December 17, 2004

Mount Pleasant Elementary School District has new superintendent

George Perez comes to the job with 30-plus years of experience

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

The new top administrator at San Jose’s Mount Pleasant Elementary School District (MPESD) reflects the ethnicity and the background of a large majority of students attending its five schools.

George Perez, new superintendent of the Mount Pleasant Elementary School District. Photo by Sheila Sanchez

But George Perez also reflects the possibilities and hopes of the American educational system that allows children from low-income immigrant families to learn, succeed and become productive members of society.

On July 1, the district’s five-member board of trustees unanimously appointed this highly regarded Latino educator and administrator to lead its predominantly Hispanic student population.

The K-8 district was established in 1865. It has an enrollment of nearly 3,000 students, and about 75 percent of them are Hispanic. More than 150 teachers educate children in its three primary schools, one intermediate school and one junior high school nestled in the eastern foothills of North Evergreen.

Strong education background
The 53-year-old Perez was principal of Los Altos High School for four years and at Santa Cruz High School for six years. He replaces former district superintendent Ida Jew, who had served as superintendent for 12 years.

“He rose to the top like oil in water. He is so outstanding. He’s a wonderful role model for our students,” said MPESD Board of Trustees President Nancy F. Hopkins. “He understands the challenges of our limited-English-speaking students. We were unified in our decision to choose him as our new superintendent.”

Barbara Marlatt, a longtime district parent volunteer, who has served on many school committees, praised the board for their selection. “We think he’s well qualified and we’re very pleased with him. We support him in his ideas on education,” she said.

At Los Altos High School, Perez supervised the completion of a multimillion renovation that included a new library and theatre and implemented a tutorial and advisory period.

As principal of Santa Cruz High School, he facilitated a restructuring effort that included the implementation of block scheduling, a bilingual advisory committee, many ethnic parental support groups, fundraising and $1.7 million in renovations of the campus’s theater, gymnasium and baseball field. During his tenure, the school also received national recognition as a 1998 New American High School.

He has a total of 32 years in education, serving in various other capacities such as bilingual math teacher for 15 years and a high school counselor for seven years.

“I’m excited to be here. The board wanted a change,” said Perez in a recent interview with the Evergreen Times at district headquarters on Marten Avenue.

Perez said he applied for the position because he was looking for a district level job. He also liked the size of the district and knew he would be a good match because of the district’s student population.

“I was these kids,” said Perez of his ethnicity and background. “I understand the issues that second-language students have.”

Goals for the district
Five months into the job, Perez’s goals for the district are to deal with its pending deficit, anticipating major budget cuts.

He would also like to continue to improve the district’s highly recognized dual immersion program and work with its lower-performing schools.

Some of the district challenges include its size and being in a bedroom community without much business support, he added.

“The people are very attached to the schools here. They’re very supportive. We define Mount Pleasant. There’s no town in Mount Pleasant. Basically Mount Pleasant is the school district,” he said.

Perez vowed to help some of the district’s schools meet their Academic Performance Index growth targets. Designed in 1999 as the measuring stick for statewide school reform, API ranks schools on a scale of 200 to 1,000.

The California Department of Education has imposed an 800-score standard for public schools. Valle Vista Magnet Elementary School met its target by scoring more than 800 points.

“It’s the same kids. The populations are pretty similar. When you’re dealing with second-language learners and the state requires you to test kids who have only been in the country for a year, you’re not going to get the best scores.

Given all those facts our scores have been in the 700s,” he said. “We’re doing better with the population we have than other districts.”

Socio-economic, not ethnic, challenges
Perez said scores are usually a reflection of socio-economic background rather than ethnic background. He said at the southern end of the district, which has higher-income families, the API scores were higher than at the northern end, which is the older and lower income part of the district.

Because of the high cost of living in the Bay Area and the impossible economic pressures imposed on immigrant families where both parents have to work to provide a living for their children, student performance reflects those difficult realities, he added.

“Most of our parents have to work to exist in this community. There aren’t a lot of parents staying home working with these kids. We have an extensive after school program to support families and kids and give them a safe place to be,” he noted.

All schools run after-school programs that close at 6 p.m., where students can do their homework in a safe environment. “They’ve done a nice job to support the families with the education of their kids. Not that we couldn’t do better, but taking into consideration the situations that our families have, the district has made a fairly nice program here for kids,” he said.

Next spring, the district will also be audited by the California Department of Education, which will conduct what’s usually called a “Coordinated Compliance Review” to check how the district is spending its money on categorical programs.

Love of teaching surpassed engineering
Perez was born in Los Angeles and raised across the country. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and Spanish literature from the University of California at Riverside and a master’s degree in psychology from the University of La Verne in Los Angeles.

He was an engineer working for the Santa Ana Watershed Planning Agency who loved tutoring math to high school students in the evenings. He soon discovered he had more fun during his three hours of tutoring than at work as an engineer.

He went back to school to obtain his teaching credential so he could become a full time educator—giving up a more lucrative and better-compensated job to be in the classroom.

Counselor changes his life
When he was attending Colton High School in 1965 and was ready to flunk out of his classes and drop out, a counselor took an interest in him. He said it was this interest that turned his life around.

“Someone recognized that there was a spark in me and told me that I could go to college. I thought, ‘Get real.’ I was a little hoodlum,” he joked.

Thanks to that counselor’s faith in him, Perez not only graduated from high school but also earned an academic scholarship to the UC-Riverside. “It made a difference in my life and changed who I was. It saved me and got me out of the slums of Los Angeles.”

Perez became the first in a family of three children to attend college. His brother and sister followed suit. His mother, the youngest of 14 children, never attended high school and his father, the youngest of 15 children, only studied to the fifth grade.

His parents, who are now deceased, immigrated to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1940s.

When he’s invited to speak at teaching functions, Perez always tells prospective educators that he would not trade all the money in the world for the abundance of love he’s received as a teacher. He still corresponds with former students who are now in their 40s.

“I’ve won all sorts of awards, but the best rewards are the letters I receive from parents and kids and past students who say, ‘Mr. Perez, I remember you.’ There’s a lot of feedback in teaching. I tell young and old teachers that if they don’t feel that love and joy in doing this, they need to consider a different profession because the money is not there.”

To deal with the job’s demands, Perez works out five days a week, plays the piano and is an amateur artist. He also loves to read science fiction novels. Frank Herbert’s “Dune” sits on his nightstand.

Perez is married to Shirakawa Elementary School Principal Pat Perez, and they have five children. His youngest daughter is in high school. Three of his children have graduated from college.