Dr. Moisés Aguirre is the Superintendent of Sweetwater Union High School District, the largest secondary school district in California. In this episode we discuss AI's influence on education, the nuances of leading a diverse school district, partnerships, humility, and self-care. Dr. Aguirre shares not only his insights but also his personal experiences, emphasizing the importance of staying grounded and humble no matter the height of success. We glance into the future, discussing the innovative programs the district is developing to prepare students for college and career. With a blend of personal anecdotes and expert opinions, this episode will make you question, ponder, and most importantly, learn.
Learn more about Dr. Aguirre
Connect with Dr. Sciarretta on X
Dr. Moisés Aguirre is the Superintendent of Sweetwater Union High School District, the largest secondary school district in California. In this episode we discuss AI's influence on education, the nuances of leading a diverse school district, partnerships, humility, and self-care. Dr. Aguirre shares not only his insights but also his personal experiences, emphasizing the importance of staying grounded and humble no matter the height of success. We glance into the future, discussing the innovative programs the district is developing to prepare students for college and career. With a blend of personal anecdotes and expert opinions, this episode will make you question, ponder, and most importantly, learn.
Learn more about Dr. Aguirre
Connect with Dr. Sciarretta on X
And I remember when Google first emerged. I remember a world before Google as a matter of fact, I do.
Speaker 1:And Google was. There was a lot of consternation around Google oh, it's going to be so easy to cheat, go search something online and it ended up being something different. Right, it's a resource. So I would like to think that we can focus on our energies on this emerging technology of artificial intelligence so that it can really help improve the human experience and the human condition, because if we can do that, I think it would be a wonderful thing. But we just have to be aware of the drawbacks and the trade-offs, because every choice involves a trade-off of some type, and so for me, being as we move forward and trying to envision what the year 2035 looks like, I would like to think it's a world where we, as humans, can engage with this new form of generative intelligence but, at the same time, keep at the core and at the center the indelible nature of the human experience.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Superintendent's Hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, Dr Shireta. Come on in and hang out. In this episode, I was privileged to sit down with Dr Moises Aguirre, Superintendent of Sweetwater Union High School District, here in the South Bay region of San Diego. Moises and I talked about a wide range of topics, from his humble upbringing and what keeps him grounded despite the challenges and stress of his daily life and work the role of artificial intelligence today and into the future, his leadership philosophy and much, much more. I hope you enjoy this inspiring conversation as much as I did creating it in collaboration with Moises. Welcome, Moises. It's a real honor to have you here hanging out for a little bit.
Speaker 1:Thank you, David. I appreciate the opportunity. I always appreciate being able to check in with old friends.
Speaker 2:I thought we could start out with your origin story, because in order to understand the present, we have to understand the past. Tell us a little bit about where you come from, who your people are, who your family is and what your foundation is built upon.
Speaker 1:Thank you, david. For me, my origin story comes with a very heavy dose of humility. I come from a family of farm workers. My grandparents, on both my maternal and paternal side, were Braceros, so they were here to work in the fields. They settled in the border town of Mexicali so they could have easy access to come over to work. I grew up in, I was born and raised in Calexico. For those of you who may not know, it's in Imperial Valley.
Speaker 2:A mashup of California and Mexico. Right the name.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what it is. On the California side it's California and Mexico and then across the border it's Mexicali, which is the opposite of Mexico and California. But definitely that's where I grew up and attended school, graduated from Calexico High School as a Bulldog and then came to school at UC San Diego. Let me tell you, once I came over here and I definitely didn't miss the 120 degree summers out in the valley I still have lots of family out there. My parents are out there. I have my sister and other family out there. I grew up in a valley, came to school at UCSD and I stayed. I didn't go back met my wonderful wife over in college. She was at San Diego State and I was at UCSD Then I had Currently now we have five children across the overtime.
Speaker 1:My career has been pretty windy in terms of my origin story. First job out of college was working in politics for one of the two governors in the history of the United States who's been recalled, gray Davis. He was a wonderful mentor. After that I went into education. I went to go work at UC San Diego doing some administrative work. Then I went to go work at San Diego Unified. Now I've been a little over eight years at Sweetwater Union High School District. It's been a little bit topsy-turvy, non-linear as I like to think about it. That's my short version of my origin story.
Speaker 2:You talk about a large dose of humility. How did your parents and your grandparents background? How does that inform the work you do today? If anybody who's driven through the Imperial Valley anytime between March and October and seeing people picking and working in the fields could possibly be the hardest job out there, how does that play into the work you do every day? It'd be easy to drift away from that reality. As you are in a position of authority and prestige with the doctorate and all these plaques that we hang on our walls. How do you stay connected to your past?
Speaker 1:For me that really comes down to being well-grounded in the moment. Anytime you start feeling a little bit of a whiff of entitlement, you just a memory seeps in and how grateful you are. I remember being in kindergarten and it was me, my mom, my dad and my little brother. I remember we lived in a one-bedroom duplex. There's four people in one bedroom. Something had to give Me and my dad had this mattress. We didn't have the blow-up mattress back in the regular mattress on the floor so that my brother can sleep on the bed with my mom.
