Curtis L. Jones Jr., who spent the first 20 years of his professional life serving in the U.S. Army before taking on public school leadership in Georgia, was named the 2019 National Superintendent of the Year®.

The announcement came in late afternoon Thursday in Los Angeles during the 1st General Session of the National Conference of Education, run by AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

The 63-year-old Jones has served since 2015 as superintendent of the 24,000-student Bibb County School District in Macon, Ga. He previously served one other superintendency in Griffin, Ga. He is a 1977 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who subsequently served the military for 20 years in Germany and at the Pentagon.
Read a profile of Jones as well as human interest tidbits about him in Conference Daily Online.

This marks the 32nd anniversary of the National Superintendent of the Year® program, which honors school system leaders throughout the country and internationally. The award is co-sponsored by VALIC, First Student and AASA.

A $10,000 college scholarship will be presented in the name of Jones to a student in the high school from which he graduated or at a school now serving that area.

For more information about the award and other three finalists, see the official AASA press release.

(Jay Goldman is editor of AASA’s Conference Daily Online.)