Superintendent David Cash Makes His Mark
After One Year on the Job, the District Gets Reshaped and Reinvigorated
Thursday, September 6, 2012
David Cash skipped the 2nd grade, not because he was a prodigy, but because none of the 2nd grade teachers at his elementary school wanted him in their classroom. “I was a wiggly kid,” Cash described himself. Some parents who have interacted with the Santa Barbara Unified superintendent have guessed that he suffers from ADHD. He’s never been diagnosed, but he admits that, even now, he isn’t one to sit behind a desk. As superintendent, he constantly visits school sites — including every classroom in the district twice a year — and when he’s at the district headquarters, he’d rather trot across the courtyard to a colleague’s office than pick up the phone.
Cash’s career has moved at a frenetic pace, as well. After graduating from UCSB in 1979, he attended law school at Willamette University and then worked as an attorney in Portland, Oregon. But five or six years into his career, he had an epiphany. While lecturing to a high school class on the First Amendment, he decided he could do more good as an educator. So he left the law and began teaching high school social studies in Irvine, near his hometown of Long Beach, then returned to Santa Barbara as a special-education teacher at Peabody Elementary School, where Paul Cordeiro was the principal. Cordeiro, the current Carpinteria Unified School District superintendent, urged him to consider working as a school administrator. Cash did. After completing a degree in administration at UCSB, he became principal of Buellton’s K-8 school. Three years later, he returned to the Santa Barbara District as a principal first at Goleta Valley Junior High and then Dos Pueblos High School. In 2004, he left for Fullerton to become an assistant superintendent, left there in 2006 to take over as Claremont’s superintendent of schools, and, three years later, took on the challenge of running the large Clovis school district in Fresno.
Courtesy Photo
Cash and colleagues posed with a National Blue Ribbon plaque awarded to Goleta Valley Junior High in 2000. Cash was principal there from 1995-1999. Also in the shot is Mike Couch (far right), who preceded Cash as principal at Dos Pueblos High School. Cash said that when he took over at DP, he would often ask himself, “What would Mike do?”
In retrospect, Clovis seems a terrible fit for Cash. Located in a well-heeled, ultra-conservative section of Fresno, folks there honor what they call “The Clovis Way.” The schools enforce a strict dress code, the playing fields are hallowed grounds, the teachers are not unionized, and an abstinence-only curriculum passes for sex ed. Just two weeks ago, some parents sued Clovis for allegedly violating California law by teaching misinformation about contraception and, while doing so, using a textbook that lists getting plenty of rest and respecting yourself as methods for avoiding STDs, according to a press release issued by the ACLU.
Cash, a registered Democrat, had quickly lost clout with the Clovis community when his board expelled a popular high school wrestler who performed what The Fresno Bee called an “aggressive move” on a teammate. The expelled wrestler said he was employing a common maneuver called a “butt drag,” but his accuser said the alleged bully had been, in wrestling parlance, “checking the oil.” It didn’t help Cash’s relationship with his colleagues when, in response to budget cuts, he called for an across-the-board cut for all teachers and administrators. So it should have come as no surprise that in 2011, the board of education summoned him to undergo what promised to be an intense evaluation. What did come as a surprise to everyone was that Cash never showed up. Instead he announced his resignation. After a stellar career marked by speedy advancement and visionary ambitions, Cash had incredibly, unbelievably, decided to quit. He was retiring from education and moving to Monterey.
Above and beyond the culture clash at Clovis, Cash, 57, said his weariness resulted primarily from the fact that four of his closest friends had all died within the year. And so he was ready to catch his breath, to spend more time with his family, and to finally quit his wiggling.
By Paul Wellman
Doctor Yes
The deus ex machina arrived, however, in the form of a casual email. Just after the deadline to apply for the Santa Barbara superintendent position had closed, the outgoing superintendent, Brian Sarvis, sent out word that Cash had announced his retirement. That email set the wheels in motion. A member of the district’s search team, Rudy Castruita, happened to be Cash’s dissertation director when he received his 2008 EdD in Educational Leadership at the University of Southern California. Castruita recommended that the board check out Cash’s résumé. Since Cash had been named a potential candidate early on in the search process, they agreed. According to Trustee Ed Heron (who had not met Cash before), it was clear he was the man for the job once he interviewed.
Paul Wellman
Former superintendent Brian Sarvis (right) passed the torch to Dave Cash at a school board meeting in June 2011.
For Cash, a man who was determined to retire, Santa Barbara was the only place that could lure him back to work. His wife, Heather, was raised here, and their two children were born at Cottage Hospital. This would be his very last job. Still, in the year he has taken over as superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, there has been no sign that he is slowing down.
