Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina

Santa Barbara Talks: Santa Barbara Unified Superintendent Hilda Maldonado responds to controversies

Hilda Maldonado, Superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, opens up in this podcast with journalist Josh Molina. Maldonado answers questions about the turnover in the cabinet, her leadership style, the Santa Barbara Teachers Association contract controversies, the strike threat, Hozby Galindo, what role being Latina plays in how she is perceived, and much more. She also talks about her personal story and coming to the U.S. at 11 and learning to speak English. Josh Molina is a journalist who focuses conversations on housing, education, transportation, business and culture. Please hit subscribe on YouTube and visit www.santabarbaratalks.com for more content

Duration:: 1h 22m
Broadcast on:: 11 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Hey everyone. Welcome to Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina. It's going to be a big couple of weeks here at Santa Barbara Talks. In just a second, you're going to see my interview, my face-to-face interview with Hilda Maldonado, superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District. We met face-to-face in her office, talked for almost an hour and a half, and I asked her all the questions based off of all the drama and all the controversy. One little thing, I did it in person. I had a couple of technical issues that you'll see. I moved the camera. I apologize for that, and hopefully, you know, it's not too much of a distraction in parts of it. But I did it in person. One of my goals is to do more podcasts in person. I'm trying to get more sponsors to fund that, to improve the technology. Help me get an assistant, because it's kind of difficult to be a one-person band doing these things. But I think it's a great interview, and I think you're going to love it. So that's coming up in a second. I've also got Santa Barbara City Councilwoman Alejandra Guterres coming on the show to talk about her re-election bid. This is going to be a great podcast. She's going to talk about her opponent, her opponents in the contest. All the controversy over red control, her four years in office, and just everything you could imagine. We're going to be talking about that. That's going to be coming up in the next few days. I've also got, you're not going to believe this, Lily Dalow and Jade Martinez-Pogue, you recall. Lily is a journalist with KUIT. I've worked with her at Newshawk, and she's doing some incredible things. She's got a big announcement coming on the show, and Jade Martinez-Pogue, who's at Law360. She's going to talk about her career and the big news of this podcast is they saw Taylor Swift in Europe, and they're going to talk about their experience on the show. Then I have, coming up, Paula Lopez and Jenny Landers from the Democratic women of Santa Barbara County. We're going to be talking about all the amazing things they're doing, the organization is doing, to support, encourage, promote women in politics in this presidential year with Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket. There's a lot going on, and damn women is the emerging powerhouse force of Democratic politics in Santa Barbara County, and they're going to be here to talk about everything related to all the work they're doing. Those are coming up in the next few weeks, but right now, let's watch Hilda Maldonado. Please hit subscribe on YouTube, and also visit SantaBarberTalks.com. Consider a contribution to support this podcast. Have a great day. Welcome to Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina. Don't adjust your sets. I am here today with Hilda Maldonado, superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, and we're going to have an amazing conversation on a variety of topics. Thank you, Hilda, for agreeing to be on the show. We're doing this in person, which is fantastic. Thank you for inviting me into your office to record this interview. How are you doing today? Thank you, Josh. I'm doing great today. It's Fiesta Day in Santa Barbara, and I'm very honored and excited to be here with you today. Yes, as we are recording, it is Friday Fiesta Day, and there's a lot going on, but this podcast, this is where the energy is right now. So, Hilda, I'll refer you as Hilda. Absolutely. He's here, obviously, formerly superintendent, Maldonado, but Hilda, I've been covering you for four years. It's going into five years since you were hired during the pandemic, and a bit of a lot of things that Santa Barbara Unified has gone through, and I've written about, I've podcasted about. So, this conversation, I'm hoping, can be an opportunity for us to talk about a lot of that coverage, a lot of what has happened in the community, a lot of the changes, and really give you an opportunity to respond to a lot of the challenges people have had at the district. In some cases, accusations, things they've said, much of this has been all public from the teachers near strike, the contract negotiations, so much. So, we're going to get into it. So, let's dive in, okay? First question, right off the bat, okay? You're going to start hard. I'm going to start. You know, viewership goes down. We've got to lead with the best. How are you feeling about all of the negativity that has come out with people leaving, cabinet members leaving, an exodus of your staff? And I have said that in writing, an exodus of your staff. People really well loved in the community. People who've been here for years, who've just give up their jobs to go work somewhere else because of the culture of Santa Barbara Unified. I'm not going to name any names. People are going to read my stories if they want to see all of that, but what is your reaction? Like, why did everyone leave? And why did so many people tell me it was because of Hilda Maldonado? Yeah, well, obviously no leader ever wants to hear that it's a personal reason that they're leaving because of me as an individual. That always feels a little bit, you know, like a little bit of an arrow through your heart. It makes me sad that that's what you would be told. Obviously, I heard different reasons that's told to me better pay. Sometimes other opportunities, retirements, promotions, family life balance. Many reasons were given to me other than that. No one has completely come to me directly and said, "I'm leaving because you came." So that's a little bit of something that we probably can unpack in some way. I'd recognize in retrospect, it's been an interesting journey as a leader to jump in and take a risk to leave a career that was going well in my previous district in Los Angeles. I'll say it because you've said it many times and be here. And it was something that it was just really, I came with a heart full of optimism and hope for several reasons. One is I had been a part of this community's leadership programs in 2017 and part of that leadership development. I was driving home one day, turning that 101 towards Ventura where the beach kind of turns left into Ventura. And as a person in who I am and how I was raised and what I thought about myself as a leader, it occurred to me, what would my life look like if I made decisions for what I want. Rather than when my family, my friends, society, and everyone else expects of me, and it occurred to me, I would love to figure out how to live in Santa Barbara. And of course, I'm not independently wealthy nor is my family and I wouldn't be able to come here unless I had a job. And I sort of put out into the universe this idea that I would want to come and live and work here. And so when the opportunity arose right before the pandemic, this job was announced and I had an opportunity to read the survey that was done on the search for the new superintendent. And in that survey, I had a lot of insight into the kinds of things that needed to be done for the district and what kind of leader they were looking for. I was very attracted to the equity lands and I'm very impressed with all of the equity work that that previous cabinet and other leaders and people in the field have been doing. I'm so proud of the 2018 ethnic studies as an elective for high school graduation. It had really called to me in a way that I hadn't felt before. I never thought I would leave my network. I never thought I would leave the work that I was doing, but I really felt called to do that. And I think coming from a large system into a smaller system, my leadership style probably did rub a lot of people wrong because in a larger system you lead differently. It's a lot less relational, a lot more bureaucratic, a lot more systems oriented, directive, kinds of leadership styles, and not to say that we wouldn't benefit for more relational work in our school systems as I've learned today. And then coming into a system this size where everything is so relational, anybody could call up the assistant superintendent of HR and demand things or ask for things either way was new to me. And the context that I came into was also a chaotic environment. I was optimistic that the pandemic was lasting another three weeks, maybe another month. And then we were all