Principal Spotlight: Kathy Jones, Camp Creek Elementary

As a teacher and administrator of 30 years at five Gwinnett County elementary schools, Kathy Jones has been somewhat a surrogate mom to thousands of kids.

She's uniquely qualified. Her own kids — Max, Patrick and Allyson — were adopted at birth.

"There's a different understanding about children when you have your own," the principal of Lilburn's Camp Creek Elementary said. "Any mother has empathy and compassion. I'm probably more motherly than most [principals]."

Jones' inability to have her own kids is no secret. It's as open a story as her and husband Robert's open adoptions of now 17-year-old Max, 14-year-old Patrick and 12-year-old Allyson. Jones and her husband of 27 years met their kids' birth mothers upon delivery and welcomed them to keep abreast of the kids' lives in the Jones' Snellville home. And while that contact has waned, the Joneses remain largely open to their kids seeking out their birth parents when of age to do so.

"Every so often," Max said, "I do think what it'd be like if I hadn't been adopted — how many people I wouldn't have met and how many things I wouldn't have done. I think of what my other family might have been like. I'm lucky to be with the mom I have now."

Jones, Camp Creek's principal for 10 years, has been empowered by children since she first began teaching at Snellville's Annistown Elementary in 1981. And during time as assistant principal at Dacula's Dyer Elementary and Snellville's Shiloh Elementary — still with no children despite years of trying — someone suggested adoption she'd never considered before.

And then there was the nearly prohibitive expense to consider. The $21,000 to become Max' parents and $27,000 to become Patrick's were scary amounts to finance. And though Allyson's adoption a year and a half after Patrick's cost only $8,000, it occurred only because of relatives' contributions and baby shower gifts from colleagues from Lawrenceville's Craig Elementary.

"I was the poster child for adoption in Snellville for a while," said Jones, joking, "We call Allyson our sale baby because everybody owns a piece of her."

With Max now a senior at Lilburn's Parkview High and Patrick and Allyson eighth and seventh graders at Lilburn's Trickum Middle, Kathy and Robert lovingly bemoan life seemingly spent as parent chauffeurs, as moms and dads of active teenagers might. Proudest moments, though, are spent working together, like last Saturday on Max's Eagle Scout project, a fence around Camp Creek's playground.

Whether Eagle Scouts for Max or swimming for Patrick and Allyson, like any working mom, Kathy Jones' days start early and end late. Twelve-hour days on campus aren't unusual for principals.

"She comes home completely exhausted," Robert said. "She really puts in 110 percent all the time."

School administration remains Jones' passion, alas enhanced by empathy of herself having kids.

"I used to get so angry when I wasn't a mom, when people would say, 'You can't understand because you're not a mother,'" Jones said. "Any mother has empathy and compassion. That makes you a better educator."

And after three decades of educating, little compares to Jones' rock star status at Camp Creek.

“The best part of my job is the hugs I get on a daily basis,” she reportedly once told a visitor in Camp Creek's corridors. “What other job is there on Earth where you get 1,500 hugs a day?

"The thought of walking down the hall seeing students with big smiles on their faces and getting a hug — it’s the best thing in the world.”

Perhaps, though, getting them at home is even better.