The founder of Richmond County's magnet school program is being honored today in Atlanta with the first Woodruff Arts Center Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the late 1970s, Beverly Barnhart helped establish C.T. Walker Traditional Magnet, A.R. Johnson Health Science and Engineering Magnet and John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet, where she served as the nationally recognized school's first principal for 19 years.

"After you've given your career to something you love and somebody says 'I want to present you with a lifetime achievement award,' it's special," Mrs. Barnhart said Friday, as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Growing up in rural Indiana, she was raised around the arts, but her "passion" has been educating children, she said.

"I know what they need," the retired educator said, and that is firm discipline, strong teachers and a well-rounded education to include the arts. "If my students heard I was crying, they wouldn't believe it."

She retold stories of students she disciplined harshly, who later returned to thank her. Mrs. Barnhart called one student's mother every few minutes until the mother eventually spoke with Mrs. Barnhart. The principal counseled the mother about disciplining her son and urged her to take his car keys. If not, she would do it herself.

"He was angry with me I would say for a couple of years, but he graduated," she said.

But the arts are what have set Davidson apart, Mrs. Barnhart said. The skills learned through the arts make better students, and the arts teach students to "practice for perfection."

"Arts is the one way to bring about proven test scores," she said.

Mrs. Barnhart's accomplishments are being recognized during the Making the Arts Work in Education Symposium.

"It's not the magnet schools for math and science at the top of the heap," said Joe Bankoff, Woodruff's president and chief executive officer. "It's the arts."

And Mrs. Barnhart "blazed the trail" for infusing arts into the classroom , Mr. Bankoff said. It was her insight, persistence and discipline that established Davidson as a template for other s to follow, he said.