Randy Ward
Photo/Jon Clark
Source: Carmel Valley News, August 28, 2008
By Arthur Lightbourn
To say that he was “disappointed” when the Del Mar school board decided to ditch the kindergarten Spanish language pilot program which was slated to begin this fall is definitely an “understatement,’” says San Diego County Superintendent of Schools Randy Ward.
Ward had planned to enter his 5-year-old daughter into the program at Del Mar Heights School but now he and his wife will take turns driving their daughter to attend a global language program miles away in a Lakeside public school where she will be doing total immersion in Spanish with English reading and writing to be added in the second grade and Mandarin in third grade, with the goal of becoming bilingual by the end of grade five and trilingual by graduation from high school.
Why?
Simply because, Ward said, “education is important.”
And when it comes to learning at least a second language, Ward speaks from experience. He grew up in a ghetto in Boston where lots of the guys he hung with were Spanish-speaking.
But it wasn’t until later, in between earning a B.S. in early childhood education from Tufts University and a master’s in school leadership from Harvard, he began studying Spanish to be more effective as a preschool, kindergarten and grade school teacher in Boston and Cambridge.
In 1983, to perfect his Spanish, he taught in the highly dangerous “red zone” drug capital of Medellin, Columbia, and later in Caracas, Venezuela.
It turned out to be immersion in more ways than one.
“When I was down there, it was the time of the Granada incident … the Columbian guerillas didn’t like that at the time and so they came into the school while I was teaching and killed a guard, put a bullet through his head, and kind of made a statement because we were an American teaching school. And the next week, they put a bomb on the first floor and blew up the first floor of the school while it was shut, so we were closed for about a week. Other than that, it was very pleasant.”
We interviewed the 51-year-old Ward at the County Office of Education campus on Linda Vista Road in San Diego from where he oversees budgets, payrolls, back-office and technical support for smaller school districts and administers a variety of support services, including professional development and health plans, for 42 autonomous school districts and 710 schools serving 494,000 students throughout the county.
“The third role we play is we are actually a small school district in and of ourselves.
“While we touch about 13,000 a year,” he pointed out, “because of the mobility of those students, in any one day, there are only 3,000 or so students in our programs. But we take our commitment to those students very seriously.”
Students directly served by the county include those who have been expelled from regular schools, homeless kids, pregnant teens, foster care kids at San Pasqual Academy or those who are incarcerated in Juvenile Halls throughout the county.
“Many of our schools are called ‘community schools’ and are individual classrooms for students who are expelled for one or two semesters.
“We also run a special ed program for preschoolers. And we have a Monarch School, which is a school for the homeless.”
Ward was appointed superintendent two years ago by the county board after he had served for nine years as a trouble-shooting, state-appointed administrator in the Compton Unified School District and most recently in the Oakland Unified School District, both of which were in receivership at the time.
He was credited with reforming instruction, improving students’ test scores and effectively stemming both districts’ financial hemorrhaging.
After we shook hands, the 6-foot, 220-pound Ward got comfortable, removing his jacket revealing his Larry King-type black suspenders, and settling down for a coffee-table discussion of his life and career.
Ward, an African-American, grew up as the middle child in a family of seven children in Boston.
His dad, who had retired from the Army, worked several jobs to support the family. “One of his jobs was custodial supervisor at Massachusetts General Hospital and that’s why I was a custodian there from the time I was 16 until I graduated from college.
“We grew up in a ghetto with crack houses and gangs and drive-bys. Obviously my dad was earning some money with his jobs and retirement from the military, so when we asked him why we had to live in such a neighborhood, he’d say, because we have to save up for your college.”
Ward went on to earn a B.S. from Tufts University in early childhood education; an Ed.M. in school leadership from Harvard University; another master’s in educational administration from the University of Massachusetts; and an Ed.D. in policy, planning and administration from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Now going into his third year as school superintendent for the county he said, “There have been lots of challenges, as you know. Challenges, fiscally, certainly, academically, with the achievement gap, and a lot of work, in not only supporting the county school districts, but making sure the students that we serve get the best education they can get.”
“For example,” he said, “the California High School Exit Exams, back in 2001, the passing rate for the students we serve, which are the toughest students in the county, you know, the expelled kids, the homeless children, the foster kids, the kids in Juvenile Hall, we passed at a 9 percent and 15 percent rate in language arts and math.
“This past year, we passed at almost a 75 percent rate.”