big back to business. We would open schools and we would go about getting to know people like you would. I wrote a six month plan as part of my interview to the board of what I would do the first six months. These are classrooms, get to know teachers, get to know school principals, and none of that happened. The pandemic just kept getting worse and worse and worse. We weren't sure how the virus was going to be transmitted. So how we open schools mattered. If you recall, there was blue, red, gold, green, tears of what we would have to meet, then it switched to a different system. And we were just pivoting to these quick decision making ways of leading that could be back into probably more of that larger system directive approach. And I've learned since that that doesn't work well in Santa Barbara, especially with people who have had relational ways of working. And we were having to build relations with local and state health leaders that we didn't have previously. So just that whole leadership style and the communication ways of working was ripped apart from all of us. But I've reflected a lot on this idea that leading systems, larger, small, the relationships matter, the relational approaches matter. And I could see that a way of working previously along with the information, like I said earlier, of the superintendent's search survey. I don't know if you're familiar with that document. Yeah. Gave a lot of insight into all of the things that I had to take under consideration. Right. So that's really good background and explanation of what you had to deal with when you were hired and how you decided to even come to Santa Barbara and apply it. As a reporter, right, I talk to people, people talk to me and they talk to other local media. And one of the things is people say, you know, Josh, she can't just keep saying things were tough because of COVID. COVID was obviously devastating, significant. We know about the learning loss. We know that that generation hopefully will be able to recover, but there's a lot of people out there saying they may not recover or there's going to have to be deep efforts to help them. So we know that was a huge thing. It sounds like you're saying you had a big city sort of big bureaucracy kind of mentality. And then you come here and like, well, it's a lot different here. The culture is here. I want to ask you about your leadership right away. I have been told people will say she says to people, people don't like her because she's a strong Latina. So can we talk about that? How much of this do you feel could be because your Latina race is always an issue, whether it's implied, whether it's stated or it's underneath the surface? Do you think some of this is the fact that you're a strong Mexican American leader and you have strong views on how to manage things? What is your thought? Wow, that's a very deep question. And you went about it in a different way trying to figure out. So the question is, do I think I'm a strong, well, first of all, I identify as Mexican. As you know, I was in board here. I am an immigrant to this country and English is my second language. And I think that it informs my identity. Your question is, do I think I'm a strong Mexican Latina? Do you think people do not like you? No, because I'm a strong Mexican Latina. Because what I've been told is that you have said that to, you know, in circles. Did I have said that? Yeah, people don't like me because I'm a strong Latina. I don't know that I've said that people don't like me because I'm a strong Mexican Latina. That's never crossed my mind in that way. You're the first person to ask me a question. Do you think people don't like you because of your... Do you think it's a thread? Do you think it's an underlying reason? Do you think it's an underlying reason for why there may be an increased amount of criticism aimed at your direction? I really don't know. That's probably a better question for how people perceive me in my identity and how I present myself. It's hard to answer that question to say do I think people think I'm a strong Mexican leader. I just feel like I am who I am in my perspective and my leadership is informed by many things. I'm more than just a female Mexican leader. I am a mother, I am a wife, I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I'm a friend, I'm a colleague, I like Mexican Spanish music and I like American music. I'm terrible at remembering the names of bands and movies and actors. But I'm bicultural and I'm bilingual. I think the experience of being both maybe presents itself to some people as that. I need with my personal story, I do leave with my personal story and the experiences that I've had that inform my leadership. I don't know if you and I have not talked a lot about my personal story. Maybe people hear that in defining me as a Mexican leader or a strong Mexican woman. But I'm proud that Mexican women are strong. My former country has elected its first female president so I'm very proud of that. I also am completely grateful to my mother who is my role model, my mentor, my guide, who has had to be a very strong parent in bringing us to this country and immigrating here. And probably some people might say defies what the traditional expectation is that the Mexican family is defined by patriarchal, patriarchal ways. I've experienced the opposite. My mother is a strong leader in my family and her mother and females before her have been strong independent women. So I'm proud to come from a line of strong independent females and maybe that comes across too. So we definitely have strong opinions about how we want things to happen or are very protective of our family and our ways of doing things. And I think, you know, as I think about the kinds of systematic changes that needed to be made when I arrived here and the things that I saw that need to be changed in the ways that we did we run our school system. I think some people may have seen that as that. I definitely have things that I've brought to the district in terms of using data to inform our decisions, not just opinions, preferences or relationships to say, well, let's touch Molina as a father. So let's give his son what he wants so that we don't make Josh Molina angry if he wants something that's do that or, you know, making decisions that only a few have expressed opinions about, but rather the whole and looking at the whole system and its resources. An example is an equity index for the higher needs schools and not just doing equitable per people funding, but rather per people need funding that shows schools that have higher poverty should get a little bit more in the schools with higher resources. Because we know that social capital matters when we think about students and what they need and access and opportunities matter when you have more money or when you have less. And I think that that is something that I've looked at. I've looked at our contracts, how we issue them, the process we use, having a rigorous system of looking at them and ensuring that we're getting the right investments made in a way that's coherent. I'm very aware of as a former principal that we need the cabinet to all work in sync and be coherent and what we're asking principles to do. I didn't want to have principles and leaders have 10 different people telling them what to do and kind of overstepping each other, but rather have alignment in our work so that they don't feel bogged down by the district office. And so I've been slowly making changes in that that could have that some people could perceive as, you know, being very like direct in my approach. A multi-tiered system of approach to finding out the needs of our students is something we worked on for the last three years, but not just to say, you know, tiering students to what they need for those with the highest needs and those that are thriving because we have that spectrum of learners. But rather to say, so what are we going to do different? How are we going to deliver that different with an equity lens in mind and looking at what are some of the institutional barriers that by design in our system have created the achievement gaps we continue to have. Because we do have things in our system that create those opportunity gaps in those achievement gaps. And those are things that I've been focused on, you know, along with also moving away from the pandemic. That's over moving towards, you know, so what needs to happen now with learning loss and what we need to do for kids to continue to make sure they all thrive. And that's, so I think if people were to say using data, creating systems approaches, wanting coherence and alignment, could feel to somebody like, I have to align myself to something. I'm doing this on my own thing here could be perceived that way. And those are challenges that I'm sure other superintendents face and all of me. So, so let me just drill down a little bit here is I've lost count of how many cabinet members staff members have left. Okay, we know it's a lot. And I know I hear you saying other opportunities, that sort of thing. What role do you think you played it, you know, some top cabinet members, people who were at the district for years, well