Jason Glass, an educator with experience in state and university systems, has been meeting with community members, elected leaders and city officials since joining the Laguna Beach Unified School District this month as its superintendent.
Following tours of the district’s campuses, Glass said he’s impressed by the facilities and, as they fill back up with students when classes resume in August, he looks forward to developing a closer relationship with the school communities.
Most recently, Glass, 53, served as the associate vice president of teaching and learning at Western Michigan University. He’s also been the commissioner of education for the state of Kentucky and the director of education for the state of Iowa. Before that, he worked at the Jeffco Public Schools, Colorado’s second-largest district, and in the Eagle County School District.
While the position at LBUSD, with its total student population of about 2,500 in grades K through 12, differs from his most recent titles, Glass said he sees parallels despite the size and influence.
“The work of improving experiences for students remains of paramount importance,” he said, along with supporting the school board with good policy decisions. “Making good decisions on budgeting and how we deliver services, those remain similar regardless the size of the organization. A lot of the problems, though the scale is different, they’re the same fundamental things you work on.”
And, the district’s reputation — about two-thirds of students go to four-year universities — was important, Glass said. He has two children who will attend Thurston Middle School in the fall.
“Laguna Beach rose high up just because of the quality it can bring to our family,” he said. “At this phase in life, we were hoping for something more tight-knit and to be stitched into a community, both for our kids and also for the whole family.”
Glass is one of “the most experienced and qualified superintendents we have had for at least two decades,” Trustee Howard Hills said. “At a time when national education experts view California school board politics as financially crisis-driven and politically confrontational, he comes from the heartland with fresh new perspectives and ideas. He has civic governance maturity; we need to enhance an underperforming governance culture.”
And, Glass understands, Hills said, that increased compliance with state education code and district bylaws is imperative to ensure equity, achievement and puts families and students first in both the classroom and the boardroom.
The board tapped Glass after a four-month search following trustees reaching a separation agreement with former superintendent Jason Viloria, who had served LBUSD for nearly nine years. Following November’s elections and changes on the board, trustees wanted to select leadership that aligned with their vision for the district’s future, several said at the time.
Glass said that assessing his priorities will come from the time he spends over the next few months listening, learning, gathering context and information. He plans to present a comprehensive plan of steps forward to the board in October, but said he knows that maintaining the district’s high standards and high outcomes remains a steadfast priority in the board’s overall wishes.
“They are also interested in taking care of the staff; there is a deep concern for the professionals who work here,” Glass said. “Laguna Beach is sort of a destination district for educational professionals. That’s something that they all want to protect and maintain. They’ve all benefited personally from being connected to this district, either as students themselves, or as parents of kids that have gone through the system, or they’ve just been community members who’ve benefited from having a great school system here.”
Glass said the academic success the district has seen, as well as the expectations its board and community have come to expect, parallels what one would find at a “high-performing, private day school.”
“Those expectations will continue for me and we need to keep delivering on that,” he said. “Higher education and going to college still have a higher return on investment. But there are other paths that have opened up as well, and it’s not the only thing. We’re a public system, too, so we need to serve everyone. It’s our responsibility to lay out in front of them a way to support that future, whatever that dream is.”
The district’s strong resources, Glass said, afford him an opportunity to show what a public school district can accomplish.
Some ideas he’s considering involve leaning even further into the arts and finding more ways to integrate them into learning, as well as partnering with higher-learning institutions such as the Laguna College of Art and Design and other nearby universities, where students could participate in dual-credit programs. He headed up the dual-credit program at Western Michigan University.
The district’s facilities, which he described as well-maintained and beautiful, are also places Glass said he thinks could be used more by the overall community. And, from his experience at Jeffco District, home to Columbine High School, he is also keenly aware of the need for security at school campuses.
“We have to think about how we can provide the same level of security now that (the school violence) threat is unfortunately part of our world,” he said, adding some of the enhanced security could come from greater human presence, locking door systems, camera systems and proactive approaches, such as counseling and early warning systems for when someone is in distress.
Overall, Glass said he is excited to build a plan looking to the future of what the community and parents want for their students. That was something he did when he was the education commissioner in Kentucky, his home state, he said.
“In Kentucky, my work focused on building a state education direction built on the priorities Kentuckyians had,” he said. “I’d love to do something like that here as we think about the next 10 years, that we’re focused on what Laguna Beach wants for its kids and its schools.”