Because of the cuts in state funding, the county board had to cut its budget by about $2.5 million last year and about the same amount this year from its $33 million general fund, he said. Most of the monies the county board administers are either pass-through monies from the state to the various districts or restricted funds.
“We also had to cut 10 percent, about $20 million, from those restricted funds, so we were very much impacted.”
As a result, he said, “We’ve been on efficiency, maximizing services program since I’ve been here.
“So that has helped.”
All of their employees are now on direct deposit “so we don’t have to print checks for them.”
Wherever possible, they have gone paperless and online.
While they would prefer not to be faced with reduced funding from the state, he said, “We’re trying to keep up by becoming more efficient.”
As to his role as superintendent, “While it is a big job, the challenge is to think about it on three levels: What it is. (‘What do you mean I don’t have authority over this and that?’) What it should be. (‘And that’s where I’m at now.’) And what it could be. (‘Where do we all want to go and where we are going?’)
“The levels I’m really moving on are the ‘should’ and ‘could.’”
The ‘should’ part, he said, really has to be about preparing all of our schools, teachers and leaders to best instruct and teach using the best instructional tools to prepare as many children, if not 100 percent, to be ready for college and to be ready to work, both in the work that’s out there now and that will be out there in the future.
It should be efficient, stabilized, even in times of economic fluctuations, and it should be “connected to the real world,” he added.
“The ‘could be’ really has to do with how we can work in a completely synergistic and seamless way so that we could share best practices, use the technology that we need to share best practices instantaneously, and to be able to change and make transitions through the use of data about what’s working and what isn’t working and adjust [accordingly].”
The board, he said, will be drafting a strategic five-year plan this year to identify “where we should be and where we could be and what the measures will be and put that out as a public document to hold ourselves accountable.”
Ward favors the amalgamation of school districts where possible to maximize resources, but he recognizes because of “politics, regional culture and all the rest, it’s much easier said than done.”
He also decries the inequality that exists in resources and teachng between schools and various districts, not only in San Diego, but throughout the state and the country.
“Equity is a major challenge,” he said. “I think quite frankly it is the civil rights issue of today, and that is, equity, quality and access to the best teachers, great facilities, technology—and, yes, it always comes down to the bottom line of money, but it’s not always just about money.
“We’ve got a lot of things built into our infrastructure, like contracts, employee rights, and all these things that unfortunately can produce a very inequitable environment.
“And I get to see it because I go around to all the districts and I see which kids are in AP courses and which ones aren’t, which ones are taking algebra and which ones aren’t, what the facilities look like in one neighborhood versus another in the same district and certainly between districts…
“Some of the equity issues have to do with child advocacy. In the neighborhood where I live, we’re going to make sure we’re going to advocate for our children and they are going to get the best. In some neighborhoods, that doesn’t exist.
“So that means that someone else, including the board and the administration, has to be those child advocates. That happens sometimes, but unfortunately other times it does not. The squeaky wheel.”
In addition to his administrative work, Ward delights in personally meeting students when possible.
He recalls three students in particular at the Juvenile Hall school in Campo.
“They were graduating and they really pressured the folks up there so they could talk to me. They came in and wanted to tell me how appreciative they were that they finally found people who cared about them and how unfortunate it was that they had to commit a crime and serve time to get their high school diplomas.
“And that while they would never say it was good to do what they did, but certainly if they weren’t in that facility with those educators and the people from probation who care about them, they would never have gotten back on the right track in terms of education.”
“I thought that was very powerful,” Ward said.
Quick Facts
Name: Randolph E. “Randy” Ward, Ed. D.
Distinction: A former kindergarten and grade school teacher, who as a state-appointed administrator was credited with salvaging the bankrupt Compton and Oakland Unified School Districts before accepting his current job two years ago as San Diego County Superintendent of Schools.
Resident of: Carmel Valley
Born: Boston, Mass., 51 years ago.
Education: B.S. from Tufts University in early childhood education; an Ed.M. in school leadership from Harvard University; another master’s in educational administration from the University of Massachusetts; and an Ed.D. in policy, planning and administration from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Family: He and his wife, Cheryl, have been married 11 years. They have two children: daughter, Jerne, 5, going into kindergarten; and son, James, 3.
Interests: Landscaping, camping, scuba diving
Reading: “Reading books to my kids.”
Films: “Not a movie-goer. I don’t think I’ve been to the movies in seven years.”
Favorite Food: Pizza
Philosophy: “Make a difference.”
