Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

After 30 years in education, New Union Elementary Principal Jill Potts is saying goodbye to a field that, though she came to it later in life, has brought her a lot of joy.

“Never again in my life am I going to walk into a room and everyone go ‘Mrs. Potts!’” she said. “I just find so much joy in the kids.”

Potts at one time wanted to be a lawyer and worked in finance for a while before changing career plans after becoming a mother.

“In my early thirties I had my two children,” she explained. “I started volunteering at my daughter’s Pre-K, and I ended up getting a job there all the while thinking ‘What do I wanna do?’ and then it hit me: education.”

After going back to school to receive a master’s degree, Potts worked as a principal for a number of years and then a school consultant in the Atlanta area before deciding to move to Tennessee.

She was familiar with Coffee County after many years visiting family in nearby Cannon County.  She found her way to New Union in 2017 which she considers the “answer to my dreams.”

“I’ve been coming here visiting my grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles in the summer and my mom and dad had moved up here,” Potts recalled. “It worked out beautifully and it’s my dream job.”

Potts says that the smaller student population, roughly 300 to 350 kids, allows her to know all of the students by name, a welcome change from her time in much larger schools in Georgia.

She also likes being able to build connections with everyone who works at the school as well.

“We’re a small enough school with a small enough staff so that we can be like a family,” she said. “We make decisions together, and they’ve taught me so much, and a lot of times I will not act on something until I have spoken with my leadership team.”

The teachers at New Union, according to Potts, are the hardest working people in the world and care about the students a lot. She also says they have a lot of fun.

“Some things just as a principal you have to do, but other things they’ve just gone crazy,” she explained with a smile. “Our school wouldn’t be what it is. You just let them loose, and they do very wonderful things.”

Potts says that the staff at New Union enjoys having celebrations and dress-up days and has even gotten her out of her comfort zone on occasion.

“I’m not a big fan of costumes and pajama days and things like that, but they have gotten me to do some things that I never thought I would do,” she said. “I had to come out and we had an 80s day and assembly, and I came out and danced wearing 80s garb and things like that. It’s always a lot of fun. We celebrate quite a bit.”

Despite all of the fun, Potts noted that her staff also steps up when needed to make sure things get done.

She explained how the COVID-19 pandemic started the same year as New Union was planning on adding a new wing to the school building. The teachers and staff worked together to clean out their classrooms and make sure the kids got their report cards.

When the construction was delayed due to the pandemic and left the school without a kitchen, the cafeteria manager turned what is now the principal’s office into a makeshift kitchen to ensure that the students had warm meals when they did come to school.

Staff also brought food to the nearby middle school to use some of their kitchen appliances.

“Just that kind of innovation and dedication and the ‘We’re not going to let this impact us.” It’s times like that that really show you what people can do,” said Potts.

As far as favorite moments and memories go, besides the ones she’s shared with the school staff, Potts says that they involve the students and how she’s gotten to see them grow all the way from Pre-K to fifth grade.

“That is incredibly special because I was in a very fast-growing district in Georgia and so they were opening new schools all of the time, so I never got to stay any place more than four years, so that’s just been wonderful,” she explained.

Though she says she knows that she’ll miss being at the school every day, a sense of readiness and a desire to spend more time with her grandchildren led Potts to make the decision to retire.

“In 2017 there were no grandchildren on the horizon, and then my daughter really shocked me and had twin boys three years ago, almost four,” she said. “They live in the U.K. so I’d really love to spend more time and travel and just do some things now that I can.”

Potts noted that many people from the New Union parents to the community members and central office staff to School Board members, particularly Freda K. Jones, have been “wonderful” and take pride in Coffee County Schools.

She said that she’s very appreciative of how everyone welcomed her, a total stranger, to Coffee County.

“It’s just been the best way I can imagine to wrap up my career.”