John Ramirez Jr. served as a teacher for only three years, but it was inside the classroom where he says he learned his most important lesson about education.

It was at Salinas' Loma Vista Elementary School, in a fifth- and sixth-grade combination class, where he realized that "there are no students in a classroom who can't achieve."

"Regardless of (the) level where they came in, it all depends on the energy and effort I put in as a teacher," he said. "I had to work with the students before school, after school, use different activities, differentiated instruction. Teaching is hard and laborious, but you can achieve results if you spend the time."

The 38-year-old educator applied this insight to the positions he has had since: as principal of Martin Luther King Jr. in Seaside, of El Sausal Middle School and Alisal High in Salinas, at Sequoia High in Visalia and, most recently, as director of alternative education programs in Visalia.

He has been praised for leaving the schools better than he found them.

After four years, Ramirez is returning to Salinas to take on perhaps one of the most charged jobs in Monterey County: top administrator for the Alisal Union School District.

The 7,600-pupil district has been roiling with conflict in the past few months, controversies that climaxed this week when the California State Board of Education held an emergency meeting to appoint a trustee for the district — a move that was supposed to take place in May.

The state board was responding to several Alisal board actions, including the ouster of former Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas and the hiring of Ramirez as interim superintendent.

Ramirez said he welcomes the appointment of a trustee and that he has already begun to work with Nancy Kotowski, the Monterey County Superintendent of Schools named by the state board as interim trustee.

"It is very reassuring for me to have someone like Nancy working for us," Ramirez said. "She's local, she'll work for us."