The Huntington Beach High School district named Greg Plutko the new superintendent last May. I caught up with Dr. Plutko, Starbucks-addict and professor of organizational leadership at the University of Laverne’s doctoral program, and asked him what he will bring to the district and FVHS.
Last May, you talked to the HB Independent and you said that you wanted to work on familiarizing yourself with “the school, the community and the people who have made the district what it is today.” How will this help you improve curriculum?
First of all, to give you some examples, I would say that my start – I started in July – and I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I have been able to take getting to meet all the different stakeholder in the school community. I’ve had really nice opportunities to visit schools already. And I’ll be visinting FVHS later this month to walk classrooms and to see all the great teacher-student interactions. As
you make those visits around the district, you listen talk about the history of the district and you listen to groups talk about the passion of the work they’re doing and watch students do their work. That’s the first part that helps me understand, where we, as a district, what are our strengths. What are those things we do really well? And secondly, it helps me understand by listening to people. What are some of those areas we really want to continue to focus on so we continue to grow as a district? And by doing that, it really helps me begin to work with all of our schools for the curriculum for our students.
Board of trustees President Susan Henry said, “We’ve really been focusing on facilities for the last few years, so now we really need to turn our attention to what’s inside the schools: the students and teaching.” Will you be carrying this out? And will there be differences in the policies that have already been implemented?
That wouldn’t be fair to stop looking at facilities. That’s important. And well, I don’t know if it’s differences as much as continuous improvement. We’re doing all of the work at both the national and state level for high schools is around something that is known as the College and Career Readiness movement. And with that also comes a movement around something that is called the Common Core. And fortunately,Californiaas a state is ahead of most other states in what we’re doing with the Common Core. And so when we begin to look around instruction in our district, it’s really not about any specific and immediate changes, it’s about preparing ourselves and being ready for what is coming. And also preparing ourselves for the needs of our students.
One of the most recent journal articles I have read talks about how today’s high school and junior high students, over 60% of the jobs they will have, have not been invented yet.
Could you please explain what the Common Core is?
Common core is your English, science, history and math, foreign language classes.
And what about electives?
Elective classes make up a huge fabric of every high school. And a very important part of the fabric. They are not always considered core classes, but to have a quality elective program, likeFoutnainValley. FVHS has a high-quality elective program. To have that on a campus, that is really important to all of the students and that school community.
California, and the country as well, is having a lot of budget problems. Especially with the lack of funding to schools, how will you work around it?
Well I think the budget problems that California is having, this has been ongoing now. Unfortunately, some of the budget problems have become the new norm, if you will. And that’s not a good thing because it’s certainly not healthy for kids and teachers and families and school. And so, we’ll have to, as we get more and more information about the budget each year, and again it’s a very volatile process at the state level and one that we have, really, very little control over. It’s important that we are aware of it, and have a lot of quality conversations about it and we plan, so we’ll always be able to offer the best instructional program we can for our kids.
You were a teacher and a coach before. How do you incorporate that experience, that experience of working with students directly, with your job as superintendent?
That’s a great question and there’s no question, I enjoy being a teacher and a coach very, very much. And in fact, I know and looking back, that is one of the things about my educational journey that I miss. In fact, I still teach, I teach at the university level still. Because I really enjoy that process of teaching. And so I would say that as I get a chance to walk classrooms and go in and see students and teachers interacting, that’s probably where I find some of the greatest joy in the work, is watching that interaction and watching teachers with their craft and how well they perform their craft and watching those students all around as having those aha moments as you will and connecting to a new topic or a new idea and going forward with it. It’s very exciting.
You’ve worked at other school districts before. For example, you were the deputy superintendent of the Corona-Norco Unified School District. How does Huntington Beach compare?
Huntington Beachis what I would term a “top-shelf” school district. The high schools and the interactions of the parents supporting the schools, the work that teachers and kids do together, and our staff. This is a very special school district. And its reputation is one of excellence both inside Orange County and as well as outside Orange Country.
What do you hope to be your legacy, or accomplish, in your tenure?
Let me think about that for just a second. I think the biggest thing always is to make sure that we deliver a high quality educational program for our kids that really do prepare them for 21st century work and a global economy, global citizenship and how do we help provide them the foundational skills and the critical thinking to allow them to be successful as they move out of our school district.
