Jeffrey Macris, the parent of Anne Arundel County public school students, won the third annual Comcast Parent Involvement Matters Award at an award ceremony this evening.
The U.S. Naval Academy history professor and his wife have five children, none of them yet in a middle school, but he helped lead an effort to make major changes in two middle schools in Anne Arundel County, according to a statement by the Maryland State Department of Education. Under his leadership, a group of Annapolis parents lobbied officials to bring a "world class academic program" to Annapolis Middle and Bates Middle and to establish better discipline. Annapolis Middle is now an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme school and Bates Middle is an arts magnet school.
The five finalists for the award included Donna Hager, a parent at the Midtown Academy Public Charter School in Bolton Hill, and Jay Wolf Schlossberg-Cohen, a Cromwell Valley Elementary School parent.