Speaker 1:Those types of things stay with you and you stay well-grounded. It really keeps away some of these thoughts of entitlement. You don't have any entitlement. You have to work hard for every single thing you get. It builds a lot of resilience. You learn that when life knocks you down you just have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off because at the end of the day, everything that's worth something in life is worth the struggle to get. Very few things are actually handed to you on a silver platter, especially when you're coming up from such a humble place. For me it helps keep me grounded. That and my five kids.
Speaker 2:You're well-grounded. Yeah, nothing like kids to make you forget all the things on your resume, right? Yeah, definitely that's important, they say when you start to really listen to your own theme music, that's when you get in trouble. You started your work in politics before you got into education formally. What kind of lessons do you bring from your years working in politics? I would put a parentheses and say we're all still working in politics, but politics formal capital P. What lessons did you learn from that that you apply to your current role?
Speaker 1:As we've seen in education recently, there's been a lot of controversy and just a lot of public debate. Something that I think happened early on in my career is I saw there's an old saying that goes California, so it goes the nation eventually. I think, having seen that firsthand, I saw the divisiveness, I saw the vitriol that was about to engulf America in the future in terms of educational debates. I think, having gone through the recall, it really allowed me to see that About 20 years before it happened in other spaces. For me, it really grounded me in at the end of the day, there's going to be ongoing debates and disagreements.
Speaker 1:It's important to be able to carry ourselves with a modicum of integrity and to not necessarily let things get under your skin, whatever may be happening, to be able to approach the work with dignity and allow folks the space to get whatever they have to get off their chest or off their minds and then to be able to proceed.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, it's impossible to make everybody happy, but it's very much possible and important to make sure everybody has a forum so they can feel heard. At the end of the day again, there's just that understanding that no matter how hard you try, you're not going to make everybody happy. For those of us in education, I think that's a very challenging concept, because we mostly got into education because it's a service-oriented career. We want to be here to serve. We want to be here to educate the next generation. Then to feel like there's somebody out there who won't be satisfied, I think, is sometimes it feels like somewhat of a failing. I think I was able to glean early on that ability to carry ourselves professionally, with courtesy, with dignity, but also have an ability to disagree. Somebody once said it look, just because we disagree doesn't mean we have to be disagreeable, because at the end of the day, we have to continue working with each other the day after tomorrow.
Speaker 2:It always strikes me as curious when I run into leaders in education who say you know what? I don't do politics, I'm an educator. I focus on the kids in the classroom First of all. They may be quote-unquote doing politics anyway, consciously or unconsciously right, because really fundamentally it's people working with other people at any level. So I think that's inspiring for me. I've known you a long time, as we've both kind of navigated this career and different positions, and to be able to come from a background of understanding at the highest levels in the state how individuals and groups work with each other and then bring that down to the local context, I would see that as being really invaluable in terms of treating people well, even if you disagree. You know people think politics is dirty. It's not. Most of the time it's not.
Speaker 1:In my undergraduate work. I was a political science major. One of the things that you're taught early on is politics is a means towards resolving collective problems. It doesn't have to be something that we kind of look away from or reject, but it can be something that can be a means towards resolving some of these intractable problems that are faced in a democracy, and democracies are, you know, they're messy but they're, I think, a way that can allows everybody that space to be able to be heard, be able to be seen. So, yeah, I think again how you think about it, you know, is going to be how you address it, how you approach it, and so I think it's better to work with it, to be able to resolve some of these problems, and just try to kind of put your head in the sand and ignore it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's your? Speaking of leadership and bringing this to the local context. What's your philosophy of leadership and how do you believe that this is manifest in your current role in sweet water, which, by the way, for listeners is, I think, the largest secondary school district in the state just 35,000 and change students so very large. How does your philosophy manifest itself?
Speaker 1:So my philosophy is one that focuses on, and it's born through experience, observation, as well as kind of literature review or whatnot. But for me, my philosophy is that true sustainable transformation really happens in a way that's incremental. Because, as I've seen different leadership styles and different leaders, I think when you try to do something that's very blunt or a huge shock to the system, it may work for a short period of time from an institutional perspective, but over the long term those efforts tend to not stick, they tend to not really kind of sustain over time, and I'm interested in sustainable change so that we can have more equitable results in education. A lot of times there's an allure of the fad or the most recent trend and folks get on board and that's understandable. But for me, my philosophy is one that true sustainable transformation is incremental.
Speaker 2:So how does that apply then in a context where we are seeing staff shortages? It's common across the state and, I think, across the nation, that it's really challenging to find teachers. We're going to have whole swaths of our profession retiring in the next five to 10 years. Leadership turnover, all of those factors how do you get even incremental change and improvement in a complex system when the Tetris board harkening back to those of us who went to college in the 90s and should have been studying instead of playing Tetris, when the whole board is shifting all the time? I'm always curious about that.
