Biographical Sketch
My passion for school leadership has been cultivated over the last twenty-five years as the Principal of Mammoth Middle and High Schools, the Mammoth Unified School District (MUSD) Director of Equity and Innovation, MUSD Title III Coordinator of the English Learner Program, and a charter elementary school principal in Los Angeles Unified School District. I have dedicated my career to helping students achieve their goals, and to coaching and supporting school leaders with their growth and development. Having worked at large and small public school districts with diverse student populations, I have honed my skills in transformational leadership in building relationships, cultivating data-driven decision-making teams, empowering teaching leadership, establishing equitable systems, and being a good steward of financial and budget administration. I also believe the body of work of human resources is about transparency, finding and maintaining talent while supporting district goals and expectations.
As the Director of Equity and Innovation for MUSD, I collaborated each month with district leadership and a district equity committee to discuss the needs of our students around math data to align goals and resources to improve student outcomes. The work entailed giving updates to the board, which resulted in the approval of an authentic districtwide professional development plan to strengthen school site teacher leadership teams on their focus on improving equitable outcomes in mathematics for all students. We co-wrote and were awarded a $50K A-G Completion Improvement Grant from the State with the former MUSD superintendent. The grant provides additional support to help increase the number of California high school pupils, particularly underrepresented students, who graduate from high school with A-G eligibility requirements completed for admission to California State University and the University of California.
As the district Title III coordinator for MUSD, I served approximately 300 English Learner students in grades TK-12 with a budget of $40K. When I accepted the position with MUSD in 2012, it was with the understanding that MUSD was experiencing challenges serving the needs of their English Learner students. I am proud of the work and collaboration with all the schools in the district to revise the district’s Master Plan for English Learners, reduce the number of Long-Term English Learners in four years by 11%, and have 100% English Learner high school graduates in 2022.
As the former Mammoth Middle School (MMS) Principal and the Mammoth High School (MHS) Principal, I have had the privilege and honor to be a part of a caring learning community of highly qualified professionals, parents who want the very best for their children, and students who made me excited to come to work every day for the past eleven years. At both MMS and MHS, my mission was to work collaboratively to affect positive change for student learning and personal outcomes. I began my work at MMS, addressing the need for equitable access to educational technology for all students. We were the district's first school to establish the 1:1 device concept to ensure all students had access to the technology and connectivity necessary to participate in authentic and engaging learning opportunities.
At MHS, I led the staff in establishing an effective expectations program within the framework of positive behavioral interventions and supports. I also worked closely with the teacher leadership team to unite the goals of dual enrollment/concurrent enrollment, flexible/independent study, and articulated Career and Technical pathways under the Early College High School Model. This model improves college access and career exploration by building students’ self-confidence. The tangible outcomes were increasing the pool of dual enrollment MHS teachers from one teacher in 2019 to five teachers in 2022; nine students graduated with AA degrees, six completed CTE pathways, 49 seniors received the California Golden State Seal Merit Diploma, and 30 seniors received their biliteracy seal. We also succeeded in obtaining a 100% graduation rate of 86 students in 2022.
My journey began by deliberately scheduling teacher collaboration and teacher-led team-building time. Our Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) represented the staff by establishing the importance of viable professional learning communities consisting of adult learners. The ILT created a plan to enable organizational support, collegial trust, student academic goals, and collective teacher efficacy to develop and build capacity in the professional learning community. This work led us to close the academic achievement gap in English, establish fair restorative justice practices, cultivate school culture and climate, establish distributive leadership, and involve all parents with the transparency of all the work.
