Marietta City Schools superintendent Dr. Emily Lembeck is the winner of the Georgia School Superintendents Association's 2012 Superintendent of the Year Award.  Samuel King, GSSA president, made the announcement during the December 2 Awards Luncheon at the annual GSSA/GSBA Winter Conference at the Waverly Hotel in Cobb County.  Dr. Lembeck, who has led the Marietta City Schools since 2005, was nominated by her board and selected from over twenty nominees.

In his remarks, Dr. King noted that Lembeck was a member of the GSSA Board of Directors, a past chair of the Metro RESA Board of Control, and was recently elected to represent Georgia as a member of the Governing Board of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA).

King shared the praise offered by the members of the MCS Board of Education in which they credited Dr. Lembeck with garnering state and national recognition of the school system and for winning awards from many different organizations.  The also credited her with achieving excellent student achievement results with a highly diverse student population, including a 16-percent increase in the number of elementary students exceeding standards on state tests and an 11 percent increase in the high school graduation rate.

Julie Harrelson of Classworks, Inc., the official GSSA sponsor of the Superintendent of the Year program, presented the award to Dr. Lembeck.  In addition, she will receive a ring commemorating the honor, her expenses paid to the National Conference on Education where a breakfast will be held in her honor, and will be given $1,000 to present as a scholarship to a 2012 Marietta High School graduate.  Lembeck will be Georgia's representative in the National Superintendent of the Year program.