Speaker 1:I think that's actually a great opportunity to practice this, because it allows us, as leaders, to anticipate what is to come. And so part of there's different aspects to leadership and some of it is visionary and be able to envision what's coming down the pipeline, to anticipate and have our organizations be well prepared. So that's the visionary aspect. And then there's more transactional making sure the buses arrive on time and pick up kids. So for me, that's the visionary aspect. If we understand this, as educators, how can we partner with our four-year colleges and universities? How can we partner with HR associations? How can we make education interesting again as a career?
Speaker 1:And I think right now, not just education, but all industries are being buffeted by winds of change, and so we can either react, in which case we may miss something, or we can be thoughtful, we can be deliberative and put some measures in place. For example, if you know there's going to be a shortage, you can look at maybe offering some type of incentive for kids that graduate from your system or they go to a four-year university, have a particular field that's challenging, maybe they have the promise of a job once they graduate, so that kind of thing. But the reality is right now. The economy is changing, the labor market is changing. There's all sorts of ways for folks to make a living that weren't there before. So if you think about content developers, you know before Instagram and before TikTok, content developer, I think, meant something very different than it means now. So for us, I think, is a matter of needing to be competitive in the labor market space.
Speaker 2:How have demographic changes impacted your district so specifically the drop statewide that we're seeing in school-aged children, for example? Whatever those causes are right, whether it's cost of living in southern California, whether it's cost of living in the state if you're Joe Rogan, that's what you point to all the time and you move to Austin, texas, and try to attract people to go live with you there. How has that impacted your district and what are some things you're doing to address that?
Speaker 1:Just like other urban areas in the state. We have had declining enrollment since pretty much since I arrived at Sweetwater. It was a trend that was kind of starting and it's only continued uphase. So in our district, when I first got there in 2015, we served approximately 40,000 students, a little over 40,000, and now we are at a little over 35,000. So, if you want to think about it that way, it's 5,000 students. Put another way, it's a high school and a middle school, and we haven't closed high school and middle school because we've been very aware of the way that this could impact and kind of exacerbate some inequities.
Speaker 1:So we've definitely been impacted by this declining enrollment. That's happening not just in our district, not just in our region, but really it's across America. And so how has it impacted us? Well, we need to be more strategic, we need to be more mindful, particularly when it comes to staffing levels. How do you adjust for the decrease in students and what the commensurate decrease that will eventually need to happen? How can you be thoughtful?
Speaker 1:Because when everything of a school system, there's all sorts of stakeholders involved and every single one is going to be impacted in different and unique ways. And again, this is where that theory of operating from a place that you want to be as deliberative as possible so that you don't inadvertently miss any spots, and so it's been a challenge. I think we've managed it from a place of care, making sure we kind of do the least harm as possible. But at the end of the day, when you have such a strong decrease in enrollment, it's going to impact all of us in urban California, and it's all the way from the Bay Area down through Los Angeles and all the way down here. So how can we be thoughtful and how can we put some measures in place? But we've definitely been impacted by this decrease in enrollment.
Speaker 2:So your district covers a very large and also really fascinating swath of South County, South Bay Area of San Diego. From National City you got Bay Front. You got East, going all the way to Ohti Ranch. You go South too. I think some of your secondary schools are right near the border. So diverse neighborhood, North-South, East-West, different needs, different for lack of a better word demands, right, and people ask for things and want their needs to be met. And most people want their needs to be met yesterday, no matter who they are. How do you, as superintendent, lead on that complex chessboard of differing regional demands? And then on top of that layer is the declining enrollment. On top of that is at one time was COVID and could be something else. How do you keep the ship going in the right direction during all that?
Speaker 1:So the one word, if I had to describe it, would probably be deliberation and deliberative.
Speaker 1:As you mentioned, our district is fairly large, geographically as well as from an enrollment perspective.
Speaker 1:So we go from the border, literally from the border with Mexico and Baja California, all the way up to past national city and the border with the city of San Diego and all the way east to east lake in those areas, and west we have Imperial Beach and some of the issues there.
Speaker 1:So a lot of like micro regions, if you will, to our district, each one with their own unique set of needs and wants, and I think it's important to take it into consideration, whatever the advocacy may be, and then to be able to develop a plan that that's as reasonable as possible, and sometimes that's the challenging thing because of the column resources and the fact that, as you mentioned, there's not sufficient resources for everything everybody would like. And so I think for me it's really important to be thoughtful and make sure people feel heard, because, at the end of the day, when you make a decision at the district level, I think it's important to be able to have people understand why you made the decision. They may not necessarily agree with a decision, but if they at least understand the rationale. I think that adds a layer of kind of what responsibility that we all have as leaders to make sure people understand, and not sense, how these decisions are being made. They may not agree, but at least that there's a rationale for them.
Speaker 2:Shifting gears a little bit. Your career has included work leading the office of charter schools at San Diego Unified School District. That's how you and I both met, when we were both significantly younger you were significantly younger than I was at the time. Your current district also authorizes, I believe, at least one charter school. How do you view the role of charters within the public education constellation in our state?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's a great question. I do remember way back when when we first met in that, in that context.
