A Q&A With New Belmont-Redwood Shores Superintendent Michael Milliken

Dr. Michael Milliken recently took over the helm of the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District. He was appointed as superintendent in June. The San Diego-born, Stanford-educated Los Altos resident has been busy since officially assuming his role, and even attended his first board meeting with the district last Thursday. But Patch managed to steal him away for just a few minutes, and introduce readers a little more to the district’s new leader.

Patch: So the idea is to get to know you a little better as we head into the school year. What is your own background and experience in education?

Dr. Michael Milliken: Well, during undergrad [at Stanford University] I majored in political science, but afterward I wasn’t quite ready to go to law school. There was a nonprofit program at my university called Volunteers with Asia, so I signed up with them and went and taught English in Indonesia for two years, and really got hooked on teaching. So one thing led to another. I came back and got a teaching credential, and was an elementary and middle school teacher in different school districts. I grew up in San Diego, so I started teaching there and then got married and moved back East with my wife in Maryland for a stretch. Then I went to grad school at Stanford, first for an administrative credential then a Ph.D. – both in educational administration. Coming out of there, I was an elementary school principal in Newark, a relatively small K-12 district across the Bay, and then a principal in Palo Alto at the middle school level. I then worked at the district office at Palo Alto Unified School District, overseeing there mostly middle and high schools. So that is the fundamental sketch of my background in education.

P: And what do you love about education?

MM: My career has evolved ... what I do now is quite different from being a teacher. But I take a lot of pride in serving students well. I really enjoyed being a teacher and explaining concepts or skills in different ways to different students to help them be successful. Not everyone learns everything in an identical way, so being able to present things in different ways and have the creativity to design lessons that excite and engage students is great. When I was in college I enjoyed being a camp counselor ... as my skills and interests evolved, it was kind of a natural progression. So then ... the transition to administration was one of looking to take on new challenges but still making a difference for students – still being a professional educator at heart. Not too many people get into teaching because they want to work at the district office. One thing leads to another and you realize that you can keep learning new things. So for me, it was just part of the natural progression of learning new things professionally, taking on new challenges and continuing to try to make the greatest difference for the largest number of students possible.

P: What drew you into the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District?

MM: Well for me, having been in my role at the district office in Palo Alto for a couple of years, I was just starting to look for another growth opportunity, and Belmont-Redwood Shores was announcing its opening. And I knew some people who had connections in [the district] … and I just heard nothing but consistently positive things about the staff, parents, community. What collectively rang through was the collective commitment to education, the success of the district to educate kids well, not necessarily a big budget, but a lot of things were going well for this district. And then for me, it’s a K-8 district, and I had experience as an elementary and middle school principal, so I was very comfortable leading a K-8 system … and it’s a great size. With seven schools, you can sit down with seven principals around a table and have a great balance between relationships and technical work of education. And, last, I felt like my skillset aligned well with what the district and community was interested in with respect to their search. In terms of bringing together diverse perspectives and stakeholders, to build a sense of purpose and trust and communication in the sense that ‘We’re all in this together,’ and that was something I’d had some success with in my previous positions. I felt as though it was a good match on a lot of different levels.

P: What are some of the greatest challenges facing the district in the 2013-14 year? And what are the greatest resources to overcome these challenges?

MM: In my conversations with a number of different community members last week, and the conversations I had with board members and teachers and other people connected to the district late last spring, I would say there are two central challenges. 

• First, communication. The job here as superintendent is more than just supporting the schools and leading them, its also about including and informing the community. At the board meeting last week, the board made a decision to put on the November ballot a continuation of our parcel taxes to support our education, to support the district. So that measure will be an opportunity to communicate to the community. We need to communicate to obviously staff and parents, but also with the broader community. Because we need everyone’s help to educate our students well and prepare them for the future. My primary strategy will be reaching out to people in the community- whether they’re community leaders or local government. My interest is to make good use of those allies and leaders that are out there in the community and help engage a better community and make sure we solicit their input as we chart a course forward through a very challenging time in education, with the revolution in information technology and communication devices, and new state standards that are coming out.
  

• The second challenge I would point to would be our enrollment growth against our facility capacity and funding. We are operating now with roughly the same funding as 2007-2008, but we have 1,000 more students … Because we are a “basic aid” district, the amount of revenue we get from the state to educate our students does not change. The money we collect from property taxes is what it is, and we educate everyone who comes to our schools with that money. So, as we have 1,000 more students over the last five or six years, that same amount of money is now having to educate 35 percent more students. So that’s obviously a challenge. We’re projected to have 3,825 students for the coming year. Given the challenges to funding, for us our obvious challenge is addressing that … We’re not too far off from filling up our schools, so given how quickly we’ve grown in the past five or so years, we have to pay attention to our enrollment growth, both in terms of making sure we’re using our money very, very well, and then attending to our facility capacity. So we have a task force that’ll be coming together this fall to take a look at that and make sure we’re taking care of that.

It’s a very exciting time to be in education, but it’s also something of a daunting time in terms of all the changes were adapting to.

P: Have you had an opportunity to visit the school sites in the district yet? How’s the remodeling going?

MM: I did. So last week was sort of my first full week in earnest, and we took a tour on Monday afternoon. There is a community oversight committee; they were taking a tour of the schools and I joined them. They visited Cipriani, Central and Ralston. There were hundreds of tradespeople and construction workers rotating through these sites. It’s thankfully on schedule and the work is going great so it’s looking like it’ll be done on time. We pushed our school year back this year, a good three weeks – we’re not starting until Sept. 11. So we’re excited to be finished on time as planned. We’ll stick to that schedule and school will start with major construction finished. The sense I get is that the money’s being used very well, it’s being managed well and we’re going to finish on time. So it’s pretty much uniformly good news from that project.

P: What are your primary goals heading into the year, and how will they guide your decisions?

MM: I had mentioned a challenge of communication with the broader community, so obviously that’s going to be a goal of mine. Another one of my goals is to build a sense that we’re all in this together, both among the staff and the broader community. Another goal is preparing for new academic standards that are coming online in the spring of 2015. The state tests will be different, they’ll be testing different academic standards. This year is our transition school year to that, so we want to make sure we’re supporting our teachers and continuing to learn so that there won’t be any surprises for our students and that they’ll be well-prepared. And a fourth goal is to ensure that our three new principals are supported and successful at their schools. Cipriani, Redwood Shores and Ralston, three of seven schools, have new principals. We’re very excited to have them join our administrative team ... and are committed to getting them settled and oriented.

P: Let’s end on some more fun, personal information about yourself.

MM: I didn’t move, so I live in the Los Altos part of the Peninsula. I have two daughters and they’re going into sixth and eigth grade this year … so I can definitely identify and relate to the parents in our community, because I’ve got school-age children myself and face the same challenges of supporting them with projects and homework and sports and that kind of thing. For me, I enjoy trying to be active and getting outdoors and playing sports. Whether it’s soccer or tennis or winter sports trying to get up to the snow, whatever I can do to get outside is always a victory for me.