EUSD's Next Superintendent
Dr. Luis Ibarra is retiring next year. The Board has yet to address their next steps.
In his April 27, 2025 Every Day Counts email to families in the district, Escondido Union School District (EUSD) Superintendent Dr. Luis Ibarra announced his intention to retire at the conclusion of the 2025-2026 school year, after serving the district since 2014. He had already announced his plans to the board before spring break, several weeks earlier.
Such a long notice is unusual but it gives the school board ample time to recruit a replacement. However, two months later, the board has not indicated how they plan to proceed and at the last board meeting, leadership for certificated and classified employees expressed concern.
What I’m hearing: In the absence of communication from the board, I have heard rumors begin to circulate that they have already selected a Superintendent without any community input, and that the candidate may be someone without experience as an educator or school administrator.
Until we hear from the board, these are just rumors, but they highlight the concerns from families, employees and others in the community.
Why it matters: Hiring the Superintendent is one of the most important jobs of the school board. EUSD deserves a qualified and seasoned superintendent to oversee the ongoing challenges the district faces, such as declining enrollment, low student test scores, chronic absenteeism, and underperformance of English language learners. Families, staff and members of the community value transparency from our board and want to know they are looking for the best candidate for our district who has the demonstrated experience to effectively address these and the unexpected issues that will arise over a potentially long tenure.
What you can do: Make sure the board hears from you! School boards are accountable to parents, students, teachers and residents of the district. If you have an opinion on how the board selects our next Superintendent, you’ll find instructions at the end of this article on how to contact the board.
The agenda for the next meeting has been posted and I’ve been told the board will finally provide some insight into their plans at the board meeting on June 17, 2025 at 7:00pm following their closed session discussion. If you are unable to attend in person, you can join the livestream.
EUHSD’s process
Our high school district recently went through the Superintendent recruitment process. In May 2023, the Escondido Union High School District (EUHSD) learned that their Superintendent, Dr. Anne Staffieri was leaving to become the new Superintendent for the San Dieguito Union High School District. In order to install a new Superintendent before the start of the 2023-2024 school year, the EUHSD board decided to proceed with a fast-paced, targeted search performed by Leadership Associates, a recruitment firm that specializes in executive positions in school districts.
Despite the rushed timeline, EUHSD created an online survey to gather community input and representatives from Leadership Associates hosted an input session to hear directly from parents and guardians, staff and other members of the community. Ultimately, the EUHSD board hired long-time school board trustee Jon Petersen who had resigned from the board to apply for the position. As a parent frustrated with the rushed process, I shared my concerns in an op-ed at the time. I wasn’t the only one who had questions about the board’s process and final decision.
At the time, the district’s decision to hire a former board member who resigned to apply for the position seemed highly unusual to me. However, I have since learned that the Lakeside Union Elementary and Chula Vista Elementary boards did the same thing in recent years. Lakeside hired Dr. Rhonda Taylor in 2021, shortly after she resigned from the board she had sat on for 5 years, and Chula Vista hired Dr. Eduardo Reyes in 2022, after he resigned from the board to apply for the position. In the case of these two elementary districts and EUHSD, the board performed a search and interviewed multiple candidates, and while they may have been biased in choosing a candidate that they had worked with on the board, the chosen candidates each had decades of experience in education, with careers spanning from classroom teacher, principal and district level administrator.
California Ed Code and EUSD board policy
It is no coincidence that the Superintendents cited above started as educators. In California, Superintendents of schools are required to have both teaching and school administration credentials. This is reflected in EUSD’s own board policy which states:
The selected candidate shall hold both a valid school administration certificate and a valid teacher's certificate.
- EUSD Board Policy 2120
However, the board can waive those credential requirements and the board policy provides no guidance on when and why they might do so.
In fact, school boards have great leeway in how they choose to select and recruit a new Superintendent. They may choose to promote someone within the district, or they may perform a search (or both, as we’ve seen). A search may be targeted, as in the case of EUHSD’s search which was performed entirely from within Leadership Associates network and yielded only 5 applicants, or it can be a full national search, yielding dozens of applicants. They may solicit community input, or they make make the decision unilaterally.
Best Practices
The CSBA recommends that school boards utilize a search firm and get stakeholder input to find quality candidates.
To ensure that a board finds the best possible candidates to fill a superintendent vacancy, experts recommend using a reputable search firm. Board members come from a variety of backgrounds and often have full-time jobs in addition to their board duties — hiring a search firm assures board members that dedicated experts will conduct a thorough and transparent search that will lead to quality candidates. - CSBA website
Concerns about EUSD’s plans
Comments made at EUSD’s May 22, 2025 board meeting (video and transcripts of this meeting can be found here) by Andrea Sima on behalf of the teachers’ union, EEEA, suggested that teachers are anticipating an internal promotion.
At this time, we have heard nothing about a search, and the concern is that an internal promotion will result in our district moving forward on the same path we have been on, which we don't see as making the adequate changes needed to promote student success as of yet. - Andrea Sima, EEEA
Sima ended her remarks with a request that the board get community input and perform a search. “Allow the community you are serving to have input and a voice in this enormous decision. Please conduct a search. We need the best. We deserve the best. And the decision is ultimately yours. The students depend on you.”
Sima also highlighted what she wants to see in a new Superintendent. Despite suggesting we need a change of path to better promote student success, she described a leader who comes from the classroom, as Dr. Ibarra did.