Speaker 1:So it's what we have two charter schools, and so for me, one of my takeaways from my time working in the charter office and with charter schools is really an appreciation for the fact that there's a space for I think some have Described it as research and development arm of education.
Speaker 1:There's a space there for Exploration, just the understanding that a comprehensive district, a comprehensive school, there's just no way it can offer everything to everybody. So charter schools have a space to offer A niche kind of programming. You know, not every campus can be offering in different languages, for example a German, a Spanish, a Mandarin language program. So how can we come together to offer the best options across the board, understanding that from a public school perspective, the traditional public school is a there's very much that responsibility for an attendance boundary for all of our all of our schools. And then the niche kind of aspect that charter schools can offer for parents looking for something a little bit more specialized was it's kind of how I tend to think about it the landscape, you know, continues to evolve and evolves quickly, but at the end of the day, I think Again, if you're deliberative, if you're thoughtful, there's ways that that reasonable people can can come together to find some common, common understanding.
Speaker 2:What are you most proud of In your tenure as superintendent of sweetwater? You're what. Five year, five years in, are you?
Speaker 1:If you count the year I was interim, I'm three years in, three years in, okay.
Speaker 2:It just seems like a long time because you, you had a particularly. Your timing was great. Though those three years should at least count as six or nine years, it should double, or at least double.
Speaker 2:We need to let the state retirement system know that leading through Educators in general during COVID should have doubled their pension contribution Credit. Let me make a note of that to send an email that no one will read. But what are you most proud of in your tenure so far? So I like to distill it down to one word and that's stability.
Speaker 1:The fact that when I was a point I still remember that evening we were in a, in a budget deficit there were so many unknowns from a COVID-19, from a COVID the pen, that pandemic perspective. We were a couple months into the pandemic, I think. At that moment I still remember thinking, oh well, we should be come back in the fall and you know it'll, they'll kind of wind its way through. But it ended up being another year of kind of Finding our way through that pandemic. And so the fact that we're able to do it in a way that was that continue to focus on having stability in our system, because for me, I kind of saw a meme that said you can't, you have to Maslow before you bloom, and so that for me a shorthand saying we have to take care of the basics Literally it was the basics. At that point we're handing out food.
Speaker 1:Distribution, yeah, food, shelter, kind of the very basics of the human condition.
Speaker 1:So we focused on that.
Speaker 1:And then we, you know, so appreciative of all the work that teachers and counselors and classified staff, everybody did their part To get us through that, that, that moment in time, which was a significant moment but for me the word Stability really comes to mind we were able to find ourselves Fiscally stable.
Speaker 1:We're able to resolve many of the ongoing fiscal issues we we had, and so I think the fact that we were able to restore the trust and confidence from the parents in our community, their staff, I think to me was very, very significant, and sometimes the ability is easy to to kind of Oversee and just kind of oh well, of course it's there, but when you had so many significant Just events and and things going on, it really was important to bring that sense of stability so then we can allow Students to really focus on their higher order thinking skills and really focus on kind of the, the learning that needed to happen.
Speaker 1:But that couldn't happen when we had a pandemic raging through our community, particularly in South Bay. It hit our community, I think, one of the hardest across San Diego County. So the ability to have a stable district and now be where we are today. It's kind of the journey that I like to reflect upon and and as I reflect upon it, that's what I keep coming back to is the ability to have that sense of stability Even through all the the things that were happening.
Speaker 2:It's through storm that was happening, so just when you are feeling comfortable with your stability and you mentioned higher order thinking skills, which we normally ascribe to human beings we have this interesting Emergence of artificial intelligence, which had been percolating behind the scenes for a long time. But it wasn't really until these language learning models became commercially and widely available chat, gpt and others, barred and Others that suddenly it kind of came to the forefront and it's become a hot topic everywhere, including an education. What is Sweetwater doing as a district to address the fact that chat, gpt and others are here to stay?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think what really is a Going to be changing the game here is that it's generative, right. So it is the has the ability to generate its own thought processes and to learn, and so what we did is, in anticipation of this, once Spring time of this year happened, we brought together, we stood up a committee, a work group to really examine the impacts from different and really what's really important is to take into account the different Perspectives, because there's going to be the. There's going to be the impact of students, right, and how are they going to leverage this technology for good or not? Right, because there's some things there that can help. So, for example, if you look at, sock con from Khan Academy had a had a video on YouTube, I thought. I think it was a TED talk and he was talking about the ability to have chat GPT as a tutor. That's right be able to move Student learning up to two standard deviations. So that's pretty significant growth that could potentially happen. But along the line, there's also some risks and, as exciting as the positives are, we have to be very aware of the tradeoffs Because inevitably there'll be tradeoffs, and that's just a student perspective Through this work. Again, it's a cross section of our district. We have some teachers who are there and they've pointed out that there's some apps that leverage artificial intelligence to help them do lesson planning and some other skill sets there as well. So there's going to be an impact.
Speaker 1:The question for us is do we put our head in the sand and ignore it and kind of let it be, or do we want to be proactive and engage with this technology so that we can at least put some guardrails and there's an understanding what's acceptable use and not acceptable use?
