Page 6 - Sanger Herald 8-16-18 E-edition

SANGER HERALD 6A THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2018
Matt Navo reminisces about the extraordinary, defining
moments during his tenure as superintendent of schools
By Dick Sheppard
Sanger Herald
It was just some kind of weird coincidence.
I didn't know the new superintendent of schools Adela Jones was going to be talking to the general session audience on Wednesday about extraordinary, defining moments when, a week earlier the former superintendent Matt Navo and I had breakfast at the Blossom Trail Cafe, just north of town.
I asked Matt to reminisce about his five year tenure as superintendent of one of the top school districts in the state.
Sipping his black coffee and picking at a breakfast of scrambled eggs with a couple of slices of tomatoes on top, Matt, looking more relaxed than I had seen him in years, began his comments with:
"I don't have a great linear memory of all that time. But there were some great extraordinary moments that helped me grow into the job. I'll always remember those."
One of those extraordinary moments had to do with Matt's first general session in 2013, welcoming all the employees back to school as a brand new superintendent.
"I had a great conversation with a guy by the name of Rudy Crew when I first became superintendent. He was superin- tendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation's fourth-largest school district ... a huge heavy hitter – and as
a new superintendent – my first couple of months – I was invited to a dinner at Central Unified where Rudy was speak- ing. I got introduced and he asked how I was doing as a new superintendent and I said, 'Okay I guess.'
But it was summer and school was about to start and I was beginning to panic about speaking at the general session. Marc Johnson started the tradition of the superintendent speaking at the general session – before Marc, somebody else always spoke. So everyone was expecting me to get up and say something and no one had ever heard me give a speech before.
Crew asked, so what are you having anxiety about and I told him and he said 'Lets cut the crap, what are you really bothered about?' And told him following the national super- intendent of the year ... probably one of the best speakers I have ever heard and having to get up on stage in front of all the district's employees and having to do a pretty darn good enough job for people to believe I’m going to be able to do this superintendent job.
Then Crew gave me the best advice I’ve ever had, which led me to a lot of those things that happened later. He said, 'Picture a pretty garden – you’ve got a pretty garden because the district had a national superintendent of the year and its achievements are up – but every garden has weeds. All you’ve got to do is find those weeds and you’ll find your work."
I remember thinking about that and asking where are those weeds? I thought about my own struggle with literacy and I pulled all the data from Sanger Unified about literacy and I realized we were doing really well on the assessments but kids weren’t leaving us able to read on grade level. We had done such an incredible job of teaching them the skills to navigate the tests that we failed to address the real literacy skills they needed to build a strong foundation for the rest of their lives. And I said, that’s my task, that’s what I’m going to focus my efforts on. I remember standing at that first general session and I remembered what Crew said about speaking – he said, 'Don’t try to be Marc Johnson. No one can be Marc Johnson. Just be yourself and people will come to appreciate
an authentic delivery. Don’t try to be something you can’t be.' I remember standing on the general session stage and
the first thing I said was, 'We’re going to put a full press on literacy,' and that set the stage for everything else.
When I walked off that stage for the first time, that was probably the greatest sense of relief I ever had in my life.
Once I realized I could really do it, I started to get my focus really narrowed and it was the start of some great guided reading work we’ve done over the past five years.
If we go back into the data now and see what’s happened with our third, fourth and fifth graders who have been in our guided reading program since kindergarten, they have had so much growth in their ability to read. All our data for this test is off the charts. So, for me, that first general session was re- ally important because it laid the groundwork for the next five years ... and I found out there was value in who I was, not in who they wanted me to be.
Matt had a tough decision to make right out of the gate.
I remember the first decision I had to make as a superin- tendent was about the high school graduation.
Here I am with nothing but minimal district office experi- ence and I already have the fire chief breathing down my neck about the concerns of a packed stadium and its ability to hold all the kids and all the parents.
So, moving forward with let’s find an alternative solution was my first, right out of the gate, maybe the potential for the least popular decision I would make.
But the end of that graduation in the Save Mart Center was the moment of complete satisfaction that this was the right move because it was 105 degrees outside and we were all in- side where it was cool, the kids brought as many family mem- bers as they wanted – didn’t have to leave anybody home. Dan [Chacon] and his team just did an absolutely fantastic job of making that event incredibly celebratory.
