|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Pleasanton Unified School District Superintendent David Haglund has announced he will be stepping down from his role in the district to move back to Southern California and spend more time with his family.
He told the Weekly his last day will be on Aug. 1 as he will continue to work through July so he can make sure the district is prepared for the first day of school in the fall. He also said that while he is leaving Pleasanton, he doesn’t plan on retiring from education any time soon.
“I don’t know what’s going to come in the future so I’m not going to tell you that other opportunities might not arise, whether it’s teaching at the university level, or consulting or doing any other type of work related to schools,” Haglund said. “I’m not ready to sit on a porch in a rocking chair. What I will tell you is that whatever I do, it will be in the proximity of my family and grandchildren.”
Haglund was first appointed as superintendent in 2017 — he was the fifth leader Pleasanton Unified had appointed in three years at the time.
During his seven years as superintendent, Haglund made it his goal to not only reduce the amount of turnovers in district positions, but to also create a strong governance and executive team so that the district could carry out more important work that directly benefits the students, teachers and the community.
“There were some specific issues that needed to be tended to when I took the job,” Haglund said. “The board had had a history of infighting, there was a lack of trust in the community, some board members didn’t appear to be speaking to each other initially.”
That’s why he said it was important to him, when he first joined the district, to create a culture of working together at a governance level while also creating a stable executive team that did not turn over as much and had the same principles of prioritizing the district’s needs.
“That was kind of task No. 1, because we couldn’t do all the other things we needed to do unless we were kind of in the boat rowing together in the same direction,” Haglund said.
During his tenure, Haglund said he was proud of the work PUSD did to address the many facility needs that were brought up during the $270 million Measure I1 bond campaign in 2016 while also using the district’s budget to address those many needs outside of the bond so that the community could see PUSD was doing everything it could to fix what needed to be fixed.
He added that while the pandemic was tough on the district, it did give PUSD the opportunity to carry out many of the Measure I1 facility and grounds improvement projects because students and staff were not at the sites, which allowed construction companies to conduct their work.
Haglund said that the pandemic opened up some commercial real estate space as well which allowed the district to purchase its new offices on West Las Positas Boulevard and not only provide a better space for staff to work from, but also give the district the ability to sell its office space at the Bernal property for future private development.
The building transition helped with the process to remodel Village High School into the district’s proposed Educational Options Center, which was another major achievement during Haglund’s tenure.
Haglund said that sitting on pieces of land like the Bernal property and the Neal property — which the district recently sold to a developer to create housing — are important first steps to create workforce housing and added that the two acres that have been allocated for housing at the Bernal property could even be sold for regular housing in order for the district to purchase another piece of land it is eyeing to build roughly 200 units of workforce housing.
“Whether the workforce housing happens on the Bernal property or somewhere else, that was a big part of our motivation to start leveraging properties differently,” Haglund said.
As for who will be replacing him as superintendent, Haglund said the district adopted a succession plan which included bumping Ed Diolazo to the position of deputy superintendent with the goal of having him take over as the superintendent once Haglund was gone.
The original plan was to have someone who knew the job take over if Haglund was absent or on leave for some reason but he said that it’s his recommendation that the board will follow the succession plan and appoint Diolazo as the new superintendent.
“My anticipation is that the board will follow that plan,” Haglund said. “I don’t have any reason to think that they won’t.”
Whether or not Diolazo will be officially appointed as the superintendent, or even as interim superintendent, still needs to be decided by the Board of Trustees. Haglund said he expects the board will discuss those next steps during an upcoming future board meeting.
“We are fortunate to have leaders like Deputy Superintendent Ed Diolazo who has effectively served our community over the past seven years,” Board President Mary Jo Carreon said in a statement to the Weekly. “I look forward to discussing next steps of our transition plan with the Board to provide our community with the ongoing stable leadership it deserves. “
While Haglund said he was extremely grateful for the community approving the recent $390 million Measure I bond to help fund the construction of new athletic and theater facilities — along with the Educational Options Center and other projects — he said he will mostly treasure the work the district has done in supporting teachers and students every day in the classroom.
He said his favorite moments as a superintendent have always been the first days of the school year and the graduation ceremonies where he could tell each student how proud he was of them before sending them off into the world.
“I would like to thank Haglund for his strong leadership, his vision to improve facilities and expand learning opportunities for students,” Carreon said. “I understand him wanting to be with family and wish him well.”
And while he won’t be superintendent for the groundbreaking ceremonies for the future Measure I projects or the first days those projects are open to the public, he said he hopes to come back for those moments because he is still and will continue to be invested in Pleasanton.
“My heart’s not leaving the community. I’m still committed. I’m still excited,” Haglund said. “I know that there’s great things coming for the community and largely that’s because we have incredible people that are working on this team, incredible teachers and incredible families in the community that believe in what Pleasanton is all about.”
Haglund is one out of four Tri-Valley superintendents who will be leaving their school districts at the end of this academic year: San Ramon Valley’s John Malloy, Livermore Valley’s Chris Van Schaack and Sunol Glen’s Molleen Barnes.