The district hired two men as elementary school principals,
evening out the administrative gender ratio.
Gilroy – The district hired two men as elementary school principals, evening out the administrative gender ratio.
The Gilroy Unified School District board of trustees chose James Dent to head Eliot Elementary School and Richard Rodriguez to lead Luigi Aprea Elementary School during a board meeting Thursday night.
Dent and Rodriguez are the second and third men consecutively hired as principals of elementary schools. The number of male and female elementary school heads in the district is now even at four apiece.
Dent is the assistant principal at Ann Soldo Elementary School in the nearby Pajaro Valley Unified School District. Previous to his three years in this position, Dent spent eight years teaching math and science in California schools. He also taught English as a second language for two years in Costa Rica and Colombia.
The shift to Gilroy – taking over for Diane Elia at Eliot – represented a career move for the California-raised Dent, who has wanted to be a principal since about his fifth year in teaching.
“I felt I was ready to take the next step,” he said.
The 37-year-old speaks Spanish and oversaw a significant increase on state standardized tests at Ann Soldo. Eliot – which has a 93-percent Hispanic population – slipped backward on state standardized test performance last year.
That his strengths match up well with Eliot’s weaknesses is not a coincidence, Dent said. When given a choice between the two open positions, he chose to be principal of Eliot.
“It’s quite similar to the school in Watsonville that I’m working at,” he said. As a new principal, “I thought it would probably be better for me to bring those (learned) skills to a similar school.”
Rodriguez is the principal at Loma Prieta Elementary and C. T. English Middle schools in the Loma Prieta Joint Union Elementary School District in Los Gatos. He has three years experience as a principal and another three years as vice principal in California schools.
Rodriguez – taking over for Maria Wetzel – will have pressure to keep test scores high at Luigi Aprea, the only school in the district to exceed the state goal of 800 on the yearly state standardized test last year.
Neither Rodriguez nor Linda Piceno, assistant superintendent of human resources, could be reached for comment by press time.
