The Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District has two leadership positions to fill after Superintendent Andrew Schwab announced that he will be leaving the district in March. The high school is still searching for a permanent replacement for principal.
“The opportunity presented itself to lead a 2,300-student unified K-12 district in the Central Valley and be closer to my wife’s family in Merced,” Schwab told the Sun via email. “The board is in the process of scheduling a meeting to discuss next steps for the superintendent transition.”
A new interim principal, Andrew Alvidrez, was hired to finish the school year after Mitch Torina finished out his term as interim principal in December.
“Andrew (Andy) Alvidrez is a retired school administrator with over 30 years of service dedicated to helping provide a quality education for all students,” Schwab said in an email that went out to staff. “His collaborative leadership style has helped build teams of dedicated professionals who remained focused on learning.”
Alvidrez taught history, economics, and physical education at the high school and middle school levels and started his 24-year administrative career as a high school dean in a school with more than 3,400 students, Schwab said in the email. He worked as a principal in the East Whittier School District, based in Fullerton, and as a middle school principal in both the Whittier City School District and El Rancho Unified School District in Pico Rivera—which is east of Los Angeles.
“The high school is fortunate to have such an experienced administrator on board to finish out the school year,” Schwab told the Sun in an email.
Alvidrez will be Santa Ynez Valley Union High School’s sixth principal in a little more than five years—with four people leaving permanent positions and two interim principals filling in this school year while the district searches for a replacement.
Michael Niehoff was the last full-time principal at the school—who left at the end of the 2022-23 school year after being in the position for one year because community members asserted their political views on the school, which he said made it too difficult for him to do his work. He ultimately resigned after receiving pushback from adults for allowing students to paint a crosswalk with a rainbow pattern for an anti-bullying and inclusion week at school.
“No superintendent or principal worth their pay would want to come here,” Leslie Ooms said in a post in the Santa Ynez High School Administration/School Board Transparency Project—a public Facebook group for the community to discuss all things school-district related. “This community has become toxic thanks to a minority who have an agenda to run the school off the rails of education.”
The search for a permanent replacement is “on hold for the moment,” Schwab said, pending the board meeting to discuss both the principal and the superintendent transition. He added that he expects more information will be available after that meeting, which had yet to be scheduled as of Jan. 23.
Teri Fredericks Harmon, a fellow member of the transparency project Facebook group, wrote that it would take more than two new hires to fix the issues facing the district. In the post, she added that the community needs to step up to vote out board members who “don’t have the students’ best interest at heart” and get back to the basics of the school’s purpose.
“Supporting all [who] want to make a positive difference—the students and the community deserve no less—and it can be done,” Fredericks Harmon said.
This article appears in Jan 25 – Feb 4, 2024.