It’s official
– Deborah Flores will start as Gilroy’s next superintendent July
1. Whether she will be well rested when she starts is up to the
Lucia Mar Unified School District board of education.
Gilroy – It’s official – Deborah Flores will start as Gilroy’s next superintendent July 1. Whether she will be well rested when she starts is up to the Lucia Mar Unified School District board of education.
The Lucia Mar board will meet Tuesday to consider the early resignation of Flores, their current superintendent, so she can take two weeks of vacation before she starts her four-year contract in the Gilroy Unified School District. Her past commitment and dedication to the Lucia Mar district will likely convince board members to let her go, Flores said.
“I think they’ll be willing to let me go a week or two earlier whether they have the interim (superintendent hired) or not,” she said.
Flores has already given her current board the 60-day notice of resignation required in her contract – allowing her to start in Gilroy July 17. However, she also has 15 vacation days remaining at her current job. This means she could officially begin in Gilroy July 1, as stipulated in her contract with the board. However, this would require her to go directly from one job to the other – an unattractive prospect, Flores said.
“The reality is that I want to use those vacation days as vacation days,” she said. To get some free time, Flores wants the Lucia Mar board to let her quit June 30.
Districts typically like to keep their current superintendent on board until they can hire an interim superintendent to see them through the ensuing search process for a new superintendent.
Yet Flores believes her current board will accept her early resignation because she put in extra work for the district before she was hired.
In 2004, while she was still the superintendent for the Santa Barbara high school and elementary school districts, she used vacation days to work for free in Lucia Mar before her start date.
Flores is also doing double duty during this transition. She spent May 18, the day after she was hired, conducting interviews free of charge for new elementary school principals.
She also used a vacation day to finish the interview process Wednesday and will use another day to interview candidates June 1 for two assistant superintendent positions.
“There’s a lot of work to be done already,” she said.
