Catayah Clark, Founder

Catayah’s two decades of experience have been equally divided between brick-and-mortar and virtual settings. She has dedicated the past ten years to virtual school and program leadership, growth, and transformation, having served as the instructional leader in South Carolina’s state-level virtual school program and as a high school principal in two statewide virtual charter schools. In K-12 virtual settings, her leadership strategies resulted in improvements in student academic performance, decreases in achievement gaps amongst student groups, and improved school report card ratings. Prior to shifting to virtual education, she served as a high school English teacher, a HSTW SLC Leadership Team member, a cooperating teacher for college practicum students and student teaching interns, and a middle school technology and learning coach. Catayah currently serves on the National Standards for Quality Online Learning (NSQ) Leadership Team and the University of South Carolina Principal’s Advisory Board. She is also a board member for the South Carolina Career Development Association.  Catayah earned a bachelor’s degree in English and master’s degrees in secondary education and education administration from the University of South Carolina. She is also certified as a secondary principal and as an English teacher in South Carolina.

Deirdre Edwards, Chair

Deirdre served as the founding Curriculum Team Leader at VirtualSC, South Carolina’s supplemental virtual program. In her 8 years in that role, she led a team of over 20 design and curriculum professionals to create, maintain and revise over 130 master courses used by students throughout South Carolina. She coordinated the development of a collaborative, quality-driven course development process that incorporated the expertise of instructional designers and SC certified teachers. She has over a decade of experience as an LMS administrator and is well-versed in online quality standards including the Quality Matters K-12 rubric, National Standards for Quality Online Courses, and the Online Learning Consortium’s OSCQR Scorecard for Online Course Design. Deirdre holds master’s degrees in marine science and secondary administration and SC certifications in middle and high school science and secondary administration.

Dr. Edward Johnson, Treasurer

He has served as a school social worker, an assistant principal, a school and district-level director of counseling, a director of student services for a virtual charter school, and an education associate at the South Carolina Department of Education. Dr. Johnson has also served as a testing coordinator in both brick and mortar and virtual settings. He is experienced in the (former) High Schools that Work Smaller Learning Communities framework, having served as an academy administrator in the school-within-a-school model. During one of Dr. Johnson’s tenures as a high school assistant principal of instruction, his instructional leadership resulted in the school moving from a “below average” to a “good” school rating and a 6% graduation rate increase. Dr. Johnson holds elementary and secondary principal certifications in addition to two master of education degrees and a doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction.