Neonta Williams
From Ballotpedia
Neonta Williams is a member of the Birmingham City Schools in Alabama, representing District 2. She assumed office on October 26, 2021. Her current term ends in 2029.
Williams ran for re-election to the Birmingham City Schools to represent District 2 in Alabama. She won in the general runoff election on October 7, 2025.
Williams completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Neonta Williams was born in Gadsden, Alabama. She served in the U.S. Army from 2000 to 2004. She earned a bachelor's degree from Miles College in 2000 and a graduate degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham in 2011. Her career experience includes working as an education advocate. She has been affiliated with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.[1]
Elections
2025
See also: Birmingham City Schools, Alabama, elections (2025)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Birmingham City Schools District 2
Incumbent Neonta Williams defeated Terri Michal in the general runoff election for Birmingham City Schools District 2 on October 7, 2025.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Neonta Williams (Nonpartisan)  | 53.4 | 226 |
 | Terri Michal (Nonpartisan) | 46.6 | 197 | |
| Total votes: 423 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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General election
General election for Birmingham City Schools District 2
Terri Michal and incumbent Neonta Williams advanced to a runoff. They defeated Anthony Jones in the general election for Birmingham City Schools District 2 on August 26, 2025.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Terri Michal (Nonpartisan) | 48.0 | 1,177 |
| ✔ | | Neonta Williams (Nonpartisan) | 26.2 | 642 |
 | Anthony Jones (Nonpartisan) | 25.8 | 631 | |
| Total votes: 2,450 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Williams in this election.
2021
See also: Birmingham City Schools, Alabama, elections (2021)
General election
General election for Birmingham City Schools District 2
Neonta Williams defeated incumbent Terri Michal in the general election for Birmingham City Schools District 2 on August 24, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Neonta Williams (Nonpartisan) | 56.2 | 2,066 |
| Terri Michal (Nonpartisan) | 43.8 | 1,608 | |
| Total votes: 3,674 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign themes
2025
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Neonta Williams completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Williams' responses.
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Neonta Williams is a veteran, advocate, and nonprofit leader committed to transforming education for Black families in Alabama. As founder and executive director of Black Alabamians for Education (BA4E), she equips parents with the tools and information to access high-quality K–12 opportunities. Since 2021, she has represented District 2 on the Birmingham Board of Education, championing Parents, Policy, and Partnerships to strengthen family engagement, advance equity-focused policies, and expand opportunities for students. Under her leadership, the district has seen gains in reading scores, early literacy access, teacher support, and transparency with parents. A U.S. Army veteran, Williams holds a Bachelor of Social Work from Miles College and a Master of Public Administration from UAB. Her professional background spans counseling, public health, and leadership roles with United Way of Central Alabama and the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Guided by an unwavering belief in the brilliance of every child, she continues to fight for progress in every classroom.
- Parents – ensuring families are informed, engaged, and empowered partners in education
- Policy – advancing equity-driven, student-centered policies that improve academic achievement and accountability
- Partnerships – building strong collaborations with community, business, and education stakeholders to expand opportunities and resources for every child in every classroom.
Parental engagement; College & Career Readiness, Workforce Development
My family members. My entire extended family is very driven, goal oriented, brutally honest and rooted in love.
An effective school board member must embody a commitment to student success above all else, ensuring every decision prioritizes the academic, social, and emotional growth of children. Integrity and transparency are essential for building trust with families, educators, and the community, while a strong commitment to equity ensures that every student—regardless of background—has access to high-quality resources and opportunities. Collaborative leadership is key, requiring respectful partnership with fellow board members, administrators, teachers, and parents to develop solutions that move the district forward. Fiscal responsibility is vital to maximize resources for classrooms and sustain long-term improvements. Vision and strategic thinking guide the board’s focus toward policies that create measurable and lasting impact, while accountability ensures the district, its leaders, and board members themselves deliver results. Advocacy for teachers and staff recognizes that educators are the foundation of student success, deserving of strong support and professional respect. Valuing diverse voices and ensuring all stakeholders are heard enriches decision-making and strengthens community ties. Finally, a dedication to lifelong learning allows board members to remain informed about educational trends, laws, and best practices—ensuring they lead with knowledge, foresight, and purpose. These principles together form the foundation of effective, ethical, and student-centered governance.
