Jessica Knight

​Jessica Sarah Knight is an experienced education professional who has served in a variety of education related capacities at the private, federal and classroom levels. Most recently she served at the Martin Pear Jewish Community Center as the Director of Early Childhood Education and served at Southwest Human Development as Program Manager for Quality Initiatives and Grants Management supporting child development managers and teachers in curriculum instruction and teacher training as well as supported planning and development of monitoring of program quality initiatives. 

Previously she worked at Chanen Preschool as a Pre-Kindergarten teacher with hands-on experience in planning and conducting classroom instructional curriculum and activities for children to encourage development of their academic, social, emotional, physical, intellectual, language and communication skills.  Before teaching at Chanen she recently worked as an Interim Support Person for Fairfax County Public Schools, and prior to that as an early childhood co-teacher at the Tampa Jewish Community Center.  

She has served as a program manager and consultant for ICF International and Education Services Inc., managing a variety of projects and budgets related to national and state level Office of Head Start initiatives while gaining analytical and logistical planning experience for federal programs, initiatives, and national level conferences.  

She has an extensive background in education stemming from her beginnings as a certified ESL teacher for children and adults, having served in classrooms in the United States, Guatemala, Mexico and Japan to include serving as a U.S. Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DODDS) teacher.  She has served in the U.S. Department of Education as a program manager for evaluation and grant review processes and as an associate manager for two Presidential Initiative Comprehensive grant competitions as well as at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Office of Head Start.  

A former elementary school teacher, Ms. Knight holds a M.S. in Community Services from Michigan State University and a B.A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences from Colorado College, where she majored in multicultural classroom education.

Jessica has been married to Ray for almost 21 years and they have 4 children, Zen (16), Rain (15), Zia/Rey (9 year old twins). She is originally from Chimayo, New Mexico and has lived in many places, moving 9 times as her husband is in the Marine Corps. She is so excited about this opportunity and looks forward to getting to know our children, families and community. 

Jessica can be reached via email at jknight@templechai.com.

---