From English learner to Fresno Unified superintendent

Transcript:

Zaidee Stavely (Host): Misty Her first entered Fresno Unified as a first grader. Her family was among the hundreds  of thousands of Hmong refugees who came to the U.S. after the end of the Vietnam War. Misty remembers being pulled out of class in Fresno to get extra help in English. But she says, it wasn’t all that helpful.

Misty: It wasn’t even remediation. We just went in there and colored and copied, like literally copied words over and over and over all day packets and packets. It was ridiculous.

Zaidee: When Misty would come back to her classroom, she would hear about all kinds of things she missed.

Misty: My friends would be like, oh, today we read this story and we saw this and we did this, you know, project. I was missing like core instruction. There was no way I was ever gonna get caught up.

Zaidee: But Misty says she had teachers and counselors in later years who helped her, who made a difference.

Misty: I had counselors who said, um, you can go to, you can go to college. And coming from a home where no one knew how to fill out a college application, my counselor filled out the application for me. Um, teachers who, um, realized that I was getting into a lot of trouble in middle school and pulled me out of it and said to me do you wanna do leadership? Do you wanna do clubs? Um, there’s other things that, you know, will keep me off the streets.

Zaidee: With their help, she turned things around. And she’s dedicated her career to giving back to the district where she grew up. Misty has worked more than 30 years in Fresno Unified. She went from being a bilingual instructional aide to a teacher, principal, to deputy superintendent. And in May of this year, the school board appointed Misty as the new interim superintendent of Fresno Unified. She is the first woman to lead the district since its inception in 1873. And the first Hmong person, in a district where 10% of English learners speak the Hmong language.

Her predecessor, Bob Nelson, says he’s elated she’s taking on the role.

Nelson: Stepping aside so that the first woman in 151 years can come and lead the district that’s in the highest ranking Hmong K 12 professional in an environment where Hmong veterans came back from Vietnam expecting a hero’s welcome and were largely ignored. Right. Being able to allow that to come to pass is a really big deal.

Zaidee: This is Education Beat: Getting to the heart of California schools. I’m Zaidee Stavely. This week: From English learner to superintendent.

Superintendent Misty Her has a big job ahead of her. Fresno is the third largest school district in California, behind only Los Angeles and San Diego. And these are notoriously difficult times for superintendents, as districts struggle to undo the damage left by the pandemic, and political tensions over education policy simmer.

My colleague Lasherica Thornton covers Fresno Unified and the Central Valley for EdSource. She interviewed both the outgoing superintendent Bob Nelson and the incoming interim superintendent Misty Her.

Zaidee: Hi Lasherica. 

Lasherica: Hey, Zaidee. 

Zaidee: So Lasherica, Bob Nelson served as the Fresno Superintendent  for almost seven years. Now he’s moving on, to work as a professor at Fresno State. What do you think that the community sees as Bob Nelson’s legacy?

Lasherica: He was always very authentic. He was always very real. Um, so of course he would be real about test scores,achievement, and being real, that doesn’t just mean talking about the bad stuff. That means talking about the good stuff as well. He used to call it like this militant positivity. So I think that’s something that, um, me personally, I’m gonna remember, you know, even once he finishes on July 31st, um, I think that’s something that other people will remember as well.

Zaidee: It’s clear in Lasherica’s interview with Bob Nelson how much he loves Fresno.

Nelson: I’m a raving fan of Fresno. I acknowledge we’re messy and we’re gritty and we’re problematic, but we’re beautiful in our complexity and diversity. And, um, there’s not a lot of pretense in Fresno. Like, it’s very authentic and straight. And I think that’s beautiful. I hate the fact that Fresnos are so hard on Fresno , right? Nobody’s harder on Fresno than Fresnos. And that kind of makes me crazy. If you don’t spend time every day focusing on the good, like you’re gonna wallow in the bad. And that’s really, really bad for our kids. 

Zaidee: One of the things he’s most proud of is making more career and technical education options for kids.

Nelson: I think that’s changed demonstrably. Like you have things like the heavy truck, diesel maintenance facility at Duncan, the pharmacology school at Duncan. You know, Sunnyside is putting in a, uh, sports medicine complex. You know, we’re buying land at, uh, Chandler Airport to build pilots and to like train people to fix planes and electric flight and doing an ag pathway at Sunnyside. And like the public service pathway, you know, police, fire, EMT out of Roosevelt HVAC at Fresno High, like you name it, like teacher, um, teacher pipeline at Hoover, a law pathway at Bullard. social justice is expanding at Edison. 

Zaidee: But he also says he made college more accessible.

Nelson: I was on the front end of authoring the Bulldog bound initiative in collaboration with Fresno State, making sure every single one of our kids has guaranteed enrollment. They accepted 2,150 of our, of our seniors as incoming freshmen. If they all go Lasherica we’d be like a third of their freshman enrollment, just our district alone. And we also established a foundation during my tenure, which now has a $20 million, um, you know, ongoing fund that that interest alone can fund up to $800,000 in scholarships annually, which is more than we’ve ever given away.