Speaker 1:And so we took the latter approach rather than the former, and so we brought this, this work group.
Speaker 1:Our goal is to have a kind of a Sharing out of these guidelines and it'll be guidelines, not necessarily formal policy or procedure, because we want to give it time and space to evolve. So we're our timeline is to be able to bring this forward by the month of December, so to close out the calendar year and again Just to put some guidance out there for our teachers, for our students, for our parents. There's a there's a lot of considerations that go into that and doing it in a reasonable way, and Probably the day after we we send those out, they're going to be outdated because I'm going to be some change to the technology, so this is going to be a field that I think evolves very quickly, but we want to be engaged in it. We want to be able to shape it rather than kind of having it be a kind of a free-for-all and and then we're just trying to react. I want to be proactive within our community because I think it could be beneficial if Utilized appropriately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that generative nature is so Fascinating and also unsettling for us as humans. Right, there's this story. It's in a book that Henry Kissinger and one of the founders of Google and I can't remember exactly the last name, but they wrote a book recently about AI and it starts out with this scene where, you know, for decades IBM was building this computer, big blue, that supposedly Could beat any human, any chess grandmaster out there, and it got to where it would be the best in the world 99 out of 100 times. Then this artificial intelligence, generative Machine played big blue. In the beginning it lost, lost resoundingly, but then it started to eke out victories and eventually, in two or three days, it was dominating big blue but was playing in ways that a Computer wouldn't play. So it was. It was exhibiting human-like characteristics and doing tricky moves and things that were Morning. They were kind of illogical, but they had a. They had a logic to them at a deeper level. So these are really interesting things to ponder, right as we, as you say, a higher-order thinking. What does it mean?
Speaker 2:I interviewed and this will come out In the next couple weeks but Amanda Fox, who's the leading author on AI. In the classroom, she's a. She's a teacher out of Louisville, kentucky, and she's written a book on on using AI in the classroom. And you know she says you so many educators when she does professional developments, they come to her and they say, okay, what tools can we find to detect if our students are using AI in the essays they write? And she said, well, why don't you ask them to type a paper in class and then present it to the class and talk about it? You'll learn right away. And that's that human piece. I don't think that ever goes away.
Speaker 1:It's interesting you mentioned that last year we had a brief visit to one of our campuses at Chulivis the Middle by Bill Gates, and one of the topics he addressed in a small group setting was kind of how do you meld HI with AI and HI being human intelligence with AI being artificial intelligence? And so that was fascinating to hear kind of some of the recent developments. And then a couple of weeks ago I read an article in a journal Foreign Affairs and it asked a fascinating question it's the year 2035. How has AI changed the world? And so here we are in the year 2023. We're talking about 2035, which sounds super far into the future, but it's only 12 years, which, in the animals of human experience, is not that much, you'll be 50 years old.
Speaker 2:I'll be a little bit older. I won't be 50 years old, I'll be a little bit older.
Speaker 1:Got rolling, but it's a fascinating question to ask from a visionary perspective. It's the year 2035. How are we gonna be engaging our world our both our natural world with all the things going on with our climate? How is the world gonna be different with our built environment, with so many things that are happening? How are we gonna be engaging with technology? So it's gonna be. We're gonna need a lot of visionary leadership and some of it.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot of cause for fear. I've heard that. I think we all have. I also think there's a lot of cause for hope. Ultimately, I think with any new technology, there's gonna be a set of trade-offs. We just have to be mindful that we protect the integrity of the human experience. I think that's what we have to be very mindful of, and making sure that we continue to have that ethos of empathy, that ethos of that every life has a natural dignity to it, kind of coming back full circle when you work on a farm. You may not have be the person of most means, but every single person has dignity and every person tends to develop a resilience. So I think if we can continue to have that as a focus and the dignity of a human experience. I think it'll help shape how we respond to these emerging technologies, and I remember when Google first emerged, and I remember a world before Google it's a matter of fact.
Speaker 1:And Google. There was a lot of consternation around Google oh, it's gonna be so easy to cheat, you just go search something online, so and it ended up being something different. Right, it's a resource. So I would like to think that we can focus on our energies on this emerging technology of artificial intelligence so that it can really help improve the human experience and the human condition, because if we can do that, I think it would be a wonderful thing. But we just have to be aware of the drawbacks and the trade-offs, because every choice involves a trade-off of some type. And so for me, as we move forward and trying to envision what the year 2035 looks like, I would like to think it's a world where we, as humans, can engage with this new form of generative intelligence but, at the same time, keep at the core and at the center the indelible nature of the human experience.
