Fingerprints: Saundra “The Fireman” Windom

Fingerprints celebrates the APS employees whose dedication has left a lasting mark on countless lives, shaping students, strengthening schools, and inspiring communities across Atlanta. This series honors the educators, leaders, and support professionals whose influence is evident everywhere, not just within the institution they’ve served, but in the countless lives they’ve touched along the way.

Through personal stories, career milestones, and reflections on their journey, this series honors the lasting impact these employees have made and celebrates the legacy they leave for future generations of Atlanta’s students.

Decades after Dr. Alonzo A. Crim shook her hand as a high school graduate in California, Saundra Henderson Windom works within the halls of the Atlanta Public Schools building that now bears his name. For a woman known as “The Fireman,” whose life began with obscurity, whose journey spanned continents and cultures, and whose path was shaped by unexpected reunions and second chances, 30-plus years of service to Atlanta Public Schools feels less like her destiny.

The retired teacher and school principal continues to support APS as an executive support specialist, where she utilizes her years of experience in supporting students, families, school leaders, and teachers with a level of personal care that leaves a lasting impression on everyone she helps.

 “She’s one of those people that really just relates to everybody,” APS executive support specialist David York said. “She’s great to work with. She is very responsive to parents and very empathetic in understanding the kinds of problems and issues that come to the central office. You can hear her sometimes over there (on the phone), and she’s just so caring. I think she has a little extra edge with caring for the people who call in.”

Saundra’s impact on APS is just another chapter in a much larger, unbelievable story of discovery, faith, and chance.

She opens her story, “Gifts from my two mothers: One Korean, one Black,” a first-person essay published in The Los Angeles Times, saying, “Family legend has it that I was found tied to a tree.”

All she remembers, before she was adopted, was being at the sea sucking sea snails and eating grasshoppers. There was a boy who helped her survive, and a lady with red lipstick.

She shares the details of her fragmented memories from before she was adopted, her experiences of growing up as a mixed-race child in America, her journey to discovering who she was, and miraculously finding connections to her past years later.

In 2018, a woman reached out to Saundra explaining she was her top match in a DNA analysis, and that began a journey down a rabbit hole that led to an unexpected reunion where she learns about the mother she was separated from years ago, whose face she could only remember by the color of her red lipstick.

“Her story shows up in one key description, non-judgmental,” former APS principal David White said. “She’s very understanding that we all come from different situations and that we are all going through something.”

Every twist and turn in Saundra’s story ultimately led her to APS, and her history has left its mark on multiple generations of APS students and families.

Windom’s journey through APS began in 1992 as a teacher at Usher Middle School, but her connection to the school district goes back even further.

At her high school graduation from Centennial High School in Compton, California, Dr. Alonzo A. Crim shook her hand as she crossed the stage in 1971. After graduating from Stanford University and teaching in Los Angeles, California, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Houston, Texas, they crossed paths again when she came to Atlanta.

When the state of Georgia told her she didn’t qualify to be a teacher, it was Dr. Crim who encouraged her to go to the State Department to get her credentials while she worked as a training director for an insurance company. Eight years later, and with all the credentials she needed to teach in Georgia, Windom became a Spanish teacher and spent 13 years at Usher Middle School.

While at Usher, she won the 1995-1996 Teacher of the Year for Middle School award. She started an intramural basketball program and used old John Wooden basketball tapes to coach her students. Her team went from worst to first after a year under coach Windom.

Later in life, Windom discovered another family connection through APS. She discovered she had an aunt, Barbara Woolfolk, working at Frederick Douglass High School while she was teaching future Douglass students at Usher Middle School. They found each other learning they were close family. Had they met earlier, Windom would have had an opportunity to meet the lady with the red lipstick, her mother, Hyon Ok Choi Woolfolk, aka “Sandy,” before she died. Windom, coincidentally, is also known as “Sandy.”

She then moved on to Therrell High School (2004-2010), where her reputation as a fixer earned her the nickname “The Engine”. She would assist schools in meeting their accreditation standards, solve issues with families, and put out any other theoretical fires that would pop up. She eventually became the school’s assistant principal before being chosen to be the principal at the Crim Open Campus Alternative High School in 2010.

At the time, Crim Open Campus had a reputation for being a “dump school.”

“When kids went to jail, girls got pregnant or whatever, a lot of times those students dropped out,” Windom said. “But if they did go to school, it would be to Crim or Hank Aaron, so I had a heart for what was happening and asked, ‘What do you do to help rehabilitate or make sure these kids get a second or third chance?’”

But when Saundra arrived, she became an advocate for the school and began turning things around academically and culturally on the campus. She had a dynamic team of educators and leaders who laid out their strategies and goals for improving the lives of students at Crim.

