Gilroy
– The shuffling continues at the school district as two top
administrators make plans to leave Gilroy.
Gilroy – The shuffling continues at the school district as two top administrators make plans to leave Gilroy.
Martha Martinez, Gilroy Unified School District categorical administrator, will head to San Jose to take a job at the county education office Thursday. Marcia Brown, director of student services, also has notified the district that she will be leaving, though she will be retiring and will not depart until the end of August.
Martinez will take up the post as Director of Categorical and Special Projects with the Santa Clara County Office of Education. She grew up in Gilroy – though she was absent intermittently because her father served in the military – and graduated from Gilroy High School in the late 1960s. She has worked for the Gilroy Unified School District since 1970 and continuously since 1976, serving as a paraprofessional, first- and fourth-grade teacher, principal at El Roble Elementary School, and administrator for five years. Her latest position at the district office put her in charge of applying for and administering state and federal funds.
“It’s a real mixed bag,” she said of leaving. “I’m really excited about my new position. On the other hand, I’ve been here forever.”
Martinez plans to continue living in Gilroy despite her change in employment.
Brown has been the district’s point-person for all matters on special education and accelerated curricula for the past three years.
“It has been very challenging,” she said of her time with the school district. “This particular position is so large and yet the support staff is very small. It’s been very difficult to do all the things I would have liked to been able to do. There just wasn’t enough hours in the day, or days in the week, or weeks in the year.”
When Brown retires in August, she will move to Oregon, where she and her husband own a house.
She also hopes to do consulting work, especially in positions where her work will directly impact children.
She will be “getting back to more child-centric things rather than administrative-centric things,” she said. “I’ll be getting back to the reasons that I got into education in the first place.”
Both Martinez and Brown’s jobs are being advertised and the district hopes to fill Martinez’s position soon, said Darrel Taylor, interim superintendent.
The absences come during a time of restructuring for the district, with the assistant superintendent of educational services position vacant, the assistant superintendent of human resources position to open June 30 and a new director of curriculum and instruction on board full time as of Tuesday.
The board of trustees is also busy conducting the second round of interviews to fill the position of superintendent. They will have hosted the three remaining candidates by Thursday and will make their decision as to the preferred candidate that afternoon. They will announce the new hire May 17.
While the district will wait for the new superintendent to hire for the two assistant superintendent positions, Martinez and Brown’s positions will be filled as time permits, said Taylor
“Hopefully we’ll be ready to fill or we’ll be a long ways down the road to filling them by the time the next superintendent will be here.”