Speaker 2:And maybe we'll, in that whole process, have a renewed take a renewed look at our use of devices in our daily lives. So I'm sure you've had the same experience. You go to a restaurant, you see a couple out on a date, or a family parents and two kids and everybody's on their device at the table. Ai is not making you pick up that device right. It's a combination of the very seductive design of the different platforms and the dings and the user interface that's amazing to work with and never gets tiring and never runs out of content. But it's like you could put that thing down, you could put it on airplane mode and you could actually speak with your family and no AI will ever replace that experience. Love, hope, fear all of those human emotions that machines can never, ever replace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, if you think about how our experience has changed for it, I remember, you know, sitting around the dinner table when there were no phones and having that interaction, and now it's been changed and you have to be really thoughtful and mindful of it so that you can actually be mindful to say, all right, we're all gonna put these devices on airplane mode or just shut them down, and it's interesting to see how people react. It's really interesting when you talk about technology, when somebody, even at the workplace, just forgets their phone at work.
Speaker 1:The almost anxiety and losing experience that produces and we're like, oh my God, I forgot my phone. I gotta be back. I gotta go get my phone. Like I can't like, okay, so you know, for a very long time human beings didn't have a phone. You know you'll be able to get home eventually and check all your messages and it's gonna be okay. It's like almost that ability to deescalate the anxiety that's created. So how can we engage with the technology in a more constructive manner, I think, is the question we should be asking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for those of us and I think you're probably in this boat where we remember when homes only had one landline and then it was really cool if you had two phones hooked up to the same line, you could. You know, I'm a teenager, I'm in my room trying to talk to somebody on the phone and I was like my mom would pick up on the other end. David Victor, five minutes. And that's when phone calls were expensive too. Right, if they were long distance From that to where we are now. The tricky thing and you're a father, so you've got five kids in different ages, and those are just the challenges, right? Is your youngest? Is how old? He's seven, okay, so he's gonna grow up in a world where he won't know a non-AI world.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm yeah and that's how do we get as adults, how do we parents, educators, how do we get to shape that experience? Because, again, every generation has had technological developments that happen right. One generation had a plane, and before there was a plane, it was impossible to fly a plane right. And so what happens is this thing in the sky and it's not a bird. Oh my God, what's going on here. And so every generation has worked through technological advancement. I think the challenge for our generation is how do we do it in a responsible manner to this kind of omnipresent development that we see coming? And I think for me is how can we do it in a way that's responsible?
Speaker 2:Moises. What's one thing that most people don't know about you as a person and as a leader?
Speaker 1:Ah, that's interesting. So one thing I think that is not well known by many people I think some do I actually didn't learn English until I was in the second grade, so my parents spoke Spanish. You know, living on the border had some time that I went back and forth, so I think that really helped me make sense and understand how challenging it is for some of our families to engage with a comprehensive kind of bureaucratic system such as an educational system. And so I think because of that, again, I approach the work that we do with humility and making sure we're providing support to families who may not be as familiar with the system and, even if they are familiar, just navigating the multitude of kind of bureaucracy that engulfs an organization system, and it changes every year because there's new laws that come online, new regulation and how can we support our families, and so that's one thing that I think is not well known about me is the fact that I didn't learn English until I was around second grade.
Speaker 2:What language do you dream in?
Speaker 1:I probably. That's interesting. I think I probably dream in both. Yeah, it depends on the context, so familiar I'll do like family setting in Spanish and then work setting. So it depends on the dream, the situation.
Speaker 2:They say that your true original language comes out if you stub your toe. It's like yes, yes. That's kind of in that moment of involuntarily involuntary exclamation Probably in Spanish.
Speaker 1:Probably in Spanish, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So, yeah, I mean even just the English language learner now, multi-language learner is the new vernacular. But that journey, right, your district has a significant percentage of students who are going through the journey that you went through, obviously in their own ways and in a different context. That's gotta be really valuable as a leader to be able to go, even with your team, at your level, right, like, hey, this is let me shed some color commentating Al Michael style on this situation, cause I lived it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the things that I am able to bring to the leadership opportunity and the leadership challenge of our district is being able to share in that challenge, that experience that a lot of our students and parents and community are going through. I think that's part of what I can bring to the table.
Speaker 2:So leading a large school district is undoubtedly a stressful and relentless job. I kind of describe and in my context it's kind of I call it the Texas barbecue low and slow, because it never really goes away. Right, it's a seven day, twenty four hour thing. It might not spike the same as being a site principal every day at three thirty at dismissal, where you have to deal with a thousand kids and parents, but it never goes away. How do you find renewal and rejuvenation and new ideas in your life so that you can meet the challenges of your job and also be a an effective husband and father in all of that?
Speaker 1:For me that for me, that really is more of a journey. It's not a end point and the starting point and endpoint, and so my journey involves family. I find a much renewal in spending time with my wife, my kids, my parents, my, my siblings, my and so you know there's a lot to be said for that just ability to share a laugh with my family. Sure, some moments that's how I find renewal. I also find renewal recently taken up a little bit of meditation and so the ability to just be mindful, which is an interesting juxtaposition because I use an app for that. It's on my technology, but headspace it's calm, calm, calm, and so part of that is you and LeBron, yes, so for me that's kind of a skill set I'm trying to develop just ability to have mindfulness.
