Ronald E. Jackson Wins Award for Outstanding Public Interest Work in Birmingham Area

PRESS RELEASE
-For Immediate Release-
September 10, 2008

Contact: Brian Gumm, (202) 683-4812, bgumm@ombwatch.org [1]

Ronald E. Jackson Wins Award for Outstanding Public Interest Work in Birmingham Area

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10, 2008—OMB Watch is pleased to announce that Ronald E. Jackson, Executive Director of Citizens for Better Schools, has won a Public Interest Hall of Fame Award for his outstanding public interest work in the Birmingham area. Jackson is a native of Birmingham and a graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law.

The Public Interest Hall of Fame Awards are part of OMB Watch's year-long 25th Anniversary celebration and honor the "unsung heroes" who have made their mark in making the world a better place and will leave an important legacy. Public Interest Hall of Fame Award winners will be recognized at OMB Watch's 25th Anniversary event in Washington, DC, the evening of Sept. 17.

Jackson was nominated for the award because his dedication to increasing the quality of public education for children in his hometown of Birmingham gives witness to one man's ability to "take on city hall" and assert influence. In addition to his advocacy work, Jackson provides students and parents easy access to excellent information about issues that have a profound impact on their lives and the future health of the city.

Upon learning of the award, Jackson said, "This is a bolt out the sky — awesome."

Gary D. Bass, Executive Director of OMB Watch, offered his congratulations. "Ronald's commitment to social justice and increasing the quality of education for all of Birmingham's children — without regard to race or family income level — is immeasurable. In the face of great odds and often personal criticism and attacks, Ronald has persevered, enriching the lives of countless Birmingham residents. OMB Watch is proud to present him with one of seven Public Interest Hall of Fame Awards."

The full list of award winners is available at /files/25th [2]. There were roughly 100 nominees considered for the award. For more information about OMB Watch, see http://www.ombwatch.org/article/archive/250 [3].

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Ronald E. Jackson Bio

Raised hard on Birmingham, Alabama's South Side, Ronald E. "Ron" Jackson is a Birmingham native and life-long resident. He was educated in Birmingham's Lane Elementary and Ullman High Schools. As a youth, he participated in the 1963 "Children's Campaign," along with his mother, father, and seven sisters and brothers, to desegregate the City of Birmingham and its public schools. Ron continued his education at Miles College with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science, and as an Exchange Student to the College of Wooster. He earned a Juris Doctorate form the University of Alabama School of Law, (a member of Alabama's first law class to graduate African Americans), after attending the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Ron has consistently involved himself in public policy and public interest law. Upon resigning his position as Managing Attorney for the Birmingham Legal Aid Society to seek election to public office, Ron said, "The poor deserve and need representation in our Legislature as much, if not more, than the special interests who write their laws, regulate their lives, property, and liberty."

Ron served two terms in the Alabama Legislature and authored laws prohibiting Alabama insurance companies from denying coverage to persons with sickle cell anemia, and Alabama's first administrative law code, opening development of government regulation in all of Alabama's state boards, agencies, departments, and commissions for public notice and input. His public sector work also included service on the executive staff of the mayor of Alabama's largest city, where Ron established Birmingham's first Environmental Court.

Realizing the undeniable role public education plays to advance social and economic justice juxtaposed to Birmingham's virulent poverty, double-digit grade retention, high dropout rates, and a fiscally unsound school district failing to link spending with academic achievement, Ron, along with founding members of Citizens for Better Schools, resolved to work "Structuring Schools For Success — Making the Vision Work for All Students" (regardless of where they may live or attend school).

Ron's work and passion has been "Opening doors of opportunity" for inner-city poor students in public schools, recognizing that gifted and talented students have the potential to excel academically but are often underachievers who fall through the cracks, "with most of these students being undiscovered and underserved by their schools and districts." Citizens for Better Schools changed that in Birmingham, where the 32,000-student school district was 92 percent black but enrolled only 0.4 percent of its black students in Gifted and Talented programs, compared to 10 percent of the system's white students, in a school system whose school board was predominantly black with a black superintendent. In the face of fierce criticism from the African American community; Ron effectively used Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to open Birmingham's Gifted and Talented Program to "Young, Gifted, and Black" students.

When school districts across Alabama refused to allow transfers for Title I students whose schools failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind Act, Citizens for Better Schools won a rare, and first ever, enforcement order from the United States Department of Education establishing the principle that "lack of capacity" is no justification to leave a poor child in a failing school, when districts can reconstitute faculties or innovate for success, "Structuring Schools for Success — Making the Vision Work for All Students."

When small, academically successful, neighborhood elementary schools in Birmingham were faced with closing due to being "too costly" to operate, Ron organized high school students studying economics to present before the Alabama State Department of Education sophisticated statistical regression analysis demonstrating Birmingham's "small schools controlled cost more efficiently" and "produced better academic results" than newer large schools.

Beyond public sector work, Ron's civic duties have ranged from serving on the board of directors of the Jefferson County Mental Health Association and the historic 4th Avenue Branch YMCA, a supporting member of the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Miles College and University of Alabama Alumni associations, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of his beloved Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, where he has held membership for over fifty years. Ron has a daughter (Cyrondys) and two grandsons (Demoriae and Christopher) attending public schools.

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OMB Watch is a nonprofit government watchdog organization dedicated to promoting government accountability, citizen participation in public policy decisions, and the use of fiscal and regulatory policy to serve the public interest