“We had a triage approach like when you go to emergency or urgent care,” she said. “We wanted the students to have a face-to-face sit down before they entered Crim to talk about what has happened in their life to get them to this point. We wanted them to acknowledge what was happening in their lives, and then we set a plan.”

“We just wanted to make kids feel good about themselves and let them know nobody is perfect,” she added. “We all have fallen short in some kind of way in our lives, and you deserve to have a second, sometimes third chance, but you’ve got to do your part.”

RELATED STORY: Crim Open Campus and Burgess-Peterson Academy Collaborate for Generation-to-Generation Event

The school received a $3.2 million Race to the Top grant from the federal government, and that helped bring new programs and resources to the campus. The school had a daycare for students with children. There was a night school, an on-campus health clinic, a mentorship program, and the Career, Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) programs for students. APS also helped the school secure MARTA tokens to make commuting to school easier.

In 2013, the National Alternative Education Association visited the school as it was recognized as an exemplary model of an alternative school for the state of Georgia and for the nation.

“We were putting a good spotlight on our school,” Windom said. “Our staff knew it was real when other schools from all over the country wanted to come and see us because we became a model school based on the what the state and federal government had established as far as what we were doing and everything that we had within a school plan.”

“We had done it, and we had the physical evidence and student data to show,” she added.

Saundra also developed close relationships with her students, and her signature level of care has made her an unforgettable experience for all who have worked with her.

“She cared about the children at that school just to the nth degree,” White said. “She would advocate for them in our principal’s meetings. She was always dogmatic about reminding the group that the school exists and that their needs are similar in some ways to what a traditional high school might get, but also different. She would remind and insist in ways that were clear, but also kind and professional.”

Just above her work phone and taped just above eye level along the wall of her workspace is a reminder of how Windom’s extra care helped an APS student reach one of his goals.

Justin Bonner was one of the students at Crim who benefited from Saundra’s persistent advocacy. Justin had already faced many personal challenges in his life before meeting Saundra, including a fight with cancer, which also took a leg from him.

The first time they met, he cursed Saundra out on his way to the stairwell. Despite the contentious first interaction, Saundra’s first concern was finding someone to help operate the lift on campus to make getting around the school easier for Bonner.

Bonner’s illness didn’t make things easy for him, but he was determined to complete his education. His cancer flared up again during his 11^th grade year, and he missed most of the school year, but he still wanted to achieve his goal of being the first in his family to graduate.

It took a lot of work and a few extensions, but he reached his goal and graduated with the class of 2012, two weeks before he died.

The photo from his graduation, where Windom is presenting Bonner with the initial Resilient Eagle Award, is just one of the memorable moments she still carries with her from being principal at Crim Open Campus.

Windom retired in 2014 after 23 years in APS, but the district wasn’t done with her just yet.

“When I retired, the Teacher Retirement System of Georgia says you cannot work for 30 days,” she said. “On the 31^st day, David White called me and asked if I would come back and work part time to mentor and support other principals.”

And that’s what she’s been doing ever since, putting out fires.

White was a principal at E. Rivers Elementary School for four years before he was placed in a supervisory role as an executive director during a transition period for APS. Having limited experience going into a role that now supervised 17 schools, including middle and high schools, with nine interim principals, White called on more experienced leaders to help him and his staff navigate through this time.

“Saundra Windom had just retired, and I had huge respect for her,” he said. “Her reputation was beyond reproach. I remember her connecting families to what we now call wrap around services, but before we called them wrap around services. She would get families in touch with social workers, or someone to assist with finding meals or resources in the community for housing. There were children and families who were better resourced because of conversations with Saundra. There were high school students who were unsure of a path forward regarding credits that ended up better understanding the credits system and ended up graduating because of her. I think that specifically came from her experience at Crim, because as an alternative school principal, that was her bread and butter helping kids who thought they no longer really had a path to graduation find a way to finish.”

In a new support role, just a month after retiring, Windom was connecting with families and earning another nickname.

“She was on the phone all day taking calls from constituents whose kid had an issue in their school or from a community member who had a problem with some policy,” White said. “She was ‘The Fireman,’ putting out fires all day long, and she had a really great way of leveraging her experiences and the things that she had come to know in a very kind, compassionate way.”

A dozen years later, she remains the calming voice that settles frustrated parents, advises principals, and mediates a myriad of situations before they escalate. Throughout her career, APS has been its own melody in the orchestra of her life.

Saundra Windom is a proud mother and grandmother. Her niece Dr. Carina Windom, who also has a background in teaching for APS, is the Equity director for the school district.

“APS is my second home,” she said. “My staff were my family. They have definitely been a support system for me and allowed me to grow.”