Since arriving, Cash has completely overhauled the district office staff and reassigned many of the principals to different schools. He has drafted a “Strategic Plan” for the district, sold it to parents and teachers at public forums, and begun the process of systematically integrating technology into classrooms. Todd Ryckman, former Dos Pueblos teacher and current district director of technology, said that with Cash “change is fast and furious. People who don’t like Dave don’t feel comfortable with change.”
Courtesy Photo
Cash donned his Dos Pueblos gear at a football contest. Cash, an avid sports fan who regularly attends school athletic events, accompanied his father to the second football World Championship Game played between the Raiders and Packers in 1968. He still pulls for the silver and black.
When Cash took over Dos Pueblos in 1999, he tabbed Ryckman and some of his other tech-savvy teachers to build a digital infrastructure at the high school. Dos Pueblos became one of the first schools in the district to manage its own mail server. This was so successful that the then superintendent Michael Caston made the server part of a district-wide system. When DP moved to Gmail, the district once again followed suit. An early adopter of digital grade books and one of the first schools to post grades online, Dos Pueblos set up file servers early on so teachers could easily share lesson plans and documents by dragging and dropping. Although Cash wrote grants to fund the equipment and manpower necessary to make all of that possible, and although several Dos Pueblos veterans remember him for rescuing them from the analog age, Cash insists that he is not at all technologically inclined. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that kids are growing up in a wired world.
Cash’s willingness to delegate authority and then to empower his delegates is a recurring theme. School board president Susan Christol Deacon said, “When he first came back to the district, he told principals, your job is to say yes.” Deacon participated in the parent-led effort to install a new pool at Dos Pueblos that began while Cash was principal. The school district only approved $700,000 for the project, which would cost millions, but Cash told the school’s parents to go ahead and raise funds on their own. They did. Longtime Dos Pueblos economics teacher Roland Lewin said, “If you go to him and tell him, ‘I’ve got this idea,’ he’ll find a way to get you what you need so that you can be successful. I call him Doctor Yes.”
By Courtesy Photo
While at Dos Pueblos High School, Cash was especially proud that young women enrolled in a construction technology class where they applied designs to Powell-Peralta skateboard decks.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, though. Longtime district teacher and administrator Mike Couch said that a principal has four bosses — teachers, parents, students, and the district. A superintendent, he said, has a fifth boss — the community. Fullerton high school superintendent George Giokaris, Cash’s boss from 2004-2006, explained that on top of pleasing all of those constituencies, supes must also navigate the minefield of politics.
Cash’s dissertation, completed in 2008, offers a window into his theory of executive power in school districts. It focuses on the relationship between superintendents and principals. In it, he elaborated on a concept called “defined autonomy,” which he defined as “the relationship school principals have with superintendents where non-negotiable goals in teaching and learning are given to schools, but schools are given the responsibility and authority to determine how best to meet those goals.”
In other words, the superintendent gives his or her principals plenty of leeway in how to spend their resources and run their sites, but they are held accountable to specific, concrete goals. This means that a superintendent should, according to Cash, meet regularly with principals one-on-one. And on the spectrum from manager to educator, Cash argues that superintendents must lean toward educator. In their meetings with principals, they must discuss metrics-based student achievement and instructional strategies. So, while on the one hand, Cash gives his principals lots of rein, on the other hand, he pays close attention to what’s happening at their schools.
And whereas he is often willing to delegate responsibility, one area where he inserts himself is in the teacher hiring process. The single most important thing a school can do to improve achievement, he said, is to hire good teachers. This year, for the first time, Santa Barbara teacher applicants were asked back for second interviews where they presented a sample lesson plan. Cash observed most of them.
And he is a workhorse. “When I used to show up to school early,” said Ryckman, “Dave was already there. When I left late, he was there. When I went to my classroom on the weekend, he was there.” The principal’s assistant at Dos Pueblos, Marietta Sanchez, said that her desk would often be stacked with work on Monday mornings because Cash had spent all weekend in his office. Now, he said, 60- to 80-hour work weeks are short.
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Comments
Seems like a solid guy with some good kudos from his colleagues. I am feeling good about my little one entering the school district. Having already dealt with Dr. Cash in a round about way, I thought he handled things very well. People respect managers/administrators that go out and get their hands dirty, not sit behind a desk all day. Also, the picture with the two students kind of says it all. Lots of times students won't really like their principal, looks like he had the kids on his side, and the teachers. Go Dr. Cash.
bimboteskie (anonymous profile)
September 6, 2012 at 11:10 a.m. (Suggest removal)