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First-year Amador Valley High School principal Alberto Solorzano was granted a leave of absence for personal reasons on Wednesday, according to Pleasanton Unified School District officials.
PUSD’s human resources director Mike Williams, who served just over two years as Amador’s principal before being promoted to the district office last year, will return to the Santa Rita Road campus to provide administrative support during Solorzano’s absence, which is indefinite at this point.
“I am working collaboratively with the administrative team to develop a plan to support the site during this time,” Williams said in an email to the Amador community on Wednesday confirming the administrative shuffle.
“As a part of that plan, I will be stepping in to support Amador Valley’s students, staff and community — working to ensure that the day to day learning experience remains intact and that our WASC accreditation visit is focused on the things that make us all proud to be Dons,” Williams added. “As the former principal of Amador Valley, I am grateful for the amazing Amador community, and look forward to working with you to ensure that our school activities continue to run smoothly.”
Solorzano had not responded to a request for comment to date.
A career educator with lifelong ties to the East Bay, Solorzano was hired by the Pleasanton school board last spring to lead the 2,700-student high school starting this school year.
Before coming to Amador, Solorzano was director of secondary education for Dublin Unified School District for the 2017-18 school year, and prior to that, he worked as a principal in Livermore, first at Livermore High School and then at Marilyn Elementary School.
Solorzano was the third principal for Amador since the 2015-16 school year.
The duration of his personal leave is unclear, but it comes one week before Amador is due to be visited by Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation officials. Amador, along with Village High, are going through a regular update of their accreditation this year, according to PUSD spokesman Patrick Gannon.
The personal leave also began almost three weeks after the conclusion of a district-paid investigation into high school transcript integrity.
A PUSD legal consultant concluded in her report Jan. 31 that high school administrators — whose names were not released — intentionally removed a completed course from a student’s transcript and record in violation of state law. The investigator deemed that incident, and another case of an accidental course removal, were isolated and did not indicate systemic problems with PUSD’s management of student records.
Gannon said he could not comment about whether Solorzano’s personal leave was connected to the transcript probe, citing personnel confidentiality reasons.