liked, who've been principals, other principals who've been at schools who've left and gone to work for the county education office. It's been sort of a place for some people to go to get out of here or away from here. You know, and I am I am drilling this down so I know people are watching and they're going to be like don't let her off the hook Josh right and so we're doing that podcast for them. No, you know, I'm just ingesting with you. I hope that's okay. No, this is a podcast. It's totally fine. No, no, we are doing it partly for them. We're doing it for everyone. Yeah, yeah. But do you do you tell me Kenny accountability? That's a judgmental word. What role do you think you've played in top cabinet people, top administrators, principals. Let's separate cabinet and principals because I actually haven't lost a lot of principals. Well, you lost the Santa Barbara High School principal. One principal. So, so cabinet, we did lose, you know, I believe it was five cabinet members. And some of them actually fiber or maybe a few more after the initial exit is, if you want to call it that and I've taken an opportunity as I've heard that that, you know, we are top heavy in a district administration. And I've taken the opportunity to actually consolidate some positions in the district office. So, for example, as you may know, this district has only been a unified district since 2012. One K-12 system. And I've had an opportunity to consolidate some positions to have less top administrators. So it services, for example, is now just one assistant superintendent of K-12. We used to always have elementary and secondary. So we operated very separate. And we had a lot of internal concerns about the elementary people have more less resources than the secondary people. And it does cost more to run a seven to 12 system. And so, you know, there has been some consolidation. So the people leaving has created an opportunity for us to redefine what the district should look like. And we're going to be doing more of that, by the way, in the coming, in this coming year, we're going to be continuing to look at administration and reducing some of that top overhead so that we can continue to protect the classroom. Our most important work is in the classroom, the teacher, the student, and the curriculum and how that's getting delivered and how that's resulting in student centered decision making. Your question to me, do I have no doubt that there is a two way relationship that happens between me and my direct reports. I did not have discussions with people who left and then need to believe I'm leaving just because you are a bad leader. I welcome conversations with previous leaders. I respect highly the leaders that left highly. And what they've said to me doesn't resonate that way. And I will say that I understand because I left too. I left my previous organization and the cabinet that I have right now have left other districts. So it's not, it's a snowball effect for many of us that are in this education world to change. We change districts, we change jobs, we change opportunities based on either personal career goals, based on work life balance, based on disagreement with the leader. I've seen in my former district that happened many times. I mean, I was there 30 years. I saw many superintendents come and go, some less longer than others, but it's not unusual to have your top leaders disagree with the new boss. I don't think I'm so unique in that way, perhaps some less effective in keeping the current leaders. At the same time, we also wanted to make sure that we see changes in doing business as usual and continuing to see the same results. So there's a lot of conversations that are sometimes are hard about how we do the work that could also maybe run people the wrong way. But to my face, what has been said and the state of goals for why people are leaving, don't resonate with what you're hearing. That's okay. It's difficult for people to maybe have had that trusting relationship to say that. Did you have access to the exit interviews? And I know that consultant came in and interviewed people about why they laughed. Was that presented to you in any kind of form? I believe so. Honestly, that was two years ago, so I don't recall, but everything goes back to relationships, the culture of the system, and the way that we listened for what is happening. So the first thing I did was a listening tour. If you recall, I visited every school. Sometimes with one or two board members, sometimes with one board member, we sat with staff, mostly certificate staff are what we call our teaching staff, not so much with our classified workers. Sometimes they joined, and I had an opportunity to hear some of the things that they needed. So for example, a lot of them asked about curriculum for our emergent, multi-lingual learners. We pivoted quickly. We bought new curriculum. We've been training people on that. I heard about our elementary reading program and our elementary reading program and the fact that I walked into a classroom and elementary and everybody was teaching differently for the same grade level. We can't run a school system where we don't have the same expectations for every child. We really need to run a school system with rigorous expectations that every child learned to read by third grade. But we can't do that when everybody has a different set of materials, and also we have a spectrum of teachers. We have very experienced teachers and brand new teachers and some in between. Some of them come from other districts, been trained differently. They come from universities that have trained them differently. And then we have 21st century learners who use technology who have access to information in ways that are different. So I heard that from the teachers. I heard that they need a new curriculum. We engaged in a whole committee process to adopt a brand new elementary reading program. And we've been very successful in the first year of implementation. And let me tell you, implementing your curriculum. It's not like, here's the books go teach go. We're going to have 100% readers. It's a process. Our teachers are learners, just like our students. And so we've been thoughtfully implementing that curriculum. And we've gotten very good feedback of both the successes and the challenges. And we've been, we've instituted a system of constant feedback from teachers in elementary about that. We use the same process for adopting curriculum, learning from that experience to now do a math adoption for junior high school, where we include all voices at the table to make sure that our curriculum selection is done in a thoughtful way. I heard from people that in previous adoptions, it seemed that only the few chosen were able to make the decision and then they were stuck with that decision. I also saw that we were doing piloting lots of different curriculums for all of these different publishers. And I thought that was not a good practice. We can't educationally try curriculum on children as if it's a research lab. We really need to commit to something, look for what works and fix what doesn't. But at the end of the day, it's the teacher experience and their knowledge and their observation of children that is the most valuable resource that we have in the classroom. So I can sit here in this office and have a lot of great ideas for what needs to be happening, but it doesn't mean anything. I am so removed from a classroom in my role that unless I'm sitting in classrooms every single day observing teaching like a researcher, I really rely on my school leaders and on my teachers to be the experts and on my role to be the supporter of what they need and creating systems and processes for how to do that thoughtfully. So I learned a lot from the listening to our about curriculum and options. I've also gone to me with people one on one and I've learned a lot about the way we've treated staff in the past. And there's there's things that have done by previous administrations dating back to 20 years ago that I've learned weren't well. I'm hoping that every time we know better, we do better. In negotiations, we started with a health plan. They really addressed the health insurance issue that we have. I've learned coming to this community and having lived here four years now, starting my fifth year living here. The access to health care, I've still trying to get a doctor here. Because it's been hard to find a doctor that's taking new patients. Sometimes I have to drive back to Glendale to see my doctor that I have for many years just because I can't get in here and I need to take care of something. And not to say that we don't have a great health care system, accessing and getting into it is limited here. And our insurance plan was very poor to say it at best. We only offered 40% health insurance coverage and we charged 70% of any increases yearly to the employee. I never thought that was a good idea. I tried to change it, but when we entered the last two year contract, I had only been here, I think a year, maybe a year and a half. And nobody wanted to talk about health insurance. This year I'm proud to say we offer 75% health insurance coverage paid by the district to all our employees. And we write sites and places where that didn't result in a savings to our employee. And in our classified staff, we actually have a plan called the Affordable Care Plan that is at 85% paid by the district so that those employees wouldn't incur an additional cost. We also worked on ensuring that when we went to negotiations, we knew we had to come in with a good offer. Let me stop you because I want to get into contract negotiations in a second. