E. Wayne Harris
Superintendent of Roanoke City Public Schools (1993-present), E. Wayne Harris has been in public education since getting his B.L. degree in 1968 at Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, following graduation, in 1964, from George Washington Carver High School in Salem, Virginia. In high school, Wayne was Student Council Vice President, Senior Class Treasurer, Basketball Team Captain, and lettered four years in Varsity football and basketball. He was also distinguished by the honor of the B’nai B’rith Award.
Harris received an M.A. degree from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1971, and completed 45 hours in Post Masters Graduate Study and that institution, VPI & SU, George Mason University , and the University of Virginia from 1972-88. In 1991 he received a Masters of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where in March of 1995 he received a Ph.D. in Education.
Before returning to the Roanoke Valley, Wayne was with the Fairfax County Public Schools(Virginia), beginning in 1968 as a biology teacher and athletic coach. After two years, he was named Assistant Principal of J.G. Whittier Intermediate School and 1978-80 found him Principal of Luther Jackson Intermediate School. From ‘80-82, he was Administrative Assistant to the Division Superintendent, moving for the next eight years to Area II Superintendent. 1991 found Dr. Harris serving a Superintendent’s Internship with the Montgomery County Schools in Maryland. The following year he was Area Superintendent for the Fairfax County Public Schools; he was that year (1993) named Superintendent of Roanoke City Public Schools.
Dr. Harris is the author or co-author of seven articles dealing with various educational focuses: library media use, minority students’ achievement, and substance abuse, all printed in various educational journals over the span of a decade.
Wayne was named Phi Delta Kappa Educator of the Year, 1981, followed by seven more major awards, including in 1985 the Distinguished National Library Award for School Administrator of the Year and in 1988 the Citizen of the Year Award conferred by the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. He is also a family man, Married to Carolyn McAllister Harris; they have three sons.
Dr. Harris has attended instructional/leadership seminars from Atlanta to Boston, his most recent was “Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement Training” taught in Roanoke by Dr. Bill Sesow of the University of Nebraska. Harris holds membership in five school administrators’ associations and serves on the Advisory Board of both Harvard Graduate School of Education and Teachers College of Columbia University, and serves on five other Boards, three in the Roanoke Valley.
In recognition of his outstanding career achievements, E. Wayne Harris was among the charter members inducted into the Salem Alumni Hall of Fame established by the Salem Educational Foundation and Alumni Association in 1996.
