The Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools recently presented the annual Richard R. Green Award for outstanding contributions to urban education to Franklin L. Till, the superintendent of the Broward County, Fla., schools, and Arthur Griffin Jr, a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board in North Carolina.
Mr. Till, 56, has served as the superintendent of the 271,000-student Broward County system since 1999.
In that job, he has built a national reputation for his efforts to get his community more involved in the schools. For instance, the local community was integrally involved in developing the district’s character education curriculum, called “Character—The Core of Our Lives.”
Mr. Till plans to donate the $10,000 college scholarship he receives as part of the award to the Broward Schools Foundation, which provides scholarships to students who pursue education degrees and plan to teach in the county.
Mr. Griffin, a senior litigation paralegal with the Charlotte, N.C., law firm of Cox, Gage, & Sasser, has been a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board for 17 years and served as its chairman from 1997 to 2002.
A graduate of Second Ward High School in Charlotte, a segregated, all-black school that closed in 1969, Mr. Griffin, 55, is credited with leading the effort in the 112,000-student school system to ensure that all children in all schools in the district receive the same educational opportunities.
In 1999, Mr. Griffin played a key role in the crafting of a district report titled “Achieving the CMS Vision: Equity and Student Success,” which provided an itemized plan to close the achievement gap between minority and white students.
As part of the award, Mr. Griffin also will receive a $10,000 college scholarship to give to any student in his school district.
—Catherine A. Carroll
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