Next Schools Chief Brings Unifying Skill to Santa Ana

Toting the latest batch of student sketches to land in his lap, city schools superintendent Alfred Mijares zipped across town one day last week, anxious to squeeze his daily fix of classroom visits into a calendar stuffed with closed-door meetings.

He burst into Dory Lomas’ classroom at Owens Elementary School, handing the colorful drawings back to a proud group of third- and fourth-grade artists who stood barely waist-high next to the 6-foot-2-inch superintendent.

“ Que bonito , this is very nice,” Mijares told one girl, mixing the Spanish he spoke to his Mexican-born father with the English he learned in California’s public schools. “No legs, hombre ,” he playfully chided a young boy. “What happened to that?”

The 10-minute visit to Lomas’ room, and another brief stop at a second-grade class, are part of a daily ritual for the head of the Bakersfield City School District, who was recently tapped to run Orange County’s largest school district, Santa Ana Unified.

Dropping in at a different campus each day reminds him what the job is really about.

“I’m interested in those kids who are considered--I hate to use the word ‘deprived’--those students who don’t seem to have all the opportunities,” said Mijares, the child of migrant farm workers who will earn more than $100,000 in his new job.

“Those students excite me more,” he added. “There’s something that moves me inside. Maybe I see myself in them. Maybe I just like the underdog.”

At 41, Mijares has made a rapid climb up the administrative ladder, with virtually no experience as a classroom teacher. He began his career with a special education credential, became principal of a high school for expelled students and has presided over districts with high poverty rates.

As superintendent in Bakersfield, he runs a $105-million budget and serves 26,500 students. When he takes over in Santa Ana, those numbers will double.

The fourth of eight children born to parents who never finished high school, Mijares spent his early years shuttling around California’s agricultural valleys, picking fruit with other migrant families. Later, his father scrambled to find gardening work and other odd jobs so the children could stay in one place long enough to get an education.

Mijares ultimately graduated from Simi Valley High School in 1971, then went to Cal State Northridge on a scholarship. Later, he earned a master’s degree in social welfare from UC Berkeley, and a doctorate in social work at USC.

“My father made it exceptionally clear that education was the key to success,” Mijares said. “He used his own life as an example.”

Now, those who have worked closely with Mijares praise his ability to set an example and serve as a role model for students and parents in the heavily Latino school districts he has led.

Peter Parra, a school board member in Bakersfield, recalled asking students whether they knew Mijares.

“The reaction was, ‘Dr. Mijares used to be a farm worker like we are, and now he is superintendent. And I want to be superintendent.’ He made everybody feel good about themselves,” Parra said. “He brought hope to this city, this district and this community. He will be missed.”

Mijares began his first term as a school superintendent in 1990 in Coachella Valley Unified, near Indio, a sprawling rural district serving a new generation of migrant workers, with a student body that was 97% Latino. In 1993, he moved to Bakersfield, the state’s largest elementary-only district, where 54% of the students are Latino, and Mijares was the first ethnic minority to serve as superintendent.

Santa Ana Unified’s student body is 87% Latino. Nearly three-quarters of its 48,286 students are learning English as their second language, and among the elementary students, 80% are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-cost meal programs.

Though the district’s demographics--coupled with low standardized test scores and a high dropout rate--frighten away many educators, they are the main reason Mijares chose to accept the new post. He succeeds Rudy Castruita, who left this summer to head the San Diego County Department of Education.

“I like the demographics,” Mijares said. “If I am a scientist and somebody says to me, ‘You have an opportunity to work in an experiment that could have a major impact on your field of study,’ I want to look at it. I think (Santa Ana) will be an opportunity for me to lead and take risks.”

The ambitious Mijares’ tenure in most jobs has been better measured in months rather than years. While colleagues, employees and community leaders praise his integrity, communications skill and motivational leadership, he has left a few concrete accomplishments in educational programs.

Through writing and speaking at national education forums, Mijares has built a reputation as a deft financial manager and an ardent supporter of bilingual education. Closer to home, he earns credit for broadening parents’ and employees’ access to the decision-making process.

“The thing I think he is the best at is communication. I’ve seen him do that in a room with several thousand, and I’ve seen him do it with a parent in a hallway,” said Bakersfield school board President Mike Maggard. “He can leave a room with some people holding their sides from laughing and others near tears because he touched them.”

