We may know Ms. Tierra Jolly ‘00 as a fairly new history teacher with a lot of spunk, or as a former graduate of McNamara.

You may not know that Ms. Jolly also serves on the DC Board of Education representing Ward 8 in Washington, D.C. She decided to run for elections last April.

“When I saw the list of people that had picked up the petition packet, I saw… not a single one of them were teachers or had ever set foot into a classroom,” Ms. Jolly said. “Then I researched the people who are currently on the board and I saw that not a single one of them were teachers either, and it made me really angry.”

So she picked up her petitions and spent the next three months running.

After Ms. Jolly graduated from McNamara, she went to college and later joined Teach for America, which sent her to New Orleans in 2007. Later she returned to the area working in DC public schools. After Mr. Holloman left last year, she returned to McNamara as a teacher.

The board of education exist to review academic policies and requirements that come from the superintendent’s office, such as graduation requirements and teacher registration. Every board member has a vote that will either approve or reject the policies. Each vote is designed to represent each ward’s constituents that each board member represents.

Ms. Jolly is the Chairwoman of Closing the Achievement Gap, the gap between students in the city’s best schools versus the students in the city’s worst schools.

From working on the board, Ms. Jolly has learned that every school has faults, and gained insight into how to better handle these faults. “My time on the board has made me fortunate that the problems at McNamara are so small compared to the problems in the schools in the ward I represent.”

Also, she is able to use her experiences as examples during class. She said, “It’s kinda cool to say, ‘well in last nights meeting,’ here’s an example of this concept that I just taught in class yesterday.”