Elementary school to be named after Seba Asa G. Hilliard III

A Fulton County elementary school has been renamed after a prominent educator. Mount Olive Elementary School in East Point will be renamed Asa Hilliard Elementary School. The Fulton County School Board of Education voted 7-0 to rename the school during Wednesday night’s meeting at Hamilton E. Holmes Elementary School in East Point.

Hilliard was an educational psychologist who promoted African-American studies and achievement. He died in 2007.

District 6 board member Catherine Maddox said she knew Hilliard and his family. “The naming of the school is not out of any personal obligation but solely on the distinguished accomplishments and the merit of Dr. Hilliard,” Maddox said.  Maddox said the board followed district policy to rename the school after the late Hilliard and there was strong community support for the change.

New interim Superintendent Ken Zeff received 150 signed petitions from residents in East Point and the surrounding area, Maddox said, and five East Point City Council members signed a letter of support.

“This was Dr. Hilliard’s community, which he brought the standards of excellence in education, and we want this school to have those same standards,” she said.

This was the first board meeting for Zeff. June 2 he replaced Robert Avossa, who served as the district leader for four years. In April, Avossa announced he was taking a job as superintendent of the School District of Palm Beach County in Florida.

In other business, the board recognized Robert Morales, chief financial officer, who attended his final meeting with the district. Morales was recently hired at the new chief financial officer of Atlanta Public Schools.

The school board also approved 2015-16 budget adjustments to commit $2.1 million for the records management fund and de-commit $500,000 for risk management. The overall $1.3 billion budget was approved at the board’s June 9 work session.

Read more: Neighbor Newspapers - Fulton Co school district renames East Point school 

In the Time of Butterflies — Àdisà

“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

― Lao Tzu

The process of transformation is often ugly and uncomfortable in the beginning. The transition stage from where we are to where we want to be—whether it’s our hair, our bodies, our minds or our disposition—is uncomfortable. And it's meant to be. The beauty in the early stages of moving from one state of being to another comes from embracing the struggle in the transition; the comfort is to be found later in having achieved our goals.

A common mistake many of us make is that we are more invested in being comfortable during the transition phase before we achieve anything to be comfortable about. ("I'll eat this and then work it off tomorrow" before we have met our dietary or weight goals; "I'm going natural but this weave will help with my transition" ...when the goal is to be natural) If we are honest what this really says about is we are more committed to whom we are than to whom we desire to be.

The transition process with all of its difficulties is the time to get to know whom we are, to reexamine notions bequeathed to us about ugliness and beauty, our worth and our values, about our identity and our consciousness, our hurt, pain and traumas, etc. What good is a beautiful natural head of healthy hair, if it shrouds a dead mind? What good is new found body beauty, if it houses the same toxic mentality about body image? What good does it do to be culturally conscious, if our behavior is still rooted in the mentality of the plantation? We confuse conversion experiences with actual transformation; we may think differently about our faith or our political commitments but very often they merely become the mask we pull over toxic behavioral patterns, which re-emerge eventually.

If we don't embrace the struggle of transition we may end up thinking we are free, confusing a more spacious cage for freedom, unaware that we are still held hostage by old insecurities, deep. Transition is the place where you do battle with yourself for your best self; transformation is where you discover whom emerged victorious.

The caterpillar loves being a caterpillar even as it embraces the difficult transition to becoming a butterfly...and then it loves being a butterfly. Loving whom you are while appreciating that you are not where you want to be are also means embracing the self-work and growth necessary to be transformed into a better version of us. Ancient African wisdom teaches us that human being are teachable and perfectible. 

Often we can see where we want to be in our lives but don't realize that to get there are we going to have to learn to fly, and before we can do that we have to embrace the struggle that comes along with the transition process that will create our wings. The caterpillar literally dissolves in the cocoon and is then repurposed into a butterfly. All the elements of caterpillar are there; they have merely been reconstituted to suit a higher purpose.

Healing requires memory, imagination and courage. Part of the work of healers is to inspire us by reminding us that a butterfly is just a caterpillar courageous enough to do the work to meet its highest destiny.

In life, love and liberation,

Àdisà