Two Veteran Educators Named to SDP National Faculty

Shelia G. Brantley, M.A., a veteran teacher and the District Comer Facilitator in New Haven, Connecticut, and Carol P. Ray, the principal of Asheville High School in Asheville, North Carolina have been named to the SDP National Faculty.  

Shelia G. Brantley, M.A.

Shelia G. Brantley serves as the District Comer Facilitator in New Haven, Connecticut as a Teacher on Special Assignment. She has been trained in the Comer Process and has implemented the program in New Haven since 1995. She presently collaborates with the School Development Program in ten schools in the district in the areas of team effectiveness, relationship building, child and adolescent development, and using the guiding principles. She presents professional development in the Comer Process to teachers, staff, parents, and students.

Shelia has taught high school English and Special Education in public and private schools for over 30 years in a continuum of elementary, high school, and college levels. 

She attended Winthrop University and earned a BA in English and a MA in Learning Disabilities at the University of Northern Colorado. In addition, she completed post-graduate work in Educational Leadership at Southern Connecticut State University.

Shelia holds a leadership role in the educational reform School Change initiative presently being implemented by the New Haven Federation of Teachers and the District Central Office.

Carol P. Ray, M.Ed.

Carol P. Ray, M.Ed. is the principal of Asheville High School in Asheville, North Carolina. She is a nationally distinguished principal, twice named Principal of the Year in Asheville. In over 30 years as an educator Carol has been a teacher, assistant principal, a director of elementary education, and the principal of four schools: Jones Primary School, Hall Fletcher and Claxton Elementary Schools, and Asheville High School.

In 2004 Carol received the prestigious Patrick Francis Daly Memorial Award for Excellence in Educational Leadership from Yale University, which has been given to Comer school principals who have demonstrated both outstanding leadership and commitment to children. That year she also received the Congressional Black Caucus Educational Leadership Award for Empowering Families & Communities.

Carol speaks nationally on educational leadership and is a contributing author of Six Pathways to Health Child Development and Academic Success and Transforming School Leadership and Management to Support Student Learning and Development. She was featured in a chapter in Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today's Youth for Tomorrow's World by Dr. James P. Comer.

In October 2010 Carol delivered a riveting presentation describing how she implemented the Comer School Development Program and dramatically increased student achievement and engagement at the schools which she has led at the briefing for the NCATE Initiative on Increasing the Application of Developmental Sciences Knowledge in Educator Preparation at the National Press Club. 

Carol earned her B.A. from Mars Hill College in Elementary Education with a minor in music, and her M.A. and Administrative Certificate from Western Carolina University.  

To learn more about how Carol and her staff used the Comer Process to close the achievement gap in Asheville, click here.