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Hilda Maldonado. And we're going to talk about contract negotiations. And I do want to learn more about your story coming to the United States and what that was like for you. We're back with Hilda Maldonado. Before we go to the contract negotiations, you talked about the Cabinet. And I just want to ask you about the COO position. And I told you I would ask you about that, so it's not like a drive-by or anything weird, but I love Stevens. He's so nice, okay? This is not a personal thing. He's met with me. I've talked to him. He's so friendly. But when you talk about consolidating, streamlining, I mean, you hired him. You worked with him previously. LA Unified. And then you're so much like, why did you create this new position? And essentially, people say he's doing a lot of what the superintendent should do. So can you just talk to that? I mean, why did you create a COO position for somebody who was someone you knew previously? Yes. You were professional colleagues. But how can you say you're consolidating on one end and then you create a new position on the other? That is the truth. And that does happen and that can happen. So let's bust that myth. Why don't we? Okay. So actually, the then board asked me to consider having an operations officer. Okay. And I think his position has morphed into many ways of thinking about, again, the organizational challenges that we had. There was a position that was a person that went to the county office. We closed that position and we repurposed it to an operations position. So that's how you do that. And that's like I explained with services I've done that. And by the way, this hasn't been said yet. But for the new school year, we will not be having a chief technology officer position anymore. Oh, okay. Breaking news. Steve's going. Yeah, breaking news. Steve, Steve has been and will continue to oversee facilities. The assessment and accountability office and he was overseeing community partnerships. Now he's going to have facility still assessment accountability and the education technology services. So we're getting rid of that position and just keeping a director and a manager. We don't think that we need to have such a high level position for that department any longer. That position was initially created to, in previous superintendent, to bring technology and become a one-to-one school district. And we already are. We have been way longer than, you know, I've been here, have been a one-to-one school district. And so a one-to-one meaning one technology iPad for a child. And so that project, I think, you know, has served its purpose and I don't believe in the city anymore. So he'll be overseeing that department as well. He's been able to look at the facilities and maintenance departments, which are large departments and millions of dollars in bond money, millions of dollars in construction money, and just maintenance of facilities in general. And really look at what is happening there and ensuring that we're really spending our dollars well as, you know, construction costs went up. I don't want to get too deep into the work, but essentially, the previous board asked me to work on getting up positions like that. And it's morphed into who he is now. Now, as far as Stephen and I going back. So I know that people think I plugged him out of obscurity and brought him into Santa Barbara Unified Center. Well, he was a music teacher, right, and that's no disrespect to music teachers. I hope not. But I think the thinking was, is was he an administrator? Oh, yeah. Yes, that's right. So I actually don't know Steve as a music teacher, and I've never seen him play music. I hope he's good. But I know Steve as a former administrator of the arts program in Ella Unified. And that is like, you know, there's a long line between that work and me and where I was at the time. So I knew his name. Then once I became a principal of a school, we actually ended up working for the same director. And when I was a principal, he was actually working on writing at that time a public school choice school plan. And he opened the first Quincy Jones Elementary School in South Central. And I was fascinated. I sort of like heard about the work he was doing, but we never talked about the work. We never worked together. We would probably go to the same meetings, say hi, and that was about it. I know that he was successful in launching that school. He was co-located with a charter school, and they had a very good relationship from what I understand. And then we lost track because as you know, in the large system, people move and go all the time. He went off to what he's told me, the Orange County Office of Education, where he worked for many years. And then he went on to run a nonprofit called Little Kids Rock. I learned about him coming to our district once he was, his name came up as a director of school performance in student outcomes. That's how he initially came to the district. And of course, when I saw that, I was like, "Steve, what's going on? What are you doing here?" And so I talked to John. He was selected. That's how he initially came for the COO position. No, we did not do a search. We actually looked at sitting leaders. And we talked to a few sitting leaders at the time, and then the board and I made an appointment for the CEO. You would understand people being upset that you would understand people having questions about whether he's the most qualified person for this position. So the most qualified person for this position is somebody who you knew of a little bit at LA Unified. Essentially, that's the choice you made. You would understand people saying, "Well, there has to be somebody else local." And people were tapped. People were tapped. And I've tapped people for even our current cabinet seats, and I've asked them to apply, and they have not. So I understand that. And people have really good reasons why they don't feel ready. Sometimes they don't see themselves ready. Sometimes they don't want to work in district, believe me, not everybody's like dying to work in the district office. It's hard to fill these positions, despite what some may say. So yes, I can understand why people might think he's not, but I have to say that Steve is very qualified, has a lot of skills, and has grown in his leadership like I expect all leaders to do. Every single one, including me, are not free from growing and learning and taking feedback and expanding our leadership skills. So you mentioned there's not going to be a chief technology officer. Was this going back to Brian Rouse? Is that that same position, or is it a decision? Yes, yes. So it's before him, actually. Todd Rickman. Todd Rickman, right? Yeah, okay. So that would be another cabinet member who was here before and was not left afterward. So was that position eliminated in the budget, or did that person leave? And I don't want you to. That's happening now, as we speak. Okay. No, the CTO that we had, who returned to his home town, he has three young children. And so he left. Yes, and so I'm closing the position and assigning the department to Steve. Okay. So he'll be making more money now, obviously. Were these new positions? No, his salary doesn't change. His salary won't change, just have more money. No, his salary doesn't change. The beauty of these jobs, or the salary doesn't change, you just get more duties as a sign that you're expected to do more. And that's what we do as leaders. And so that's what administrative job is. And I'll just say, that's a reason why many people don't really go for these jobs, because they do require someone to be nimble, to be flexible, adaptable, to be able to run many things at once, and have their eye on the ball with many things happening at once. So community partnerships is now going to Kenya Edison, understood in the family services. And he's absorbing the chief technology, and that's how we're moving the adding more to Kenya's plate, adding more to Steve's plate. And when we're going to have to do more of that going forward, even in the school sense, we're going to have to look at the administrators. Okay, let me ask you about the contract negotiations. So this is a year long of really tense, just a lot of negative energy in the boardrooms. Directed at the board, the board members, to you, to pretty much every employee of the school district who's in the room. And we're talking picketing, we're talking marches, rallies, and you've got teachers coming and speaking and looking right at you and saying, you don't care about retention, you don't care about quality teaching. Essentially, that means you don't care about students, and they're pointing out your travel budget, they're