Westside Story Newspaper – Online The News of The Empire – Sharing the Quest for Excellence
SAN BERNARDINO, CA— San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD) Superintendent Doc Ervin announced Tuesday, May 3 that he will retire at the end of this school year. In making the announcement, Ervin praised the educational community for putting students first during what he called “the most unprecedented time for public education.”
“When I joined the SBCUSD team, my goal was twofold. First to reopen schools to in-person learning after the pandemic pushed classes online for a year, and second to set us on a transformational path toward becoming a high-performing public school district,” said Ervin. “I am proud to say we accomplished the first and have good curricular, instructional, and assessment systems and structures in place to support the second.”
Ervin was hired one year ago, with the Board of Education unanimously appointing him for a three-year assignment. According to Ervin, he made the decision to retire earlier than expected after carefully considering family, health, and progress toward his professional goals here.
“Superintendent Ervin came to SBCUSD, listened to our community, and led us through reopening our schools with an emphasis on doing what’s best for kids,” said Dr. Scott Wyatt, President of the Board of Education. “While his tenure will be brief, his impact on our system has helped us see new opportunities to help scholars excel and move our District on a trajectory toward becoming a high performing district of excellence.”
Ervin spent several months gathering input from the community through his Listening & Learning Tour. He shared his findings with the District’s leadership team who developed five overarching goals to strengthen student outcomes. Then at Mr. Ervin’s urging parents, students, teachers, community leaders, principals, District administrators, and Board members joined a task force to build on these overarching goals and create a new strategic plan known as Framework for Excellence: Vision 2025. Nearly complete, the Framework will provide SBCUSD with a roadmap to guide its success in the future.
Ervin noted that he appreciates the support he’s received from members of the District’s Board of Education. He added that he hopes they will embrace the collaboratively designed Framework before the next school year begins and will come together to select a new leader who is aligned with their educational philosophy.
“As I have said since I started my role here, SBCUSD has everything it needs to be a high-performing, urban public school system,” said Ervin. “I believe in the plans our team developed together with input from our school community. I believe they can be successful regardless of my decision to step away because this District is an educational community that wants transformational change. Success is possible if everyone stays focused on making decisions in the best interests of kids.”
In addition to reopening schools and preparing the Framework for Excellence, Mr. Ervin also led the District in many other accomplishments including:
• Implementation of a robust COVID-19 management system that protected SBCUSD students, staff, and community to the greatest extent possible.
• Establishing a District division to focus on Equity, Access and Innovation and ensure all students are met with the support and opportunity they need to be successful.
• Implementation of a system-wide digitized 4-year plan to guide high school students toward graduation and improve college readiness.
• Adoption of the NWEA assessment systems to provide meaningful insights for teaching and learning that will help educators improve their effectiveness.
• Establishment of a Superintendent’s Parent Advisory Committee to ensure representation and improved communication with parents and guardians from all 73 schools.
• Improvement of communication between the District and its various stakeholders through the deployment of ParentSquare and several electronic newsletters.
• Achievement of three new Linked Learning Gold Certified Career Pathways and the state’s first Linked Learning Gold High School.
• Launching of a pilot program for a Learning Labs as a model to scale Districtwide in support of academic success in literacy and math.
• Initiation of teacher-led efforts to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment systems to provide uniformity, continuity, and consistency across all schools.
Mr. Ervin’s last day as Superintendent will be July 1, 2022. The Board of Education will discuss the process of identifying the District’s next superintendent at a future board meeting.
