Novato's New Schools Superintendent Settles In

Novato’s new superintendent of schools has spent most of her first few days on the job doing two things: introducing herself to Novato Unified School District employees and ignoring the unpacked boxes in her office.

“I’m putting my feelers out with the staff that’s here,” said Shalee Cunningham, who replaced Jan La Torre-Derby as of Monday. “It’s nice to start in July because we have limited people working right now. I’ll get to know everybody over time. But there are a couple of issues we’re going to have to deal with right away.”

Cunningham, former superintendent of schools in Steamboat Springs, Colo., is a fifth-generation Sonoma County native who agreed to a four-year contract with NUSD on April 19.

La Torre-Derby announced last fall that she would be stepping down and retiring at the end of the 2010-11 school year. She left two months early because of an illness in the family, but she is working two days a week through the end of July.

“She and I went over the budget,” Cunningham said. “It looks good, but I do see a lot of reductions in staff. We have a lot of vacancies. We’re glad to have the (state) budget done, though; in some years in mid-July it wasn’t complete. At least we know.”

Cunningham said her priorities are continuing to watch the budget and learning more about asset allocation and demographics. Later, there is sure to be discussions about redistricting and altering the geographic drawing boundaries for each school.

“I’m really trying to rein all this in,” she said.

The hot-button topic — the future of Rancho Elementary School — is one she’s not ready to approach. Rancho, the highest-scoring and least ethnically diverse elementary school in the district, does not have neighborhood boundaries; it draws from all over the city and enrolls children through a lottery. Proponents of the system say the stellar test results speak for themselves and the lottery could not be more fair. Opponents say it’s time to change Rancho, a former “back to basics” school, into a neighborhood school like all the others.

Cunningham said multiple studies and reports need to be gathered before the board of trustees has what it needs to assess the Rancho situation.

“I don’t think there’s going to be one single report that’s going to help the board make that decision, and that’s going to take some time,” she said.