Atlanta Public Schools picked the leader of one of the city’s oldest charter schools to head up the district’s charter office.
Matt Underwood, executive director of Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School, has been chosen as executive director of the APS Office of Innovation. The school board must give final approval for the hire, which it is slated to do Monday.
Underwood takes over from Gayle Burnett, who is retiring from APS.
He will oversee an office that provides support to and monitors APS-authorized charter schools and the outside organizations that the district has hired to run a handful of its schools. The office reviews requests to renew and create charter schools.
Underwood started working at Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School in 2007, according to a biography posted on the school’s website. He was a middle school principal, and then he became executive director in 2011.
The kindergarten through eighth grade charter school, whose charter is authorized by APS, was created by the merger of two charter schools that had been in operation since 2002.
Underwood is to start at APS in January.
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