First and foremost, we need a leader…[w]ho has been on the front lines of teaching. We need a leader who understands the struggles and successes that teaching brings to the staff in this district. We need a leader who knows how to navigate contract language and how the impact of the contracts created by the people of this district are more than just the paper they're written on. That they impact our entire staff from CSEA, your management, and the teachers.
Reading between the lines, it seems as if some teachers are concerned that the board is going to forgo a Superintendent search, despite the ample time to perform one, and promote someone within the district who may not have experience as a teacher or school administrator.
Other changes in leadership
At the same board meeting, it was announced that 2 cabinet members, who had each been with the district for 8 years, were leaving for new positions. Chief Technology Officer Leonard LeVine has left to become the new Executive Director of Cybersecurity & Digital Privacy for SDCOE and Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services Dr. Laura Philyaw is moving to a similar position with the National Elementary School District.
Additionally, long-term employee Kimberley Israel, who was most recently the Coordinator of Community Outreach/Community Schools is leaving. Israel had been with the district for over 20 years and was a frequent presenter at EUSD’s school board meetings.
The concurrent loss of these 3 high profile district administrators is unusual. It is hard to know what to make of their departures in light of Dr. Ibarra’s announced retirement. Although the board has not spoken publicly about their plans to replace Ibarra, they have no doubt discussed the need for a new Superintendent during closed session and leaders within the district may be familiar with those discussions.
These departures leave 2 members of Dr. Ibarra’s cabinet intact: Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Andrew McGuire and Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Audrey Frank.
McGuire was hired in May 2021, during the pandemic, having previously served as the Director of Purchasing, Warehouse & Contracts for Hemet Unified.
Frank entered her role when she was appointed Interim Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources in October 2023 after the departure of Dr. John Albert. She was subsequently made permanent in May 2024. Prior to her appointment, she had been a principal at L.R. Green.
What other local districts have done
If the EUSD board is planning on an internal promotion, an existing cabinet member is the most likely candidate. Of the two remaining cabinet members, one has been in her position for just a year and the other has a background in business, not as a classroom educator. I researched what other local school districts have done, although in most cases, news coverage of Superintendent hires is hard to find. Through a combination of news articles and LinkedIn profiles, I was able to obtain some info on the Superintendents of nearly every school district in the county.
San Diego County is home to 42 school districts. Some are elementary districts, like EUSD, some are high school districts, like EUHSD, and some are unified districts that serve grades K-12. Districts range in size from less than 100 students (Spencer Valley Elementary) to over 95,000 (San Diego Unified). I focused on districts that include the grade ranges of EUSD.
Looking just at the 25 districts in the county that are Elementary or Unified and have at least 1000 students, only one has a Superintendent who is not a former teacher and principal - David Feliciano of the La Mesa-Spring Valley Elementary School District. Prior to his promotion, he was the Assistant Superintendent of Business Services.
I chose to ignore districts with fewer than 1000 students because, like our local San Pasqual Union Elementary district, they tend to be single school districts which don’t have the same needs as a 23-school district with 14,000 students like EUSD. However, even looking at all 36 Unified or Elementary districts in the county, there are only 2 other districts that have Superintendents who were not former teachers, and both have fewer than 500 students.
EUSD’s past Superintendents
EUSD has had 12 Superintendents since it was formed in 1934. While I cannot easily find histories on all past Superintendents, the last five Superintendents have been former teachers. And the four before that, going back to the late 1960s were most likely former teachers based on their Ed. D. degrees.
If the EUSD board promotes our Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, it would be the first Superintendent in decades, if not the history of the district, to not have been a classroom educator. And while not unprecedented, it would be a move that few school districts in the county have made.
What’s next
Again, until we hear from the board, we cannot be sure what they plan to do. Given the high level departures in the district and lack of communication from the board, the concerns expressed at the last board meeting and those I’ve heard since may be warranted. Given the size of our district along with the fiscal and academic challenges we face, we deserve a qualified and experienced superintendent to lead our district when Dr. Ibarra retires.
At this point, we do not know if the board will seek input from the community in their hiring decision. However, you can still make your voice heard. There are two ways to contact the board:
Attend the school board meeting on June 17, 2025 at 7:00pm at the district office (2310 Aldergrove Ave., Escondido, CA 92029) and share your feedback during the public comment portion of the meeting, which is thankfully near the beginning of the agenda.
Email board members with your comments ahead of the board meeting.
Doug Paulson - dpaulson@eusd.org
Zesty Harper - zharper@eusd.org
Mark Olson - molson@eusd.org
Frank Huston - fhuston@eusd.org
Joan Gardner - jgardner@eusd.org
Whenever you contact the board, it is always a good idea to state who you are in relationship to the district, such as a parent, student, staff member, or other Escondido resident, before sharing your comments.
In this case, you may want to comment on what qualities and experience you would like to see in our next Superintendent, as well as the process you would like to see. You may want to state whether you want the board to:
seek community input via surveys
host community input sessions
perform a regional or national search
include parents and guardians in the process
While the board may not create a survey for community input, I reached out to EEEA when working on this story and learned that they created a survey for certificated staff on this topic. A representative from EEEA will share the results of their survey at the board meeting on Tuesday.
Our school board is in a partnership with parents, guardians, students, teachers, classified employees, and all the residents of the district. The choice of a superintendent should reflect the concerns, needs, and interests of everyone in that partnership. We are all responsible for our children's education, and everyone should be given the opportunity to not only have their voice heard, but to also have it be thoughtfully considered by our elected representatives on the board. This is the only way to make a choice that meets the needs of the entire EUSD community.