An elected official’s core responsibility is to represent the community with integrity, ensuring policies, budgets, and decisions prioritize the public’s best interest. This includes fostering transparency, accountability, and collaboration while setting strategic goals that create lasting, positive impact.
That I am advocate and lived a life that pleased and honored God along with the people that I encounter.
The death of my Grandfather; it shaped my personal value on being able to retire. I was 15 years old
Cleaning a Dentist office with my Granny
Bible. It literally is the best book that I have read. The instruction, insight and encouragement is like no other!
Essentially the same, to represent the community with integrity, ensuring policies, budgets, and decisions prioritize the public’s best interest. This includes fostering transparency, accountability, and collaboration while setting strategic goals that create lasting, positive impact.
My constituents are the families who elected me to serve, the community in which I live; the businesses and benefactors of students who graduate from high school prepared to enter into a phase of economic independence.
As I currently do, engaging with, listening to and remaining available to hear the concerns, interests and needs of the students , faculty, staff and community that I serve. In remaining aware, I am able to elevate their concerns through governance and in some instances the supporting policy.
Relationship building is monumental to the success of a public servant. I will continue to work with the faith based community, non profit organizations with specific interests in k12 education, work force development, city and county government and neighborhood associations,
Whereby the knowledge that teachers have can be translated to equip students to become critical thinkers and problem solvers.
"Good teaching" will be measured by exams, not necessarily completely standardized exams. I would support advanced teaching approaches but affording educators more autonomy with curriculum design and implementation; affording more project based external classroom learning opportunities.
"Good teaching" will be measured by exams, not necessarily completely standardized exams. I would support advanced teaching approaches but affording educators more autonomy with curriculum design and implementation; affording more project based external classroom learning opportunities.
I would support a statewide lottery. Additionally, I would continue to advocate for 100% funded student weighted funding formula. Essentially, this approach would afford districts with students who hold additional learning needs or impoverished households to receive additional supports to circumvent learning gaps based upon resources.
Most importantly, my value of human life; the fact that every student and adult in our schools deserve to be in a safe, secure and nurturing environment.
By hiring additional staff for the sole purpose of supporting the mental health needs of students/staff and faculty. This would also inlcude Social workers and supports for family therapy of employees of the district.
I would like to create/implement a policy that raises accountability around culture/climate and parental engagement.
An environment where students are critically thinking, reading phonetically, solving math problems, all while being challenged by they teachers, peers and parents that ultimately leads to them becoming economically independently adults.
I own a non-profit organization that specializes in parental engagement. I host Parent Empowerment Sessions to train and teach parents how to be actively engaged and involved in their child(ren) education. I release monthly newsletters and provide a personal website designed to provide parents and community members with information to maintain transparency and engagement.
Personally, I believe that right treatment of our current employees is the best recruitment tool. Next, we could partner with our statewide higher ed institutions to create internship to hire initiatives. Additionally, I believe that we should host Annual Teacher of the Year recruitment fairs from districts across Alabama and neighboring states to hire the best of the best. Finally, creating an incentive to hire retired educators to return the classrooms.
It is a tool that should be proper utilizes by staff and students. Maintaining a health, safe balance of AI, the proper use and innovation of it can cause students to explore personal and future professional interest. We should want to prepare our students for world class exposure and AI is a tool that can support such.
In general being "Thanked" for taking the time to listen to, be present and support voters in their interest and need.
Fighting for our hourly employees to be moved from $7-8 an hour to a living wage of $15 per hour. This was an incredible moment and life changing for employees of Birmingham City Schools
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2021
Neonta Williams did not complete Ballotpedia's 2021 Candidate Connection survey.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
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Candidate Birmingham City Schools District 2 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on August 20, 2025
