Southern California school district board votes unanimously to
hire Edwin Diaz
Gilroy – The city’s top school official has been hired to serve as superintendent of the Pasadena Unified School District.
Tuesday night, the Southern California school district’s board of education voted unanimously to hire Gilroy schools Superintendent Edwin Diaz. The move came one day after a delegation of board and city leaders visited the Garlic Capital to interview his colleagues.
“I was moved close to tears a couple times in hearing stories about him,” said PUSD board President Peter Soelter. “We were pleased to see he grappled with difficult budget decisions, his accountability, the 25-year facilities master plan. Just all-around, he comes with every accomplishment a school district could want.
“We’d love to have him as soon as possible,” Soelter added, “but we obviously understand how difficult this is for his current district, and we want to be respectful of the needs up there.”
Diaz will spend coming days sorting out the details of his salary and start date. He suggested a March 1 departure, though he allowed for the possibility of spending 10 days in Pasadena before then and returning to Gilroy for a similar period of time after the official end of his tenure.
The back-and-forth shuttling could help sustain momentum on curriculum improvements and construction of new facilities as Gilroy Unified School District moves forward without Diaz, who has presided over the district for six years.
“There are some senior staff here that will continue to carry the ball,” Diaz said. “Also, we need an interim superintendent. My main concern is at the operational level – to make sure the school improvement and departmental improvement plans get implemented in a consistent manner. The intensity around that improvement needs to be retained and consistent throughout the year. Sometimes when you have transitions or changes like this, people can tend to drift for a while, which is what we want to avoid.”
The GUSD board of education will meet Jan. 4 to begin discussing the transition period. Board President Tom Bundros expects the hiring process for a new superintendent to last six months.
“He’ll be very much missed,” Bundros said of Diaz. “I personally have really enjoyed working with Edwin. I think he’s brought stability to the district and brought us from a very low-performing district to one that is average performing for California.”
For some, that’s an understatement. Most use the word “turmoil” to describe the state of affairs at GUSD when Diaz arrived in 2000. Student performance was poor and declining, parent involvement was low and there was genuine unrest among the staff. Diaz is credited for stabilizing the district and improving performance, in part by standardizing teaching methods.
He will face some of the same challenges in Pasadena, a school district more than double the size of GUSD. Pasadena has 21,000 students and 33 schools. The district’s enrollment is 55 percent Hispanic, 25 percent black and 15 percent white.
Pasadena school officials expect Diaz to establish stronger partnerships with local organizations such as the Tournament of Roses and local community colleges. The previous superintendent’s failure to accomplish that goal led to his ouster by the board.
“I think there’s been a great deal of satisfaction with academic improvements here,” he said. “But some of our board members didn’t think there was enough of a sense of partnership with the whole community. Last spring, the board decided not to extend the superintendent’s term … What we like about Edwin is that he seems to be able to find things for organizations to do. When he works in a partnership, it’s not just cursory. There’s a deep connection there.”
As examples, he cited Diaz’s work with an educational foundation to standardize instructional methods across the district, as well as a partnership with Gavilan Community College that allows students to get a high school diploma and an associate college degree in just five years.
“It’s clear to me,” Diaz said, “that in order to improve a school district, it has to be a community-wide endeavor. You can’t improve Pasadena Unified School District in isolation of the broader community. One of my initial steps will be to establish relationships with the city, city representatives, and community leaders.”
Diaz would not disclose the salary figures under discussion with Pasadena. He currently earns $175,000 annually. Soelter said the former Pasadena superintendent earned about $215,000.
