Superintendent to Retire From Ocean View School District

Supt. Donald Hodes, who has served in the Ocean View School District for 18 years, will retire July 1, school officials said Wednesday.

Hodes, 66, was associate superintendent at the kindergarten through eighth-grade south Oxnard district for 14 years before taking over the top position in 1992. He is retiring after 44 years as an educator.

“The last 18 years of my career were at Ocean View, and they were the best of my career,” Hodes said. “The people in this district have been wonderful to work with. We are not politicians.”

Paul Chatman, president of the 2,450-student district’s board of trustees, praised Hodes for keeping the welfare and education of children as his first priority.

Hodes also received praise from teacher unions.

Helen Faul, president of the Ocean View Educators’ Assn., commended Hodes for “consistently bargaining in good faith” during contract negotiations. “We’ve reached accord during both good and bad financial climates,” she said.

Hodes became a principal at the age of 26. During the 1960s, he was instrumental in establishing President Lyndon Johnson’s National Teacher Corps in Southern California.

He was project director at the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools office and taught at Cal State Long Beach, UCLA and USC, where he earned his doctorate.

Hodes specialized in early childhood education, was a key planner for the first Head Start program in Los Angeles County in 1965, and served as assistant superintendent in Compton between 1967 and 1976.

Hodes will be honored at a celebration June 15.