saying all these things about how much your administrators are getting paid, et cetera. Et cetera, et cetera. And you just, you know, and I'm there watching many of the meetings in person. And you're just there, you know, you're just looking at them and just taking it. All right, so. Well, we're listening and taking notes. I hope you caught that too. Yes. Yes. When you have, and I know you're obviously a strong leader, but when you have that many people week after week, go it up and saying, you don't care essentially about teachers or students. Because if you did, you would be doing things differently. What's going through your head? Wow, that was really emotionally hard. It was, it was, it was very, I guess if I had to use a feeling word to describe it, it was sad. It was sad, and I understand some of the stories they brought. And it made the job even that much harder, because on the one hand, I'm hearing these stories of, you know, how hard it is to live here, how hard it is to make a living. That really is the essence of the negotiations, right? I know what I'm putting at the negotiations table, but what's happening at the negotiations table, even though we put out communication about our offers to attract and retain to, I talked earlier about the healthcare plans to ensure that we took care of our people, to ensure that we gave a wage. And I can't even say, I don't even want to try to pretend to call it a living wage, because you and I know there was a New York Times article that said we were the fifth highest, or the fifth most expensive town to live in in America. How do you get there in a public school funding model that we have? But it was sad, it was hard to take, I think it took a toll on our mental health, it certainly took a toll on my family who watched, it took a toll on some friends, you know, and people asked me how I was doing, and I'll be honest, during that period, I had an nephew that passed away by suicide. I had a very good friend that died from cancer and she had only been a retired teacher for a year and a half, and I want to speak openly that I went to seek mental health support myself, because as I'm in my role as a superintendent, and in my person, I had to really try to make some kind of a balanced way of taking care of myself. And if I've learned anything about myself and anything about leadership and my journey, it is that you have to know yourself best, and you have to manage yourself first. It's almost like the airplane, you know, put on the mask first before you put it on your child, and I'm not seeing our employees or children, but I had to really try to figure out what are ways that I am going to reach a level of balance and take care of my emotional state so that I could withstand. We are not allowed during the public comment to respond. That's just Brown Act, and that is what it is. I know about it, our board members know about it, and that is not how you negotiate. We couldn't have negotiated in that spirit of listening to stories and responding in the moment. That's just not how it works. And so we were almost by Brown Act rules expected to sit there and listen and take it. We didn't not hear it, and I did take note of some of the things that they were asking for, and we knew some of these issues because they've been talked about before. So I'm very proud of my team at the negotiating table. I'm very proud of the board. We were very clear that the offers we made were addressing the needs that they were asking for. We knew that there was a lack of trust. We knew that the only way that we could get there was to just go to the fiscal facts. It doesn't deny the emotional stance, and I was a single mom for many years. I know what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck. I haven't always made the salary that I'm making now. So in the last four years that I've made this kind of salary. And so I understood that. I couldn't respond to it in that moment. And that is part of negotiations. You have people, you have a team at the negotiating table going back and forth, making offers, and then you have activism that happens as part of wanting to get that point across. And I am a former teacher. I have been part of previous negotiations in the teacher room. I support it. I understand it. I value it. And it was hard to hear it. And my heart went on to them, and that couldn't be expressed in that space. Will you keep any of it with you? I think it would be normal as a human being to hear that kind of criticism. When the time comes, I will get you back. And what I mean, not personally, but do you have less of a heart when it comes to consolidation, positions? Is there any part of you that's like, "I have to somehow..." I think my takeaway is protect the classroom. I have a graphic that I use to describe our organization and how we function. And in the middle is a triangle. It has teachers, students, curriculum, or content standards. And that's the heart. That is the center that we would all be working for all the time. And so the takeaway for me is you always protect that. That's the center. You can't ignore the support staff around them. And if you look at the support staff, our lowest-paid workers, our food service workers, our maintenance workers, I have to take that into consideration along with just keeping a fiscally healthy agency. So that's where the hard decisions come in by being a superintendent is that you have to balance all of it all the time. And so as we look at how we consolidate, we're also in a declining enrollment district. We've lost a lot of students. And we haven't talked about that. And so we have some small schools. We committed to low-class sizes in our offer. We made an initial offer. Yes, we agreed. Low-class sizes. We agreed on the health care plans. We didn't agree on the attract and retain negotiations where I wanted to really offer brand-new teachers a higher salary and a more experienced teacher a higher salary. They declined that offer. We offered early fact-finding process. They declined it. We wanted to show the numbers and agree on the numbers with a neutral party so that we could all be speaking from the same. We achieved that in June when we finally got to the hearing. We could have achieved that earlier. The trust was in there. The relationship was in there, and it was denied. And so it was a painful process to go through, but it's a necessary process. And it's got built-in balances and checks that are beyond what is just me by myself, concocting some number. If it were only that easy, the superintendent role is not that. I'm taking in all of the information, but I've got people that are looking at some of the information along with us. The county superintendent has to approve our offer. I don't know if you were there in the meeting where we talk about that. We have outside entities that also look at our numbers. We have an internal auditor in our school district. We have an external auditor. We have processes that look at all those things. And I think people didn't understand that or translate that because I think the focus was on how are we going to get the leaders to look differently. And in that setting, in that board, Brown Act rule system, that will never be achieved. So two things that we'll move on is it's one thing to hear the teachers. It's one thing to hear adults criticize in a professional setting. You've said many times this happens. You know, people are always happy. There have been times you in other districts who are not happy, and it's sort of part of the territory of being a high-level administrator in education. The Dos Pueblos High School Rally, which I was at, they were using your name, those students. We have seniors, juniors using your name. I think you showed up there. I did not witness this myself because I joined the march later, but I was told by the students that at the DP campus, and they asked you not to march, and they were yelling at you and sort of shouting your name, how does that feel? When you hear the students criticizing you, how do you deal with that? In my person, obviously, you know, you're like, oh, wow, but I can't take that personal. I represent government. I represent the leader. I represent the decision maker. And so I value student voice. I love that they were activated to support their teachers. We could not want anything more than that. I think our community should support our teachers. I think our society should support our teachers. I come from a country, good or bad, politically. I don't know. I haven't lived there in 40 years, so I could be misspeaking. But when I was growing up, it was my parents and my teachers. They were highly revered. And they were, you know, held in a pedestal as the most important people in our society. I don't think we have that in America, and I think it's so important for us to really think about the role of the teacher. Going back to the triangle, they should be supporting their teachers. They should be asking us to do better, and they should be activated. They're the future. I wouldn't want those students to be going like, "Go, Maldonado. Don't pay well." Like, that would be terrible. Like, that's not what I would want. So I highly