I’ll never forget the Save Mart Center people coming over and saying, 'We have had hundreds of graduations in this cen- ter and not only was this by far the most well attended, this was the best graduation we’ve ever had here.
And at that moment I thought again, 'Wow, I can do this job.'
There were other extraordinary moments during his five years as superintendent that brought great satisfaction.
That graduation was one and then when we ventured into the agreement with POM Wonderful that was the second
one. That was a big one. It opened up the first 'pathway' at Sanger High School. It was at first not a popular partnership with local farmers because POM Wonderful is such a massive industry. The farmers wanted to know why we were interested in creating a pathway with such a big conglomerate.
But seeing that pathway develop over the last five years and seeing the other pathways come alongside because they were so powerful ... I think the pinnacle of that moment wasn’t captured until last year’s graduation when those 24 students graduated with an AA degree even before they graduated from high school.
There’s nowhere else in the world where this could have happened except right here in the Sanger Unified School Dis- trict.
I remember talking to Brayden Wise’s mom, Andrea, and her saying, 'The POM Wonderful pathway was the best thing that could have happened to Brayden because going into
high school he was not sure about his future. The pathway provided him with skills he would never have known he pos- sessed. The pathway helped grow his love for ag and all the possibilitieswithnewtechnology. Theprogramalsogavehim a tremendous beginning to his college journey as a graduate ofhighschoolwithanAAdegree. He'llbeabletojointhe workforce in as little as two years with a four year degree.'
She said she thought Matt Canaday had been tremendously
instrumental in the program's success.
Brayden was one of the best welders we had coming out of
our welding shop and that was one of the triggers to upgrade the welding shop – $1.3 million we put into upgrade that shop to meet the requirements of Reedley College so those kids could have the AA degree.
Again, I think the pinnacle of that was at that graduation – that was just such a huge step we were able to create for those kids.
Many decisions a superintendent has to make have about an equal chance of success and failure. Matt shared the ex- traordinary moment when he decided how and why to make tough decisions and live
with the result.
I had a conversation with John Deasy - another heavy hitter - who was superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District within my first year as superintendent.
When we were coming out of a meeting John asked where I was going next and I told him I had to catch a plane and he said, I’ll take you, and I thought he was going to go get his car. He made a call and a limo and a body guard showed up.
When I got in the limo I asked if it was bulletproof and John said, 'Yes it is.'
I asked how a super- intendent gets to a place where he needs a body guard and a bulletproof car.
This is a Herald file photo of Na- vo. When we got together for breakfast, right after he got back from vacation, he was wearing an untucked shirt, walking shorts and sandals and looking very, very relaxed.
John said, 'When you have a school district with 650,000 students there’s no telling what decisions you’ve made that will upset people.' He said it was a good week because he had only had surveillance on his home for four days. He said, 'Matt, I’m going to give you some advice – you can do the right thing for the right reasons all the time and just be prepared not to last very long as a superintendent and as long as you accept that you’ll be fine.' Basically, I think what he was say- ing was, if you’re doing the right work, expect that your tenure will be short because doing the right work, you do it at a cost. You just have to accept it. You play the politic game and you can last awhile because you won’t be doing the right thing. So it was about a year after that, that John was fired because he took on a board member and lost.
I remember thinking he was right, if I want to last forever I could pull back on all the things that are going to put pressure on me and on the district, but if I accept that my tenure will be as long as it needs to be, then I’ll just do the right thing and accept the consequences.
That’s how I came to accept that I might have a short ten- ure as long as I did the right thing.
But I wasn’t in the job to try to last until retirement, I wasn’t in the job for whatever prestige or financial freedom it gave me, I did the job because it gave me the opportunity to do the right thing for the kids.
Either get in the game or stand on the sidelines – and I wanted to be in the game.
Theywereallrisksthatwereworthtaking.
Making those decisions allowed me to set some things in motionthatwhenyoulookback -Ihopethatwhenpeople look back a few years from now they'll say, that was some- thing started in Navo’s time on the job.
We'll continue next week with Matt's memories of some of the defining moments he experienced as the former superin- tendent of Sanger schools.
He retired at the end of the last school year and Adela Jones took over the helm in the school district and is now experiencing - and creating - her own extraordinary, defining moments - see the story on the front page.
Matt is now with WestEd Center for Prevention & Early Intervention.
WestEd is a nonprofit organization. Its mission statement says it's a research, development and services agency that works with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity and improve learning for children, youth and adults.
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