In Coachella Valley, Mijares began as assistant superintendent for instruction in 1989, and was swept into the top job a few months later, as the district confronted bankruptcy. Mijares slashed 20% of the budget and cut 186 jobs, then borrowed $7.3 million from the state, which stepped in to oversee the district’s administration.

Since coming to Bakersfield in January, 1993, Mijares’ main goals have been to build a districtwide vision of excellence and to decentralize district administration.

He has established superintendent “cabinets,” modeled after the top policy-makers on presidential cabinets: one for teachers, another for classified employees, a third for parents and a special, “problem-solving” cabinet made up of school principals and district administrators.

When it came time to appoint new principals, Mijares asked school-based committees of employees and parents to screen candidates and establish priorities. And he has changed the decision-making process at the school board level to allow for more public discussion of controversial items.

“He’s caring and concerned about the employees, but I can’t say that he really has done anything programmatically different that’s going to have a lasting effect on the district,” said Pam Baugher, who heads the Bakersfield teachers’ union and has worked in the district 26 years. “He started some things, but there’s no closure to what he started.”

Santa Ana school board members said they are somewhat concerned about Mijares’ short stays in previous jobs. They are hoping to get a three-year commitment from him when they finalize his contract Tuesday. But Mijares had a similar three-year contract in Bakersfield, and is leaving before the second year is over.

Mijares said he has no specific plans yet for the Santa Ana superintendency, a job he will likely start in January.

“I’m just going to get to know people,” he said. “I want to get a feel for the community.”

Regarding his move to Santa Ana after close to two years in Bakersfield, he added: “I’m still in public schools. I’m still in the fray. I’m still meeting the same challenges. It doesn’t matter whether my hat says ‘Bakersfield’ or ‘Santa Ana’ or ‘Coachella,’ I’m still doing the same thing.”

Among a dozen school board members and employees in his previous districts, Mijares is universally lauded as both a hard-worker and a devoted family man.

His days in Bakersfield often begin with 6:30 a.m. breakfast meetings (bran muffin and ice water for Mijares) at the local Marie Callender’s. It is typically 12 hours later when he returns home to his wife and five sons, aged three to 16.

Raised Catholic but now regularly attending a nondenominational Christian church, Mijares names the Bible as his favorite book. His office is decorated with a USC Trojan clock and a collection of photographs of children at school and at play.

The desk is neat except for half-drunk Big Gulps of Diet Pepsi--Mijares grabs a sip and a handful of M & Ms from the gum ball machine on a bookshelf before sitting down to start a meeting.

“I hope I’m perceived as one who listens and one who cares and not one who is out to manipulate or exploit,” Mijares said. “I am driven by a need to make an ethical decision, one that is right. I’m tired of the political and social expediency.”

Maggard and others described Mijares as both a simple, down-home guy and an impressive intellectual. He punctuates conversation with the casual, “man,” but often throws in a word that sends college graduates looking for a dictionary.

He struggles always to build consensus, which sometimes leads to slow, methodical decision-making, school board members in Bakersfield said. But this was a key quality that helped attract a unanimous vote to hire Mijares by the five Santa Ana Unified trustees, who have been bitterly divided over many issues during the past year.

“What was surprising is that we could differ so much philosophically on major issues and see the same qualities in a superintendent and agree that those qualities are what we wanted,” said board member Audrey Yamagata-Noji.

“I think it brought the board together,” Trustee Rosemarie Avila said of the superintendent search process. “We just found (Mijares) to be very fair. He listens to everyone and he’s very, very fair.”

To Mijares, that impression is the highest compliment.

“To me, what’s most important is how you work with people,” he said at the end of a two-hour interview in his office. “I just want people to feel that I was fair. And if I blew it, I come back and say, ‘Doggone it, I’m sorry, I’ll do better next time.’ ”

Profile: Alfred Mijares

Born: 1953, in Pasadena

Education: Simi Valley High, 1971

Cal State Northridge, 1976

UC Berkeley, master’s in social welfare, 1978

USC, Ph.D. in social work, 1987

Career highlights: Worked with physically handicapped infants, Paramount Unified School District; principal of alternative high school and director of instruction, Moreno Valley Unified; assistant superintendent for instruction and superintendent, Coachella Valley Unified; superintendent, Bakersfield City School District.

Family: Married, five sons, ages 3 to 16