supported our students. I highly support their activism. I believe in student voice. And I believe it's important for us to hear the student voice from all perspectives and from all the things that they experience. They've told me things, too, that they experience in schools that we need to improve. You know, we did a racial climate assessment. We heard about students in our district after George Floyd. Right before I arrived, we had a board resolution that talked about getting, you know, our police off our campus to ensuring that we protect students who fear the police, which I, you know, I understand. We heard from students about classrooms that were high achieving AP classes that only showed one type of student ethnicity in our classes. I forget the name of the class that only had Brown and Black kids. And that needed to change. And, you know, I'm so proud of our teachers who pushed on me and the board and our leaders back in the beginning to do universal access. They recognized that we were, we had policies that separated kids and we were allowing that. And I think it's important for us to, yes, that was an important moment, but let's look at the other moments. Let's look at the other things that kids are telling. We have a brand new student member, Rebecca, your reporter, just did a whole profile. Our brand new student member, Latino student, Eric Gonzalez, who I think brings an incredible perspective of belonging and how do we make sure that our environments are designed where children feel like they belong. They are seeing that they are valued for what they want to. We have very traditional clubs, very traditional sports, and we need to expand. We need to do better at seeing our 21st century learners and asking kids what they want to see. Not everybody wants to go to football or soccer or baseball. Maybe there's esports, maybe there's robotics, maybe there's, you know, Eric talked about starting a fishing club for himself, you know, and other friends. And how do we do that better? How do we really find out what are the kids? And by the way, I'm also very proud of our often-away policy. I just finished reading the book. Sorry, I'm lying. I didn't read it. I did audio listening to the book, the actual generation. Then it does, in a way, but I do like reading, the anxious generation. We really need, so we have, you know, a policy that's called off in a way where the phones have to be turned off, no watches, no headphones. I have to be honest, I walk into some classrooms, I still see headphones, I still see watches. At the middle of last year, I really heard from our high school principals and how they're changing that. We're seeing more, they call them, I think they call them cell phone hotels, where kids have to come in, put their phones away, sit down and get to class. We have to grab back the attention of our students away from technology. That is such an important issue right now in our school systems, not just in Santa Barbara, but nationwide. You know, we have a one-to-one technology effort that we did to get them into time. That was great for that time, but we really need to pull away. We really need to go back to that in-person relational learning and get kids back to focus. The Surgeon General issued a report that talked about loneliness and isolation as a health crisis. And, you know, connecting to each other, really creating communities that are in-person. I think it's so important that we go back to that. I was at a meeting where we talked about volunteerism as a way to connect older adults, retired people with young people. How do we look at, you know, even the community, you have a high school graduate, not too long ago. He had to do community service hours. How do we get our community to help us create opportunities for our kids to go out and get involved in working with retirees, working with our local government agencies, businesses, learning different crafts and careers, and then fulfilling community service hours in a paid internship. Because I've heard kids say, "You need me to do 50 community service hours? I've got to go take care of my little sister and my little brother and pick them up and help them with their homework and feed them." Let's be honest, we have a long way to go still. Some students, depending on their wealth or inherited wealth or their circumstances, can go volunteer time, but there's a whole community of people who have to get home to take care of their sibling because their parents are working multiple jobs. Those aren't things people even think about unless they've lived it a lot of times. And those are system issues, right? We created that system. So then if we created that system, we created the barrier. And my goal is to huddle them, we look at the barrier and remove it or get people to help us with it, and really rethink those kinds of things that we inherently create for kids. I have given a lot of ink coverage to Hoseby, Galindo, asking them, "What do you think of Tilda Maldonado?" And I've had him on my podcast. So I'm going to give you the opportunity. What do you think of Hoseby, Galindo, and how he led this effort? He led this effort and treated you in the boardroom. And please, Hilda, you know, you're professional and you have to use the right words. But any human being would understand if you had some feelings about how personal that effort was. I offered Hoseby, Galindo, before we got into negotiations, to go into training that is actually developed by the California Teachers Association, which is called Interest-Based Bargaining. They created the content, they being the California Teachers Association. And, you know, I said, "I will pay for all of us to go. Let's go into Interest-Based Bargaining." And he could not commit to that, and he came back and said, "What an interest is in that." And so we led with our own value system for how we were going to negotiate. I believe that he believes that the trust is broken, that the trust can never be recovered, and that it was going to be us against them. Listen, we're one organization. It is not us against them, and I try to convey as much. When I meet with Hoseby privately, we have once a month meetings. We have very amicable professional conversations. When he goes out to the boardroom and makes comments about me, that you would never think that we have professional -- I know his wife, I know his children, I've met them, I ask about them, he asks about my family. And we talk about issues that have to do with instruction. We talk about issues that have to do with what people are needing, when we meet. And so that was hard for me to see that he had such different opinions behind closed doors and in public. As I look to other superintendents as I talk to other colleagues, the approach that they took to negotiate has happened across many districts. It's the same -- some of the main things you reported, if I read other -- and I did, I read other newspapers, I talked to other superintendents, the same issues were stated that they claim were happening in Santa Barbara. So this is part of what some might call a playbook for a negotiating these days. It's a lot more active, it's a lot more going for things like trust, things like lack of good leadership, attacking myself, attacking the board. Those are part of what is in the playbook, and I knew about it before we started. So I wasn't surprised that this was happening, I saw that way ahead of the negotiations. And how was we and I don't know each other? We didn't know each other, we didn't have a relationship. I had built a relationship with the previous union president, we still have lunch once in a while. And she understood, and that takes time. So I was sad to see that that was the approach, but I wasn't surprised. I knew that was going to happen, and I've seen it happen across the state. I've seen it happen in other states. And that is years of frustration, years of lack of investment in public education. And so that is what we are facing, and I think that we can do better. You recently had your contract extended through 2027, did you get the same raise that the teachers got? I do, I have that. There is a clause in my contract that is a me to a clause that says whatever everybody else gets I get. It also says whatever cuts they get, I also get it. So if we come to a point where we have to make cuts. Is that standard? Like, did I carry before you? Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, look, my contract was negotiated over Zoom with two lawyers at the table, and the board president and myself, and they went through it. It was most of the lawyers talking, and me going like okay, okay. I did not probably understand the process fully. What an awkward position that you stand to benefit from the agreement that is reached even though you're on a different side. You're kind of advocating against yourself. People don't like that. People are like, she's going to, she get the same raise we fought for. Do you, is that hickey at all? How does that feel that you're getting all the advocacy they did? You're benefiting from it as well. Yeah, I should have gone from the 23% sure now. And just bankrupted the district. Oh. It's an awkward position to be at because that is where I have to have integrity in what I'm doing. And I have to have integrity in the process and I have to have integrity in what is, what can we really offer. That's leadership. That's being able to look at both sides of the problem and in protecting the fiscal status of the district. How did you feel when it went to that hearing? And basically the decision was pretty close to what the district had offered. I think it was an extra 2%, 1%. Yeah, they pushed us a little further. Yeah. That had to feel like we were right the whole time. I'm not exciting with that, but it had to feel that way. Like, well, they wanted all this and this objective ruling was really close to what we had offered. How did that feel for you? Well, I think it helped to validate all along that we never intended to incrementally bargain. It validated that we had this much money we could spend and we weren't lying and we weren't hiding money and we weren't trying to short change people. That we weren't just paying ourselves a lot of money and not caring for our employees. I think it felt, look, we negotiations is about feelings and facts. And fact finding, by definition, is the facts. What are the fiscal facts? So on the feeling side, people were right to feel that they want better compensation. I agree with that. On the fact side, this is what the system could withstand and not go bankrupt. And one of my jobs, one of the biggest priorities I have as a superintendent is to make sure we don't bankrupt the district in the process. So that is that I was very pleased with the outcome. I have to say that we have been pushed a little more than we wanted to and that's why we have to look different. In this year that's coming, we have to really look at our expenditures very closely. In a declining enrollment, committing to class size reduction, but still looking at declining enrollment, we are going to have to think differently about how we invest. Two more things, we've got about 15 more minutes here. Can you talk to the teachers on the show? They're going to be watching. They're going to have opinions on every part of this. It's been very tough for them. They cost a living is very high and we all know. Being a teacher does not pay well. You know, other careers that are far less important to our society, you pay a lot more in those careers. And teachers are incredible. It's an incredible position. You know they're watching and they're going to have all kinds of feelings. What would you say to them? Like just put a button on this, like, you know, you care about them? Do you want them to stay here? Speak to them directly about all the concerns that they've had about your leadership. So I think what I would say to our teachers is, you know, hanging there with us. We care about you. We want you to thrive, not just personally, but professionally. We want to rebuild the incredible district that we are. We want people to know what a great organization we have. We want people to know that we are doing really great work in our district and value your contributions to our community. And uplift that. Come see me. Send me an email. Let's meet. Let's talk over coffee. I'll come meet you in your classroom. Let me hear from you. And, you know, show me all the great work that's happening. I'm happy to come and visit and cheer you on with all the great work that you're doing. Yeah. And when I was at the board meeting, when the contract was formally approved, you talked. You opened up, you know, about your personal story. Being an immigrant. Learning English here. Having to navigate through the system. Overcome systemic discrimination. So let's talk about that. You know, I wrote a little bit about that when you were first hired. I think understanding your origin story is really helpful to people seeing how you lead. So talk to me about coming to this country, how old you were and what your life was like. Because I think you're very proud of yourself. You said it in the meeting. And I'm sure everyone is proud of you, your family, how far you've come. So I came to this country when I was 11 years old. And, you know, I was in 1976, the same 10 year old by Centennial of this country. I talked a little bit about my mom and my dad. My mom being able to only access a secondary education. And she's so proud of having become a good reader and a good mathematician just with those two years of education. And I've told this story many times. My mother had to make breakfast for her teacher every morning to be able to access that classroom. And that really informs my leadership. To think that a little girl, and she lost her mother when she was nine. So she was raised by her father and her grandmother who lived, you know, several doors down in the community. She was very clear that we came to this country to get an education. She was very clear that she wanted us to be bilingual and educated because she knew that that was a way out of poverty. And that informs a lot of my, what I do and why I care about reading and why I care about kids and education. When I came here, I didn't speak English. I went into a classroom with an English-only program. I had teachers that looked like my uncles that did not speak Spanish. I was pulled out of the classroom for an hour and a half with Mrs. Taylor, who I will forever be grateful to, who had my older brother and I were two years apart. And the three of us would go into Mrs. Taylor's class to learn English. That was fifth grade, sixth grade, by seventh grade. I was just thrown into classes where all instruction was in English. I had no idea what people were saying to me. And somehow I took it in and figured it out. I can't tell you how. I'm amazed that I was able to achieve what I did in school. I was made fun of. I was... Where was this at? This was in LA. And, you know, many times I basically kind of went along with people to sort of like, "Oh, everybody's moving somewhere. Let me get up and move." You know, just kind of things that you experience as a non-new speaker and understanding the culture of the school system. But I also had really incredible teachers that tapped into me and said, "You know, you could be a leader." And Mrs. Stillwagon, in eighth grade, said to me, "You should run for a government office." And I was like, "What is that?" And people helped me. They helped me create flyers. I ran for eighth grade student representatives. And I had an opportunity to go to other junior high schools outside of our school district to learn about leadership and talk about that. And I'm amazed because I don't think I processed it like I would now as a 59-year-old. Right? So that's why I said in my comments that I'm a reluctant leader, people have told me I have leadership skills. I don't think I've always thought of myself as a leader. I'm one of six children. And my younger brother, when we came to the U.S., he and I graduated a year apart. He went to trade school. He wanted to work as a mechanic. And I went to college, community college. And, you know, he presented with bipolar disorder. I say it now. At the time, he lived like something was wrong with him. And I remember in episode where I went to my mom and my sister. And I said, "He doesn't make sense. He's talking. He doesn't talk like he's there. We need to take him to the doctor." We went to the hospital and we took him. And the doctor's at County Hospital, you wait like six hours. We didn't know health insurance or anything to guide us. They stood in the corner of the clinic and they came out and looked at their chart. They said his name. We all stood up right away. They looked at the chart. They came up to my mom and they said, "He's probably been drinking or doing drugs. Take him home. Let him sleep it off." And something was born in me that day. I fought with the doctors. And I said, "Hold on a second. You didn't do blood work. You didn't look into his eyes. You haven't even checked and were asked him any questions. I am telling you, my brother is not doing drugs or drinking. Please prove to me that that is the reason." And so they took him in. And my mother was so upset with me because she's like, "You never treat doctors. That's not the way you talk to them." Because culturally that's how we're trained. These are professional people with educations. Why should we question their judgment or their authority? But they came back and they said, "We're going to do a 72-hour hold." I don't know if you're familiar with that. But that 72-hour hold became a two-week hold. And that became nine years of trying to treat my brother. I went to court based on social workers and counselors asking me to become a legal guardian. I became his legal guardian and most of my 20s were spent taking care of my brother. And unfortunately he died by suicide. And that's something that I've carried with me, that I've had a lot of shame and guilt about. Because I felt like I was in some way responsible for his suicide. And that's typical of survivors of suicide. Three years later, I had my son and my younger sister had her son. And we both had sons about four months apart. A year and a half after she had her son, she was diagnosed with a very rare form of lupus