News Update

After three wildfires and a pandemic, Santa Rosa superintendent is ready to retire

As are other superintendents who are retiring in high, if not record, numbers this year, Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura is worn out from the challenges of guiding her district through a pandemic.

Diann Kitamura

But few district leaders have had to deal with the series of calamities that Kitamura has faced during her 5½ years as superintendent of the 16,000-student district. If she were a military leader, her uniform would be covered with Meritorious Service Medals for the campaigns she led: the devastating Tubbs fire in 2017, followed by the Kincade fire in 2019 and the Glass fire in 2020 that destroyed more than 800 students’ and staff members’ homes.

Having reached age 62, Kitamura, a well-respected leader in Sonoma County, is calling it quits, ostensibly to care for her elderly mother. But, she acknowledged in a profile by Education Week writer Stephen Sawchuk, the frustration of dealing with changing, perplexing Covid health guidelines and the stress of parents’ irreconcilable, conflicting demands to reopen schools have gotten to her.

“For me, I don’t want to become bitter. I don’t want to become angry about the people I love and adore, with a community I adore,” she said. “It’s better for me, just knowing how much I know about the community and schools, to let someone come in and have a fresh brain about it all.”

Although she is fourth-generation born in Yuba City, Kitamura experienced the struggles of low-income English learners who comprise a third of elementary students in her district. Her mother and siblings spent World War II in an internment camp for Japanese Americans, and she was raised for a time in a resettlement camp, where, interacting with farmworkers from Mexico, she learned Spanish and spoke it fluently, along with English and Japanese. Despite being multi-lingual, she was put in a lower reading track with other non-white kids. She eventually pursued a teaching credential in agriculture at Chico State, with a commitment to raising all students’ expectations.

One of her legacies is the Integrated Wellness Center. Created in the wake of the Tubbs fire, its free counseling and social services will position the district to respond to the post-pandemic needs of students and their families this fall.