New LAUSD superintendent Michelle King's top priority: 'Making sure every student graduates'
The new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, Michelle King, spent 31 years working her way up through the district but has stayed largely out of the spotlight. Now she’s stepping up as the public face to steer the district through its big challenges, including declining enrollment and big budget problems.
King spoke to KPCC about her first few days on the job, her priorities going forward, and her strategies for attracting and keeping families to the district's schools.
Here we are the end of your first week as L.A. Unified superintendent, walk we through the highlights? What did you do?
Each and every day, I started my day in schools visiting teachers, students, classified staff, seeing what they were doing, introducing myself and [giving them] the opportunity to see me, and for me to see incredible things happening on our campuses.
You have so much experience in this district and one advantage many have said that gives you is that you can really hit the ground running. What are the specific things that you want to accomplish in your first year as superintendent?
One is graduation, and making sure every student graduates, and that is one of my overarching, top priorities. Even today, I was with a group of administrators at Dorsey High School, sitting around a table talking to them about how we’re going to ensure each and every student is going to walk across that stage graduating A through G, college-prepared and career ready.
[Secondly,] balancing our budget is a huge priority for me. I was just in a budget meeting today working with teams and working with staff, around ensuring that we’re able to reach a three year balanced budget and that’s a heavy lift for us.
And then thirdly – really important — is the engagement piece, engaging families and school communities. One of the things that’s troubled me over the years is that there’s been a waning of the public trust in L.A. Unified. I will hit the ground with a campaign that’ll be called "Listen, Learn, and Activate," where I’m able to go out into the community, to community meetings, schools, etc. hear what’s going on, hear what the people, the stakeholders feel is important to them, learn – really learn deeply — and make something happen.
How much more can you raise the graduation rate? How much can you close the deficit that’s expected? How many more parents can you get engaged?
For my engagement effort, we’re looking at – between now and April – really trying to target approximately 10,000 folks in terms of that type of engagement. And that doesn’t include going to the schools that I’ve shared with you, visiting with those communities as well. We’ll set metrics to be able to meet that.
I have a plan of working with the board, we’ll go through a strategic planning process, we will lay out what the goals will be, set metrics and targets to be able to do that.
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