YES Prep at Northbrook Middle School names new program director

Texas native Jeremy Jones has been named new director of the YES Prep at Northbrook Middle School program. Northbrook Middle School is a district-charter collaboration site for the SKY Partnership that includes the YES Prep program option for middle school students.

Mr. Jones has served 11 years in education including roles as a Teach for America instructor, charter principal, YES Prep math teacher and founding director of the YES Prep Talent team, and an administrator with the Achievement School District in Tennessee, which has a goal of moving lowest performing schools to the top quarter academically by 2018.     

A graduate of Georgetown High School in Georgetown, Texas, Mr. Jones earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics in 2004 from Texas A&M University in College Station.

A Teach for America recruit, he taught special education math for a year at Stella Worley Junior High in Westwego, La., a Westbank New Orleans campus, before joining YES Prep and teaching math for three years at the North Central Campus, a middle school in Houston. He also served three years as the founding director of YES Prep’s Recruitment/Selection division.

Elsewhere, he served one year as an elementary principal at Los Suenos Academy in San Jose, Calif., an elementary Rocket Ship charter school. He worked two years with the Tennessee Achievement School District.     

Director Jones is excited to be back in Texas and working with the YES Prep and SBISD partnership.

“Northbrook Middle School is a unique opportunity to influence the future of 1,100 students in this whole building, not just in YES Prep,” he says. “The stakes are really high for all of our kids. They need to view their middle school years as the start of a seven-year commitment, not just three years.”

At Northbrook Middle, he will work closely with Northbrook Middle Principal Valerie Johnson. The two campus leaders have already made a commitment to higher combined performance.

“We have an ambitious goal to be ranked among the top 10 schools in Texas over the next four years. We aren’t underestimating the amount of work to get there, or the work that will needed by all of our teams to get there. But I believe that this goal is possible,” he says.

The leadership teams, faculties and staffs at YES Prep Northbrook and Northbrook Middle are committed to working together to assure that every student is equipped with both the academic and life skills to meet the district’s key goal known as Spring Branch T-2-4.

The T-2-4 goal calls for all our students to successfully complete some form of higher education after graduation – military training, technical certification, two-year or four-year college degree.

Outside YES Prep, Mr. Jones believes in high personal performance goals, too. He has run marathons in a variety of locations, including Nashville, Tenn.

Director Jones replaces the former director, Cendie Stanford, who retired earlier this year.