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Dougherty schools advocate dies at age 52

• An Albany school advocate is believed to have died from natural causes, authorities say.

Carlton Fletcher

ALBANY — Lynn Borders, the director of the school advocacy group Communities in Schools, was found dead in her home Monday, authorities say.

Borders, 52, is believed to have died of natural causes, Dougherty County Coroner Emma Quimbley said Tuesday.

Communities in Schools Board Chair Greg Edwards called Borders’ death a “great shock,” and said that her death is a blow to the organization.

“The organization is going to have to regroup,” Edwards said. “We’re going to keep the programs that she worked so tirelessly for active and keep this organization alive.”

According to police reports filed with the Albany Police Department, Borders’ son, Marc Layer, went to her home at the 1700 block of Gail Avenue Monday after he couldn’t reach her by phone.

Layer found her lying in a hallway and she was unresponsive, the report says.

Quimbley said that it appears that Borders died of complications from existing medical conditions.

In the report, police found a notebook that Borders had reportedly been keeping to log her pain. The last entry was Saturday, when she noted pain in her arm and chest, but she wrote that it wasn’t severe.

Established in 1995, Communities in Schools is a student advocacy group that promotes student achievement in the Dougherty County School System. As it’s director, Borders oversaw the group’s merger with the Albany/Dougherty Community Partnership for Education last year and continued the group’s focus on lowering the area’s dropout rate.

In addition to the notebook, police found a small sandwich bag containing a substance that investigators believe to be marijuana. Quimbley said that there was no evidence that marijuana contributed to her death.

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