Education
Reinventors

Hi Gustavo! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, your district, and how you first got into education?
Absolutely! I’m Gustavo Balderas, superintendent of the Edmonds School District, just north of Seattle. We serve roughly 22,000 students, 53% of our student population are kids of color, and there are 129 languages spoken in our district.

I come from an immigrant family. My parents are from a border town called Villa de las Negras in Coahuila, Mexico, about three and a half hours south of San Antonio. My extended family worked in agriculture in California, Oregon, and Washington and would return to Mexico in the off season. I was born in Mount Vernon, Washington – about a half hour from my current office – where my family was picking strawberries. I was sick as a newborn, so my parents settled in Eastern Oregon. I learned English as a second language, but I also had a severe stuttering problem as a child – so I didn’t speak much in any language.

The public schools were my salvation. I received a great public school education in a small rural town. I started my career in education and have worked in every area: teaching, support, tech. And now, here I am as a superintendent.

I don’t think anyone ever picks superintendent as a career path. Most people just get tapped on the shoulder. I’m now in my 11th year as a superintendent and I’m so honored to be in this profession.

Can you share a bit about the career readiness partnerships you run in the area?
Schools in Washington have great alliances with industry. We also have a lot of alignment with university and community college partners. In our district, for example, we have 18 articulated pathways through our high schools to our colleges, universities, and community colleges.

One program that I’ll spotlight is our partnership with T-Mobile. We pick 10 to 12 students from diverse backgrounds and work with T-Mobile and Edmonds College – the local community college – to help these kids receive a full stack developer certificate in two years.

Through the program, they receive a two-year degree, get certified as a full stack developer, and get hired by T-Mobile, which sets them up with a pretty healthy income for an 18-year-old.

How do you start these partnerships and how do you ensure that they ultimately provide benefit to students?
It’s all about understanding the local context. What’s feasible in your district? For example, we have a big Boeing aerospace manufacturing plant right up the road. So how can we align elements of our curriculum with aerospace manufacturing?

My advice to other superintendents is to avoid being siloed within your district. Meet your local chamber of commerce, meet your local industry partners. Be out there. Figure out how your schools and your local economy can work symbiotically.

You’ve been recognized as an equity leader when it comes to classroom instruction. How do you apply that equity lens to your career readiness work?
To me, equity just means making sure we’re doing what’s right for all kids. And that comes down to proportionality. It means looking at all programs to make sure there’s balanced representation. Equity is about creating that opportunity of access across the board.

We’re 53% kids of color, so I expect at least 50% of those involved in our pathways programs will be students of color. With the T-Mobile program, for example, we and our partners are hyper cognizant of making sure that kids from underrepresented and low-income backgrounds are aware of the program and have the resources to apply for it.

You’ve said that you wish you could have every student take part in a pathways program. What needs to happen to make that dream a reality?
Over the years I’ve seen that kids in pathways programs graduate at a higher rate than those who aren’t in pathways programs. And that’s because these kids are engaged. They’re able to do hands-on work in a way that enables them to create their own success.

We need to really understand how to better marry academic and skills programs together in a comprehensive secondary schedule.

How do we step back and rethink education more broadly? If you’re a kid who loves auto tech, why shouldn’t you be able to learn more about auto tech without being restricted by your schedule?

Doing this requires a substantial rethink of how we treat education and making our systems more flexible for different types of students.

On a more practical level, sometimes you need to be aggressive. You have to tap kids on the shoulder and expose them to these opportunities. Some kids have impostor syndrome. For example, lots of girls can be hesitant to get into auto tech, but when they do, they’re great at it and they love it. Also, make sure that you provide the right access. Some kids don’t even know we have these programs at all. We’ve got to reach those kids directly.

How do we start training students now for industries that might not even exist yet?
It’s all about soft skills, or what I call “process skills.” It’s working well in a group. It’s staying on task. It’s being able to articulate your point of view. We need to start developing those skills at a very, very young age.

What three key takeaways do you want to leave other superintendents with?
Leverage your local industry to drive your curriculum and your pathways programs.

Start early in developing the “process skills” that kids will need to be successful in the future.

Use data to drive your decision making. That’s truly how you create equity. When there’s disproportionality, that means there are issues in the system. When you see hard evidence of proportionality in the system, you know you’re making a difference.

Education Reinventors, powered by HP, is a virtual, national community of U.S. superintendents reimagining education leadership in the new normal. We enable superintendents to connect, discuss shared challenges, and brainstorm solutions to improve outcomes for students and community members.

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