The new superintendent of the Old Adobe School district has a simple, but lofty goal for his district. “Our long-term goal is to be the best small school elementary district around,” says Jason Lustig Yamashiro. “I feel like the Old Adobe School district is in a great position. We are developing very strong programs at each school site.”
After an extensive nationwide search, the Old Adobe Union Board of Trustees hired the recent graduate of Harvard University’s Doctor of Education Leadership program to continue developing the unique all-charter school district that has a different focus at each of its five elementary schools.
Yamashiro was a unanimous selection by the board, but only after a lengthy search that included the use of a professional search firm.
“We had candidates from all over the country,” noted boardmember Marlene Abel. “The new person had to have the perfect background for our district. We believe that Dr. Yamashiro has the background to move us forward.”
Board President Anthony Bendik added, “We had four really high-quality candidates. It was a good problem to have. It was just a matter of finding the best fit. Dr. Yamashiro’s results as a teacher and principal at both elementary and middle school district level projects are a great match for Old Adobe, and he is excited to lead Old Adobe’s quest for high quality, themed schools of choice.”
Yamashiro replaces Kim Harper, a longtime district principal who served a year as interim superintendent after Cynthia Pilar unexpectedly left when she had an opportunity to pursue a doctorate degree.
“We are very grateful to Kim for the job she did,” Abel said.
Yamashiro started his career in Berkeley, under his bachelor surname of Lustig, as a principal at Cragmont Elementary School in 1997, and in a few years won statewide recognition for achievement gains with a 124 point Academic Performance Index gain between 1999 and 2000. Cragmont, with its improved academic program coinciding with the development of a dual immersion Spanish/English program, became the most requested school in the Berkeley choice system.
At Cragmont, Yamashiro was well known for his “Principal’s Challenges” that engaged all the students in achieving a goal, and played an instrumental role in developing a model arts program that included visual arts, music and dance for all students every week.
Ten years and three children later (his three boys were born in 2000, 2003 and 2007), Yamashiro accepted a promotion to become principal at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. Over four years at King, he collaborated with the staff and the district to implement significant changes that took the school from good to great, raising African-American and Latino subgroup API scores by more than 100 points, dramatically improving the school’s culture and climate, and rebuilding a strained relationship between families and the school.
In 2011, Yamashiro was drawn away from King to the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Doctor of Education Leadership program. One of only 25 students selected from a competitive pool of hundreds of applicants, he and his family moved across the country for intensive immersion in leadership training. He completed his doctoral program in residence as a special assistant to the deputy superintendent of Oakland Unified School District last year.
Yamashiro takes over a five-school district that has remodeled itself into a charter-school district with a different focus at each school.
Last year, the district reopened a closed elementary school as Loma Vista Immersion Academy.
Working with funds from a bond measure passed by district voters in 2012, the district has made technology, including high-speed Internet service, available at all its schools, and is in the process of upgrading each of the school campuses.
Yamashiro knows that one of the challenges he faces is how to reconcile the Old Adobe charter schools, with a different emphasis at each school, with the traditional concept of neighborhood schools, but said the two need not be mutually exclusive.
“You have to acknowledge that more parents are making a choice where they send their child to school,” he explained. “Three-fourths of the parents consciously chose the school they want for their child and Old Adobe is acknowledging that reality.
“But most people also want to choose their local school. What we have to do is provide high quality choices in every neighborhood. High quality schools create community and the schools become the center for the family,”
He said in the short time he has been in the district, he likes what he sees.
“I took a full tour of the campuses, and I am really impressed with the work that is being done at the charter and themed schools,” he says. “The facilities are really being improved. There are a lot of new things in the works.”
The district’s focus this year is on LaTercera School and its emphasis on the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program.
“It will be the first elementary school to focus on STEM in Sonoma County,” the new superintendent pointed out. In addition, La Tercera is getting a physical make over to improve the classrooms and infrastructure.
Yamashiro takes over a district that is not only benefiting from California’s recovery from the recession, but also the foresight of the district’s trustees who made the switch to charter schools, allowing Old Adobe to further take advantage of the state’s new funding system. The passage of the school bond measure in 2012 has also given the district the money to add the technology and make upgrades to prepare its schools for the new Common Core Standards teaching methodology.
“Our budget is very solid,” Yamashiro says. “Funding is always a concern, but the way the state funding is structured, we not only get a short-term boost, but it also solidified what the district can expect in the future.”
(Contact John Jackson at johnie.jackson@arguscourier.com)
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