified challenges at WCPSS. The Coalition's press release framed it using a 2006 observation from Judge Howard Manning: "Money is important, but competent, effective leadership is essential to success."

The terms of the training remain thin on public detail. Neither the Coalition's announcement nor the EducationNC report specified how many Wake County principals are involved, what format the training takes, how long it runs, or how it is funded. Those specifics have not been made available by WCPSS.

The unnamed author of a Carolina Journal commentary identifying themselves as the current leader of the North Carolina Coalition for Charter Schools and a former head of the Department of Public Instruction's charter school division framed the collaboration as evidence that the traditional divide between district and charter schools misses a larger point. "Innovation and excellence can come from anywhere — from small, rural schools and from big, urban schools, and everywhere in between," that author wrote. "What's important is having the vision and humility to recognize excellence and learn from it, no matter its origin."

For WCPSS, the optics are notable regardless of the unresolved details: the state's biggest district chose a rural charter school fewer people have heard of as a leadership model worth replicating. Whether this grows into a sustained program or remains a single engagement between two educators with a shared history in Bladen County will depend on what Taylor and Wray build from here.