Speaker 1:I find it ironic it's on my phone and it's on an app that I'm trying to disconnect. This is kind of the juxtaposition is pretty interesting. But for me, things like that, you know, going for a walk in the evening park just kind of to decompress the day, and then, as I'm at the walk, my, my phone keeps buzzing because things keep happening right. So for me it's, it's a journey. I think after covid, we all realize how important self care and and making sure we're taking care of our mental wellness as well as our physical wellness, which many and often times have a deep connection to each other our mental wellness with our physical wellness.
Speaker 1:So just, I think it's important. Sometimes some days are harder than others. That's just the reality, depending on what's going on. But to be able to try to focus on that, I think it's important for all leaders and for everybody. But I think is the demands of leadership Are such that it's important to make sure you're also not forgetting to take care of your mind and body.
Speaker 2:Refill the tank. Refill the tank when you can. The tank fill the cup. However, you can whatever it is, who your role models and where do you find your inspiration?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that one at the most basic level is I kind of coming back full circle? I have to say, it's my parents. My parents filled me with inspiration because, even though they only completed a middle school Education, they were able to raise their kids and get us through high school and Apologies for interrupting.
Speaker 2:were they from?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom was born, my family, my grandfather, my uncle, my dad. He was born when I was a kid grew up in.
Speaker 1:Mexico. So so I think my parents are a deep source of inspiration. My family, my wife, my children they're a deep source of inspiration. From a personal perspective, I have role models I look to professionally. You know people I've worked closely with that I feel are heavy influences. People like Dr Bob Stein, dr Carl Cohn's, different folks that I've worked with over time that I feel really have influenced me. There's in different realms as well, because my career has been so kind of you know topsy turvy, but on our board I trust the Segura he's, he's been, he worked in in labor for a long time. I learned a lot from him and that previous boards.
Speaker 1:I do this people I can definitely. I try to glean knowledge and, probably more important than knowledge, I try to glean wisdom from different people that I've worked with, because I think as we traverse this journey called life, we can learn something from everybody, regardless of whether they have a degree or not, regardless of what they do. You never know where that, that negative wisdom is going to come at you. We just have to have our ears and our eyes open to be able to acknowledge it when it comes to us.
Speaker 2:What's next for sweetwater? So you're in a place of stability and some people would say stability means you can rest and relax, and other people would say if you're stable too long, you're sliding too far behind the stern of the boat and boats getting away from you. What's next for sweetwater?
Speaker 1:It's a wonderful question. So for me, stability is a allows you the space to be innovative and then it allows you to be able to take some risk and do some things that maybe people had thought of doing but, given everything else could not have, we're just simply couldn't afford to. So I kind of tend to look at it that way. So how we think of kind of shapes, how we approach it. So one of the things we have a real deep interest in that we're going to be working on is our developing our concurrent enrollment. With our community college. We recently were the recipients of a. There was a grant of. Each grant was a hundred thousand dollars and it was for each of our high schools. So for us it's over a million dollars and that for us that's significant. We are going to have the ability to grow our concurrent enrollment programs. We're also in received receipt of another grant to begin our first ever early middle college in partnership with Southwestern Community College down in the sunny Cedar O'Rea.
Speaker 1:So for me, being able to be stable allows us the energy, the space to be able to be creative, to be able to be innovative, so that we can be thinking of these things that are going to be moving forward.
Speaker 1:So, for example, with universities and colleges moving away from the SAT, which has a lot of kind of historical context to it, you know good, bad and in between. But moving away from it has has gotten us thinking what are those ways that we can have our students have access to the college going experience? So for us it's working with our community college. So that's one initiative we're working on. We're really focusing on again bringing that focus to academics and making sure we're preparing our students to for college and career. And I think that's the other thing that's changing is there's been so much focus on on on the college going that we forget that sometimes life is not linear and college definitely. We continue to encourage it. But sometimes kids go work or have other experiences, then go to college, go back to work, then go back for a master's, then go back to work, then go back for a doctorate, go back to work.
Speaker 2:So like you and I. Yes, I can't both of us in mind but life isn't linear.
Speaker 1:You know it doesn't happen and you do a and then you do B and you do C. Sometimes you go from a to C, you come back to B, then you go to G, then you go. So that's important, I think, for our educational systems to acknowledge and equip our students so they're able to navigate the quickly evolving kind of professional landscape and just overall experiences. So those are some things we were focusing on and I really appreciate that question because it's something that we have had conversations about. Ok, so we've got our finances stable.
Speaker 1:Covid is kind of starting to regress, that's that's re-energized and refocus the system back on on making sure our students are learning and learning through experiences, learning through different ways, maybe learning to use new technology. So it allows us that space to now be able to be proactive rather than always reacting to. That was happening with COVID was we were in a very reactive space. You know there's a new regulation and a new check and health check that would come down and the expectation was that schools would really be responsible for it was in the past was more the health care industry. So that was just being in. That was just. It caused a lot of disruption. So now for us to really to be able to get our students and our staff back in a, in a place of focusing and being able to be innovative, and bring some of that along the lines with preparing our systems for being smaller, because less kids are in our system. So it's like it's not really a layer cake, it's more of a marble cake.