Zaidee: Bob acknowledges that test scores are low in the district. But he also points out that students in the district have improved more than the statewide average.

Nelson :Like how much gap closure are you doing annually? So we’re actually out, like our gap closure is going faster than other districts. 

Zaidee: He acknowledges there’s still more to be done.

Lasherica, one thing that stood out to me is that, um, he told you he’s proud, proud of creating a more diverse workforce, particularly district leadership? 

Lasherica:Yep, one thing that I kind of like how he talked about was, you know, obviously Bob Nelson is a white man. He, he kind of said it was his job to jam his foot in the door and open the door for other people. Um, and he also had just kind of talked about the system was better, the students had better experiences, he was a better leader, um, because the people that surrounded him were people who did not look like him. Um, and so, you know, that was  one of the things that he considered his greatest accomplishments as superintendent. 

Zaidee: Yeah, I thought that was a great quote from your interview. Let’s hear what he had to say.

Nelson: Your job is to open doors and like jam your foot in the door to make sure other people have the opportunity to come behind who don’t look like you, talk like you, think like you, have your lived experience. And to surround yourself with excellence from a wide demography, not just race, you know, like all other aspects of like inclusivity, right. 

My cabinet at the district level is super diverse. Our principal is a diverse pipeline, and our teachers are getting increasingly diverse. A lot of times you still have the dynamic where the vast majority of your teachers are Caucasian for kids of color. And kids need to see visual images of people who look like them, talk like them, sound like them, have their lived experience. And you need diversity in leadership to push one another’s thinking. 

Zaidee: My understanding is that Bob made a bunch of teacher pipeline programs to help people become teachers. And you wrote 79 percent of new teachers joining Fresno Unified come through one of these programs. So now Bob wants to start something similar at Fresno State to recruit principals and district leaders, right, Lasherica?

Lasherica: He wants more people from the Fresno and Central Valley communities, which of course is a diverse population. To go through the educator program at Fresno State, um, and then to become school district leaders to, to lead the school districts across the Central Valley.

Nelson: I think it’s absolutely critical, Lasherica, for, um, people who have some street cred in the valley to create leaders who can lead in the valley and want to lead here. And not a lot of people wanna lead right now post pandemic like the polarization. There is no question that the superintendency is as politically charged as is it as it has ever been. But I feel it’s my responsibility to go and try and build a cadre of leaders here locally that can come and lead valley schools. I actually think leadership is not only, it’s critical, it is a wonderful blessing. And I need people to understand that. 

Zaidee: What else stood out to you from your interview with Bob, Lasherica?

Lasherica: One of the things that stood out that stood out from his interview was the things that he’s gonna leave to, to Misty, um, because of course, because of the student achievement scores, which, which are, you know, honestly kind of terrible in Fresno Unified, 

You can’t talk about Fresno Unified without talking about how, you know, over 66% of students failed the English Language Arts standards. How over 75% of students failed, um, to meet the math standards. but you know, also, how do you address that when you also have students who 88% of students are living in disadvantaged circumstances, over 80% are living in poverty. He understands that he didn’t get to do everything. Um, and so he talks about leaving, leaving, um, a literacy initiative he said that Misty was gonna be the better person to even lead that initiative. 

Nelson: She’s really good. She’s a, I think, stronger academic leader and will help move the literacy work in ways that I have not. Because she’s kind of an early learning teacher and taught kids to read. I, you know, as a sixth grade teacher, I did less of that. And so she knows very clearly what it takes for kids to read and, you know, and understands like, all the complexities of the science of reading. I accomplished like the inertia of moving the system to like close gaps faster, but we’re not over the proficiency bar.

Zaidee: So Lasherica, how big of a deal is it to have Misty Her, who is a woman and she’s also a, a Hmong refugee, be the new superintendent of Fresno?

Lasherica: I mean, I think it’s big. Like she talked about, like Lasherica, I’ve walked this hallway a thousand times, like, because she, she has been in the district for, um, 31 years. Um, and in the district office there’s this hallway with all the superintendent pictures and you know, first you have black and white pictures of men, and then you have, you know, the color pictures of men. Um, and then just seeing her face there, um, you know, I, I think it’s impactful. So, um, I think that’s most impactful because of how diverse the district is. I mean, over 92% of students in the district are minorities. Um, so just having those many students finally get to see somebody who looks more like them, somebody who isn’t the same, somebody who looks different, period.

Zaidee: Yeah, I don’t think people understand actually how diverse Fresno is. Um, you know, not only, you know, over 90% are students of color, but also, you know, how diverse those students of color are. 

Lasherica: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think a lot of people think about, oh, it has this large Latino population and it does. Um, but You have students who speak Hmong, Arabic, Punjabi, Khmer, Mixteco, Armenian, Vietnamese, like all of these languages. And those are just some of the top ones that are spoken within Fresno. 

Zaidee: We should probably mention that there was some controversy surrounding Misty Her’s appointment. Some people in the community didn’t like the process and felt that the school board needed to open it up from the start as a statewide or national search. Others felt the backlash was unfair and reported some racist harassment. What’s your sense of how the community feels now?

