Escondido school chief hopes to inspire

Looking back at turning points in his life that led him to his position as the new superintendent of the Escondido Union School District, Luis Ibarra remembers cooking classes in Mrs. Diaz’s third-grade class.

“She was strict as can be, held us accountable, but she did rotations and we learned how to cook,” he said. “I remember the first one was how to make cinnamon toast.”

Ibarra would come home and help cook for his family in East Los Angeles. For the first time in his young life, Ibarra had discovered that school could teach him things he could use and even be fun.

It was a simple classroom exercise, but one that he would never forget. When he became a teacher about 23 years ago, he said he modeled his classroom after Mrs. Diaz’s.

As the superintendent of a district known for its innovations and low test scores, Ibarra said he hopes to encourage teachers to find a way to instill the same love of learning that his teacher gave him.

His mission of reaching all students is that much more personal to him this year, following the February death of his older brother, who dropped out of high school.

Born in Tijuana 47 years ago, Ibarra grew up the fifth of seven children — six boys and one girl — in an East Los Angeles neighborhood where his father worked as a carpenter.

“Gang members on Friday night would just hang out there,” he said about his neighborhood. “You’d fall asleep and wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning to loud noises, people screaming. You’d hear gunshots and you tense up. You couldn’t wait for the daytime to make sure you were going to be OK. But you got through it.”

Everyone from the local merchants to people at the neighborhood church spoke Spanish, and Ibarra said he still remembers going to a little room for English lessons and learning a new language on the playground.

Ibarra said he remembers a teacher asking him if he planned to go to college. The idea was so foreign that his family had never even talked about it. He became the second in his family to graduate from high school and the first to graduate from college, which he paid for, in part, by joining the ROTC and enlisting for two years in the Army.

After graduating from Cal State San Bernardino in 1990, Ibarra was hired as a teacher in the Rialto Unified School District.

While he was teaching Victor Elementary, where he worked from 1996 to 1999, Principal Conny Ridgeway said she believed he someday would be a superintendent. In 1999, he became principal of Victor Elementary.

In 2001, he joined the Oceanside Unified School District when then-Superintendent Ken Noonan hired him to be principal of Laurel Elementary School.

“He did a phenomenal job as principal,” said Noonan, who also promoted Ibarra to the district office.

Noonan retired before he had a chance to work with Ibarra in the district headquarters, but in his new job as a headhunter, he recommended Ibarra for the top position in Escondido.

“He’s an extremely caring man,” Noonan said. “He cares about kids. That’s the first reason I would hire an administrator at a school site. And he’s extremely well-organized. He’s meticulous. Just a genuinely good person.”

Seeking a way to have a bigger impact on the district, Ibarra took a job as head of human resources in Oceanside in 2005. While the job did allow him to make hiring decisions, it took a toll on him personally when during a budget crisis, he had to lay off people he had earlier hired.

“When I was in human resources, it was about doing whatever I could to save every last person,” he said. “We worked hours late into the night to make sure ours list was correct because we didn’t want to over-pink slip. It was affecting lives. These were people, not just names on a list.”

Ibarra said he wanted to work more closely with the budget to help the district through its financial problems, so in 2010 he took a job as head of business services while studying for a chief business official certification at the University of Southern California.

The switch from the education to the business side of the district was unusual, but Ibarra said it is becoming more common.

“When you go into the business side, to have that educational background, you bring a lot to the table because you truly know how it affects programs and all business operations,” he said “You don’t just deal with budgets. You deal with operational efficiency.”

After a few years, however, Ibarra said he was ready to work on the curriculum side.

“I wanted to get back to my passion, which was teaching and learning,” he said.

That opportunity came when Jennifer Walters announced she was retiring as superintendent of Escondido Union earlier this year.

Since starting his job July 1, Ibarra hasn’t has had a chance to see many Escondido classes in session, although he did visit a summer session at Felicita Elementary School, where almost all students are learning English as a second language.

“You see yourself in the eyes of the kids,” he said about relating to the children’s experience. “You see your parents. And it just takes me back. Ok, that was my mom and dad, walking me to school.”

Ibarra said he is not comfortable with the attention he has received in his new role. He knows, however, that his story may help inspire others in the district, where many students are learning English as a second language.

“For me, it’s about all kids,” he said. “All community members and all parents. But yeah, I recognize that when a kid of Hispanic descent looks at me, I have an obligation. I realize I’m a role model and I have an obligation to kind of talk to them and share my story and say, ‘You can do this, too.’ ”

Talking about his vision for helping students, Ibarra is reminded of the story of the man who threw starfishes into the ocean after finding thousands stranded on a beach. After somebody questioned why the man thought his efforts mattered, the man threw another into the surf and said, “It mattered to that one.”

He also is reminded of his late brother, Rene, and he imagines teachers who may be just one idea away from helping a student like him.

Rene had polio and felt like an outsider growing up, Ibarra said. Once he was mainstreamed in high school, he gravitated toward the gang lifestyle and dropped out of high school. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in February at the age of 48.

After his death, family members discovered one of the important items he had saved was a diploma to a trade school he attended.

“School mattered to him,” Ibarra said, choking up. “It never stopped mattering to him. And I’m going to dedicate my first year to my brother, Rene. Because he’s the kid who we should never stop trying to reach. He was trying to do it on his own. And that’s what drives me.”