Speaker 1:All these things intersect and interact and it's not a neat layer like oh, this is this, the, the, the, the client enrollment layer, and this is not the innovation layer. And this is not that, no, it's, it's really a marble cake where everything's kind of in there and it's juxtaposed and there's a lot of contradiction and for us, the ability to work through those in a really reasonable way to make sure we're supporting our, our communities is important.
Speaker 2:I know it's a ways off still, but the day you retire from service and public education, what do you want your legacy to be?
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So for me I I really see myself as a workhorse, not as a show horse, and everybody has their collides. Dale. Yeah it's a workhorse right.
Speaker 2:Yeah me.
Speaker 1:I Really want to make sure that my legacy is our students had the most experiences available to them to learn that they had access to world-class education and then when they go on to the world and they come back to us, they go. You know what, you know what doctor, a, you know what doctor or sirada because of your work I was, I felt like I was prepared. It was great. I went to college and I was like I Got this. You know, if you go to career, if you go to the military, you can go there and say, because of how I was prepared, I've got this.
Speaker 1:And not only for this, but to be able to have the creativity and to be able to Think differently, because, at the end of the day, that's what our kids are gonna need, they believe to think differently than we have. Because our world is evolving so much and there's so much change and that is the constant across. Everything is changed. To make sure that our students have the ability to To meet that change head-on, that would I would like that to be my legacy.
Speaker 2:So you have a long and impressive resume, lots of accomplishments, degrees, and we've talked about some of it today. What's one item on your anti resume, ie one gap that you'd like to fill, either personally, professionally, something you haven't done, haven't accomplished, haven't learned, haven't seen, haven't felt?
Speaker 1:so for me, I I'll go with a personal one, just because I think it's kind of a neat. For me, I really want the opportunity to travel a little more. For me, the world consists of my district and my energies are hundred percent there. But you know, I think, being my national, I have access to this Experience of experiencing two cultures. But to see beyond those two cultures, I think it's important so that's a personal goal is to do a bit more travel, be able to be exposed to different cultures and, again, I think the world could benefit from people getting to know each other a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Right now there's so much conflict that I think is important for us to to have more understanding and and Across cultures and across perspectives. I think that's an important thing that we. It detracts from the human experience when you're so focused on, kind of the, the singular, the other ring of people. I think as a species, we're too quick to do that and I I would really like for for me, as a goal, to be able to explore that and get to know others.
Speaker 2:So you, first of all, I want to thank you again for the generosity of your time and your attention. I know you have myriad things that pull you in all different ways at all times, and so it means a lot to me that you'd come and spend this this time this morning here chatting. Before I ask you the last question, is there anything that we have not covered today that you feel bubbling up, that you want to share or mention Related to your career, sweet water or your vision? Anything else, yeah, other than the fact that you're Raiders fan. I don't know if that's allowed on here. Well, you know, growing up in the valley, we only used to get Raiders games.
Speaker 2:Back when you had the rabbit ears on the TV.
Speaker 1:So for me, I really want to kind of just express my appreciation, david, to you.
Speaker 1:I think it's hugely important, regardless of the work people do or how they're engaging in the world, is the ability to focus on Relationships.
Speaker 1:I think that continues to be unique to to our existence and I Think it's something that fills all of our cups to be able to have those Relationships with people we know that we can harken back to.
Speaker 1:We went through difficult experience and because of that we've come out or made a great experience, but the ability to have those relationships, the reason I'm here is because you and I have gone back, you know, a number of years, if not decades, and I think that's really important. I also think it's really important to continue to focus to, to build greater understanding, because that's something I think we're losing, or at least it hasn't been a focus, whether it's understanding across, you know, polit, political divides, ratio and ethnic divides, linguistic divides, technological divides it's just a lot of division in the world, and so the ability to be able to be a little bit more curious before we come to judgment and learn and have understanding, I think is going to be critical for us. Moving forward with all this change coming through is the ability to have an understanding and for each other, I think it's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, likewise, I really value our Friendship and we. It is definitely more than just a few years, it's, I think it's more than a decade. We've. We've known each other in various capacities, back when neither of us had any gray hair and I had hair so, so it's been a while. So the last question is you get to Design a billboard for one of the freeways that runs through your district, and you have a number of them, so I like the five or the 805 or the 54 or one of those, the 125. One of those freeways, moises, gets to design a billboard for the side of the freeway with his message for the world, and Folks are driving by at 70 miles an hour, so they have a few seconds to See and appreciate and understand that message. What does your billboard say?
Speaker 1:Is it in the context of a school district or just life? The context, the context that you choose so I would say Something along the lines of life is short, work hard, play hard, care hard, mmm.
Speaker 2:Life is short, work hard, play hard, care hard. That's a great and, I think, fitting way to end today's conversation, and we'll have to do this again soon. I'd love to circle back and see how your partnerships with Universities are going and the middle college concept, and I'm almost intrigued by the great work You're doing in a very challenging environment. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, david. Thank you for listening to the superintendents hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS 1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Bacchial for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day you.