Lasherica: Oh, that’s a good question. Going all the way back to May when the school board first appointed, um, Misty, her as interim superintendent, um, there were a lot of kind of mixed emotions just because there’d been a lot of drama around the search process up until that point. Some people even felt that, um, even the way that appointment happened at that moment, um, it didn’t restore community trust. Um, so there’s that side of it. Um, but then again, there’s also people who are excited to see that they have named her so that the board can focus on national search. Um, there are people that are happy to also just see her and, and what her appointment means with her being the first woman and the first Hmong leader.

ZS: What stood out to you from your interview with, um, Misty Her? 

Lasherica: She still, um, to this day talks about the influence and the importance of being a teacher. That really stood out to me because you just don’t hear that a lot. She talked about how that is one of the things that’s driving her, her 100 day plan that’s driving, you know, all the things that she’s going to do or that she’s even done already to this point. 

And then, you know, probably the obvious thing in talking about, you know, this teacher within, um, she talked about how she wants to address every student’s needs, um, because yeah, and again, she used her own experiences. She talked about her own childhood and this thing even, you know, with her family, how her teachers made an investment in her who needed support, but not in her brother.

Misty: I always talk about my brother who passed away. He and I had some of the very same teachers, okay. But there was an investment in me and not in him. So, so I, I think about that, you know, like who gets chosen for what and why, and then why do some other kids, you know, don’t? I’m just relentless when it comes to making sure that every single kid, you know, uh, gets what they need. And, and I think that, um, the one thing, you know, because sometimes when you step away from the classroom, uh, people don’t see you as a teacher anymore. And I think that the one thing that I have that, that I love more than anything is the classroom. And, and at the heart of who I am, first and foremost, before anything else else, I’m always gonna be a teacher. 

Lasherica: I think that’s something unique because, you know, when you hear most leaders talk, they say, oh, the needs of students, and they’re lumping ’em into groups and, and, you know, the student groups that’s important to address. But her actually saying, we need to figure out the needs of each child and figure out how do we get each child to that finish line and address those needs, provide those interventions, while still offering that challenge and content for them to excel. I think that’s unique. 

Zaidee: ne of the first things Misty Her started doing when she became interim superintendent is she started conducting what she calls “listening” sessions with students, district leaders, principals, retired teachers, graduates, and parents.

Misty: And they were like, you’ve been in the district for 30 years. Why would you still need to go listen and learn? Shouldn’t you already know a lot about the district? And I said, because the, the role is different. My role now is different. And so I’m really intentionally listening and learning.

Zaidee: She started with students.

Misty: I think that our students are our best teachers and they can teach us a lot about our system, the things that we’re designing for them, what’s working, what’s not working. And they are so honest because there’s nothing that they hold back.

Misty: A couple kids asked me this question, so what are you, what, what are you and our teachers preparing us for? Like, what’s the world that we are going to be stepping into? And that came from third graders, right? Like, what are you preparing me for? If you’re saying that in the year 2030 something, I’m going to be graduating, then, then are you, do you think that you are doing a significant job of preparing me for that? But that tells you that our students are so smart. Yeah. And, and that they want more than what we’re giving them. 

Zaidee: As part of Interim Superintendent Her’s 100-day plan, Fresno Unified gathered state, district, school and student data to identify and prioritize ways to enhance learning for each child while also focusing on historically underserved student groups, like English learners and students with disabilities, who have significant achievement gaps compared with other groups. 

But she also said she wants to look at students as more than a test score.

Misty: Like, I was talking to, um, a student and he said, I’m in the eighth grade right now, and, uh, my test score tells me that I am in sixth grade. And he said, but I’m so much, um, smarter than that. I can do this, this, and this. But it’s just that in my home, I never got books. I don’t have a, a tutor that comes in to help me. I rarely see my mom, because she works two jobs. And so, can you guys use what I know to help me, you know, get me there.And, and I think that, we gotta get everybody across, across the finish line, right? The finish line is proficiency. So how do we get them there in whichever way, you know, works for them.

Zaidee: She says she wouldn’t be leading Fresno Unified, if teachers and mentors had only focused on her test scores when she was a kid.

Misty: I believe that our students are, um, so incredibly special and smart. Um, and I’m tired of people defining them by a test score at the end of the year. And I wanna find a holistic way in which we can still get our students there, but that we’ve, our students feel valued and they feel important and they feel like they’re, they are a part of something greater than just that, um, you know, that proficiency level that is given to them. ’cause if you just measured me by my proficiency level, uh, when I was a kid, then I probably wouldn’t even be here.

CREDITS:

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of Education Beat: Getting to the heart of California schools. A production of EdSource.

You can find links to Lasherica’s stories in our podcast notes and at EdSource dot org.

Our producer is Coby McDonald.

Special thanks to our guests Bob Nelson, Misty Her, and reporter Lasherica Thornton.

And to our managing editor, Adam Eisenberg.

Our theme music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

This episode was brought to you by the James B. McClatchy Foundation.

I’m Zaidee Stavely. Join us next week. And subscribe so you won’t miss an episode.