KPS Administrator Named 2010 YWCA Lifetime Woman of Ach

By Jonathan Kleyer

The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) has announced that the 2010 YWCA Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award Recipient is a Kalamazoo Public Schools administrator.

Patricia Coles-Chalmers will receive the local YWCA chapter’s 26th Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award in an award ceremony at 5:15 p.m. on May 13th, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, 100 W. Michigan Avenue, Kalamazoo.

Each year, the award is given to a woman in the community who has demonstrated, as the organization puts it, “a lifetime of outstanding contributions to the well-being of the community, state or nation, and has a record of accomplishment, leadership and positive role modeling as a volunteer and/or in a career.”

As it happens, Coles-Chalmers has contributed to the Kalamazoo community for over 30 years in her role with the Kalamazoo Public Schools.

Over the years, she has had an impact on students and their families, and even the school district, as she has gone from teacher, assistant principal and principal to her current role as the district’s Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Services.

In this role, Coles-Chalmers has helped schools improve the district’s state test scores in language arts and math over the past three years, created strategic plan expectations for children at every age of development—as well as for the adults and community organizations that support them, expanded full-day kindergarten from 176 to 950 students over the course of two years and had a hand in opening the newly-constructed Prairie Ridge Elementary and Linden Grove Middle Schools.

In its announcement, the YWCA called all of that just a few of the superintendent’s many accomplishments.

The organization points out that Coles-Chalmers has also implemented a number of changes to the district’s curriculum during her tenure, such as adopting a new kindergarten through fifth-grade math series, increasing the number of economically and racially underrepresented students in college-level advanced placement classes and restructuring the district’s high school schedule from a four-course semester system to a five-course trimester system, completely revamping the high school course bulletin in the process.

The superintendent is also credited for the district’s receipt of a $9 million federal magnet schools grant, a $7.5 million 21st Century after-school program grant and a $150,000 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Literacy Planning Grant.

Outside of her work for the schools, Coles-Chalmers has served as a president and vice president on the boards of the YWCA and Alpha Kapa Alpha Sorority, as well as president of the board of the Kalamazoo Nature Center. In previous years, she has been honored with the YWCA’s Woman of Achievement Award, Genevieve U. Gilmore Volunteer Leadership Award and the Kalamazoo Public Schools Excellence in Education Administrator of the Year Award.

The YWCA uses an independent selection committee to determine the recipients of the Lifetime Woman of Achievement Award and the Women of Achievement Awards. Six people served on this year’s committee: Mike Larson, Alexander Lipsey, Hanah McKinney, Juan Olivarez, Mary Tyler and Julie Sullivan.

For more information about the YWCA of Kalamazoo, or the Women of Achievement Awards, call the organization at 345-5595 or go online to www.ywcakalamazoo.org.