Natasha Rachell leads instructional technology for Atlanta Public Schools, a district serving around 50,000 students across more than 80 campuses.

Her team has been as large as 39 people.

Today, there are 13.

In this episode of Strategic Syncing, Natasha joins James Symons to talk about what it means to keep creating meaningful impact with fewer people, how leadership changes when resources shrink, and why she believes the current screen time debate may be focusing on the wrong thing.

Atlanta Public Schools is considering limits around student screen use, including minute limits for younger students and percentage-based limits for older students.

Natasha understands the reasoning.

But she questions whether “screen time” is too broad a category to be useful.

A student creating a video, collaborating with classmates, building a portfolio or demonstrating learning through technology is not having the same experience as a child scrolling alone for hours.

Yet both are often counted the same way.

Natasha also shares how her twin brother’s traumatic brain injury changed the way she thinks about accessibility, empathy and leadership.

That experience gave her a different understanding of how technology can support students with different needs and why accessibility has to be considered from more than just a physical perspective.

The conversation also explores what Natasha loves most about leadership: helping people grow.

She talks about mentoring, encouraging her team to pursue new opportunities, and why she wants people to become better even if that growth eventually takes them somewhere else.

And when James asks what her own team would tell her to improve, Natasha’s answer is immediate: stop coming up with so many ideas.

This episode is a conversation about EdTech, screen time, accessibility, leadership and how to keep moving forward when both people and resources are stretched.