and she passed away about a year later. And so I found we had now these two or three-year-old sons. We've had a brother died by suicide, six years of sister died from lupus. And then I got a divorce. And I don't believe my ex-husband for leaving me. I was probably a hot mess and didn't even know it. Because when you're going through that much grief and that much trauma, you just can't be a normal human. But at the same time, I had to make a living. And I had to figure out, okay, so how am I going to now be a single parent and raise my son? And so I began to be tapped. And I think when you're in high trauma, you almost work double or you work harder because you're so worried about having to present yourself at work as a very competent person, but you're really deep down inside suffering. And I think that sort of, you know, I began to be asked to take on more and more leadership posts. But I'm very informed by that period of my time. You know, that period of time in the sense that I think it's made me stronger in one way. I think it could have made me stronger even in like dealing with my own emotions. So throughout the years, I've sought help to try to figure out how to deal with that. I think most recently with my nephew passing away also by suicide, one of my best friends dying from cancer after only being retired for a year and a half. You know, really opened up some of those wounds and reminded me that I need to continue to be healthy in my mental health. The journey into becoming a leader is sort of marked by all these pivotal moments in my life and inform my leadership. And then I also was just tapped into, I was highly invested in by previous leaders to access leadership programs, that taught me different ways of learning, different ways of leading, including the coach that I got when I got here, who really helped me to think about, you know, how to manage myself first. And I think another part of my journey just in terms of thinking about leadership and thinking about the work that I became in many ways specialized in emergent multilingual programs in LA Unified. And I did that for two reasons. I was the student that is the emergent multilingual. And I really wanted to be the teacher that I needed. And I really wanted to meet the needs that I needed as a student back then. And my goal was to learn more about how do we do that. In 1988, the state of California passed a law that said we cannot teach Spanish anymore in our classrooms. I don't know if you recall or covered that. Propped into seven. And so part of that work led me to think deeply about how the heck are we going to do this. How do we look at a person and go, you don't speak English, but I'm going to completely teach you how to speak English in English. And never really acknowledge your identity and your language and your roots. And I think that's also informed a lot of my leadership. And that really hits me on many levels. Do you feel like people don't know the real you? I feel that it's hard for people to get to know the real me because nobody sits down with me and has these kinds of conversations because we're all separate and apart in our schools and our classrooms and in our lives. When I've had the opportunity to go and meet people and hear what their real issue is, I've always come away enriched by their story and I've had an opportunity to tell a little bit about mine and that has always resulted in better relationships or in a group. And I think that, yes, I think it's hard to get to know the real me when I am in a leadership role running a large system. Well, I really appreciate your time and us being able to have this conversation and address a lot of these issues. Is there anything I did not ask you that you feel you would like to share with the audience? Yes, there is. There's so much we can do for our podcast. So before we wrap up, I'll give you the floor. What didn't I ask you about that you want people to know? What's going well? What's going well? What's the new cabinet like? How is that working out? So I'll answer my own question. If that works for you, you know that I'm, you know, following about being a journalist. So that's totally fine. And I didn't even ask you what you thought of my coverage the last two years. You can discuss that later. But I really want to say that I'm so proud of the previous cabinet and the current cabinet leaders. Everybody has their own sets of skills, knowledge, and experiences that they bring to the table. I'm proud to have a very diverse cabinet, both ethnicity-wise and experience-wise. The cross has many districts across California. I am proud of the work we're doing and elementary of unreading. I'm proud of the teachers. I'm proud of the fact that they've called out to me about math and how much we need to improve math and how the rollout of the program. The rollout of the previous math adoption used to be improved. And we've come back with our principles and our elementary principles are just knocking out of the park. They're incredible. We have many rising stars in our elementary principal, just like we do in junior high and in high school. And I think it's so important for people to know there are great things happening every day in Santa Barbara Unified. And I know those all make the news. I invite you to come with me on a tour of classrooms. To come with me to see the great things that are happening and the ways that we are working differently, that I believe is going to start to creep up that achievement gap. Last year we had incredible gains in reading and in math. Are they where we need to be? Absolutely not. So I'm never going to say like, wow, we hit it on the park. We don't. We still have so much work to do. But the work is happening and it's happening differently. And I invite you to come and see it. I invite you to meet our cabinet members to get to know them as well. They're incredible leaders. We're so proud of John Becky, the last man standing who has been just an incredible champion to us and was our chief negotiator and has done so much work. Have we made a lot of mistakes? Absolutely. We are a teaching and learning organization. And so we should hold ourselves accountable for that. And I hope to role model that myself by being a learner, by being a listener, and by being a teacher. And I'm hoping that people can know that about me and can know that, yes, it's okay. You don't have to like all my decisions and it's okay to criticize. But I'm really looking for constructive feedback. Critical feedback is one thing, constructive feedback is another thing. Because there's always ways to get better. And that's what I'm hoping to achieve in the next couple of years. Well, I gave you constructive feedback in my top 10 public relations. You gave the board and I constructive feedback. And we did take some of them changes. Yes, we did. Yes, we did. So I thank you for that. And I thank you for covering us and I encourage you to continue to cover not just the news that we know people want to see, but also think about doing some of the great coverage of the good things that are happening. And I don't know. They may not get as many clicks. You'll tell me. We do a little bit about that. But yes, there's a couple hundred people protesting. We got to cover that. Absolutely you should. And there's also a couple hundred resilient kids thriving. Yes, well, hopefully a lot more than that. But it's been a pleasure and I appreciate you taking time to answer all these questions and just kind of address all this stuff head on as we are about to start a new school year. You know, when I was a kid, we didn't start until after Labor Day. And now we start with like middle of August, late August. Oh, that's a whole other controversy right there that you're going with. It's a negotiated calendar. You guys threw in three weeks of vacation. Now you're back to two, right? We are negotiating now for the following year because it's a two year calendar negotiation cycle, I believe. And so we've been getting feedback about the three years. And I have to tell you, it's so hard to get feedback in this district because it's always 50/50. And so, you know, you're going to make 50% happy and 50% upset either way. I just have not had like overwhelming results in every time we've done surveys and feedback. So that's a little tough. Yeah. That's Santa Barbara for you. And my daughter will be, she will be in you at Santa Barbara unified in two years. Well, you know what, when she comes to our district and even at this opening of the school year, we're hoping that she'll experience a joyful learning environment that sees who she is, that meets her where she needs to be met, and that gets her to the rigorous levels that we want our kids to achieve. But she's in Galita Unified and, you know, we're pretty happy. Yes, Galita Union is incredible. I said that last time and I got correct. Galita Union, of course. All our feeder districts are incredible. Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks a lot, Ildamoldenado, and please hit subscribe on YouTube. Visit SantaBarberTalks.com and I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Thank you. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]