New superintendent readies to take Santa Maria high schools into the future
SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- New Santa Maria Joint Union High School District superintendent Antonio Garcia is an educator at heart.
With that spirit in mind, he's been learning as much as possible about his new home since becoming superintendent in early January.
"I have spent a lot of my time getting to know the culture, of our school district and the community of Santa Maria," said Garcia. "I've been doing that by spending time at schools, meeting with staff, meeting with parents, meeting with students, having conversations with other stakeholders in our community, officials with city government, Chamber of Commerce, certain organizations and informal leaders."
Garcia succeeded Mark Richardson, who announced his retirement last year.
Before coming to Santa Maria, Garcia served most recently as Riverside Unified School District’s Assistant Superintendent of Professional Growth Systems.
Garcia said he's still developing broad-ranged goals and an overall vision for the district.
It's why he's made it a priority to speak with as many people in the community as possible.
"In order to do that, it's taking me some time to really formulate that through learning, listening," said Garcia. "I'm working on that plan and I'll be sharing that with the board in the near future."
He did point out there are two specific areas he has already identified as needing improvement.
"One of those that I would point out is our college readiness," said Garcia. "We need to a better job at preparing our students for college and their careers and that's an area that we're going to be focusing on."
Garcia also mentioned that he hopes to improve student proficiency in mathematics.
"That's not just specific to Santa Maria, that's actually a statewide challenge that we've had for years, but I want to make sure we are looking for solutions that we can address that specific to our students here in Santa Maria," Garcia said.
The new superintendent will oversee one of the biggest events in district history when the brand new Career Technical Education (CTE)/Ag Farm campus opens up for the start of the 2020-21 school year.
"It's something that most school districts in the state don't have and we're really proud of that, proud of that vision, proud of that effort," said Garcia. "We're ultimately going to have six different pathways represented there, students from every one of our four high schools will be attending there and taking courses."
The $20 million, 25-acre facility will accommodate about 500 students. It will include classrooms, workshops, commercial kitchen, pavilion, animal pens, livestock corrals, barns and farming land.
"We want to make sure that when students go through a CTE pathway and complete a program, they are completing them with options," said Garcia. "At the end of the day, we want students to be able to either choose to go get a job that's a good paying job, but we also want to make sure that the students have the option to go to college if that's what they choose."
Garcia emphasized the school district has an open door policy and is always available to speak with parents and other community members.
"Parents have a voice," said Garcia. "We want to partner with parents. In order to maximize our students' success for their future and their current reality, we need to work together and I welcome and encourage parents to be part of that process."
