Betty Gray Reflects on 50-Plus Years As South Cobb Educator

Betty Gray spent more than 50 years in education in Cobb County, and most of those years were spent in South Cobb schools as a teacher, principal, counselor and school board member.

Today, the eighth annual Betty Gray Scholarship Luncheon will be held at 11:30 a.m. at Roswell Baptist Church in Marietta. Four students from South Cobb high schools, Pebblebrook and South Cobb and Powder Springs' McEachern high, will be selected for a $1,500 scholarship. Selected students qualified by having at least a 3.0 grade point average, strong community involvement and recommendations from school educators or officials.

Gray said she and organizers of the scholarship program thought it would last a year or maybe two, and she is surprised and proud that it has survived eight years.

“There are so many people now not even thinking about going into education, and it breaks my heart,” Gray said. “It doesn’t help a whole lot, but it certainly says to the kids that this community cares about education.

This summer, Gray will turn 78.

"Age is relative," she said. "You have to work at it.”

And Gray would know best. She's worked 54 years in the same education system, and she continues to work with aspring teachers at Kennesaw State University despite having retired.

Gray's first teaching job in South Cobb was as a high school english teacher at South Cobb high school in 1957. After that, she worked as a middle school counselor and as a teacher at Sedalia and Clarkdale elementary schools, went into administration at Wheeler High in 1978 for almost three years, before being asked to be the principal of an elementary school.

When she was asked, she replied that she needed to think about it. She said it was not common for there to be female principals then and she was not sure at first if she was up to the challenge.

However, she learned that she most certainly was. She eventually retired when she was the principal of Compton Elementary.

In 1992, she ran for the school board and she served 16 years, four terms. She was defeated however, by current School Board Member David Morgan. She then subsequently lost the primary for House District 39 to his wife, State Rep. Alisha Morgan.

Now, she plans that she can help others who have a passion for education with her scholarship.

Cobb Chamber CEO David Connell will be the featured speaker at the luncheon.

Betty Gray sat down with South Cobb Patch and shared some of what she has learned over the years, and we are going to share it with you all this week.

The wisdom she has developed from her more than half a century of teaching can span many industries and professions and be applied to various aspects of life, and it certainly can’t all fit in a short video, so we’re going to run a series of these videos throughout the week in celebration of Betty Gray. Let us know what you think about what she has to say, and how she has touched you in some way.