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In This Issue...
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A Fairy Tale Job
In Spite of Education's Challenges, Live Oak's New Superintendent Tamra Taylor Feels Lucky
By Linda Fridy
What was supposed to be just a detour on her way to a degree in clinical psychology ended up taking Tamra Taylor down a whole new career path.
That path eventually led her to the Live Oak School District, where she took over as superintendent last July.
"I always knew I'd be in a job with people," she said.
The surprise was that the job was in education.
The Central Valley native had completed her undergraduate work at UC Davis and was planning to go to graduate school in clinical psychology when an advisor told her she needed more life experience first. So she went to work in a preschool.
"I fell in love with it and how quickly kids learn," she recalled.
When she returned to school, she got her teaching credential and never looked back.
Taylor spent about a decade in the classroom, teaching upper elementary grades and serving as a mentor teacher before moving into administration.
"I still in some ways miss teaching. It's the most rewarding for sure – kids appreciate what you do for them," she said.
Loving Live Oak
After serving as a director overseeing 14 schools in a large Sacramento school district, Taylor was looking for the right opportunity to move into a superintendent's spot. Live Oak matched everything on her wish list: a small district near the ocean, good board and community relations and a strong staff.
"As I spoke with people [about Live Oak], everything kept coming up positive. I figured it was probably too good to be true," she said.
Six months into the job, she's still pinching herself.
"It's like a fairy tale. I'm still amazed at my good fortune," she said.
She's found the district employees and community warm and accepting, and has nothing but praise for the board that hired her.
"The board asks the right questions. The members stay involved but do not micro-manage," she said, acknowledging that she is still learning a new job. "I know I'm lucky."
Taylor seems inclined to speak her mind and to encourage others to do so as well. She sees expressing an opinion as showing that you care.
"People in Live Oak have the assumption that they are part of the decision-making process. ... It feels more like teamwork," she said.
Santa Cruz County offered another opportunity to Taylor. Growing up in Modesto and Sonora, she had always wanted to live near the ocean.
She's in the process of moving from the house she rented quickly when she took the job last summer to a home just blocks from the beach, a prospect that delights her.
She joked that she has already joined long-time coastside residents in finding that temperatures in the 80s are "hot." The gray of tule fog even surprised her when she went home over the holidays.
Getting Results that Matter
The 2,100-student district Taylor inherited from retired superintendent David Paine has its share of challenges, but has been free of the drama of some other county districts. In recent elections, board incumbents were reappointed when no opposition ran against them and the community passed a parcel tax to support art, science and library programs in November 2008 even as the economy began its downward slide.
Three of the district's four comprehensive schools are in program improvement, primarily because students still learning English have not met targets for standardized test scores. The district has a strong preschool program and supports two charter schools, one of which is the only high school in the otherwise elementary level district.
Live Oak's relatively small size was attractive to Taylor because it gives her a chance to make a real impact, she said.
"It's very difficult to create change with any particular voice in a large district. I loved that Live Oak is small," she said.
Taylor's first goal at Live Oak is to create consensus across the schools and grade levels for the answers to four questions:
What do we want kids to know?
How do we know if they know it?
If they don't, what are we going to do about it?
If they do, how are we going to challenge them?
"Results matter. We need to get agreement on what results we want," she said.
A committee of teachers and other staff who work directly with children is leading that effort.
Taylor advocates balancing the skill building that shows up on standardized tests with teaching kids how to apply those skills. She worries that education throughout the United States has not kept pace with changing needs.
"As a country, education is our solution. We can't keep pace globally if we don't ask what the 21st century is going to be like," she said.
She believes in collaboration, both for teachers and students.
Teachers working together will allow them to share effective strategies, she explained, and students working in groups prepare them for a world in which few people function in isolation.
"The problems are too intense to solve alone.
There are not often individual heroes," she said, explaining that students should embrace the idea of hero teams.
Emphasizing Technology
One area in which Taylor took an immediate lead was to add new technology to classrooms. She directed $600,000 of an existing grant toward bringing in a high-speed network, laptop carts to bring computers to the students, document cameras and state-of-the-art white boards that use interactive technology.
More than 20 teachers signed up to pilot the Promethean boards, particularly at Shoreline Middle School.
Taylor said the use of technology helps students relate school to the outside world, where most of them are quite comfortable adapting to the latest devices. She also noted that younger people are drawn to the social aspects of technology, from texting to Facebook, and teachers can use that approach to lead interactive literary criticism, for example.
Live Oak has already shown its commitment to collaboration and new approaches through successful Cal Grants.
"We have incredibly committed teachers who care deeply and want to have a voice," Taylor said.
She gives parents just as much credit and responsibility.
"If we don't invite parents into the conversation, we miss what they know about their children and all that motivation and effort – the wind behind the sail," she said.
While not all parents are successful at parenting, she said she has yet to sit across from a parent who does not care about his or her child.
She plans to have each school present a report card to the community annually, sharing the data about how students are doing in a public forum.
"It's not just a one-way conversation. Parents must tell us what we need to do for their children. … It's a reciprocal relationship," she said.
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