Retiring superintendent reflects on education career
| Saturday, May 16 2009 10:27 AM
Last Updated Saturday, May 16 2009 01:52 PM
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Jenn Ireland / The Californian Kern County Superintendent of Schools Larry Reider poses for a portrait in his downtown office Thursday afternoon.
Jenn Ireland / The Californian Kern County Superintendent of Schools Larry Reider reminisces about his first job as a teacher while in his downtown office Thursday afternoon.
In the summer of 1965, Larry E. Reider left his family's wheat farm in eastern Washington and drove for two days to Kern County to take a job teaching 5th grade in the Arvin Union School District.
After seven years as a teacher, Reider became a principal, and in 1984 he began working for the county schools office. He was promoted to associate Kern County superintendent of schools in 1994.
On Tuesday, Reider announced his plans to retire from his position as Kern County superintendent of schools, a position he has held since 1999.
The Californian spoke with Reider about his career in education, his tenure as superintendent and the current challenges in education.
How did you become a teacher in Kern County?
I tried to join the military, Vietnam was cranking up. But I tore up a knee playing basketball in college. And I needed a job. I had a job offer in Juneau, Alaska, with the social department, but I didn't want to deal with the snow. I went through the directories in the personnel office and started going alphabetically and came to Bakersfield. I sent a letter to the Kern County office of education saying I was interested in teaching. With the Bs I could have ended up in Barstow, who knows!
They forwarded my file out to Arvin because they wanted someone with a PE background, and he called me the day after Memorial Day and said "Are you interested in coming to Arvin?" Well, sure I would be, not knowing where it was, in all honesty.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere, I had eight kids in my graduating class, so Arvin was big city for me.
And dang, I started liking it, there's that sense of fairness and hard work I was brought up with. I had that same sense here.
When did it hit you as a teacher that kids should come first?
In the first or second month I was in the lounge in Arvin and a teacher was complaining about a class, and she was not a good teacher at all. She said, "What can we expect out of these kids?"
I thought to myself, how can you go in a classroom and say what can we expect? You have to expect the very best out of these kids, they're counting on you to move them up.
That was really a defining moment in my career. If educators feel like that, I can't be feeling like that. That child has to be what I'm going to focus on.
When you announced your retirement this week you said you were looking forward to sitting on your patio to read. You've been a big proponent of reading programs, including the Community Reading Project.
Reading has been a big part of my life, I have two or three thousand books at home. I started school at age 6, with no kindergarten, and I came home and my mom asked, "How'd you like school?" I said I didn't like it, because I didn't learn how to read.
I'm proud of the Community Reading Program and the Ready to Start program. We're spending $350 a year to get a child ready to start school. I'm also pleased to have been a part of Vision 2020, to be a part of focusing on education and getting our community involved with each other. We're just a microcosm of community, and the more we know about the community and it knows about us, the better end result there is.
I think that career technical education is so important, I really do. That's something I'll keep pushing. One of the problems with education is that it's very cyclical. Thankfully career technical education is coming back to where it should be. For a long time there was the idea where if you couldn't get a child educated to graduate from college he was a failure. Well, when I have a leak in my bathroom at 3 a.m., I want to know that plumber has training. I'm not the handiest person in the world and I rely a lot on people with skills like that.
You came in to the position with a different approach than the previous superintendent, Kelly Blanton.
I'm more low key. Someone came in during the transition and asked, "how are you and Larry going to be different?" Kelly said, "Larry's going to be a little more cautious and think things through a little more." Not that he didn't. What he did was the right thing at the right time. We are where we are today because of what he did.
And I am a little more cautious.
I felt that reading and getting a child ready for school and career education are what I really wanted to do.
What foundation do you leave behind, and what advice do you have for your successor?
I'm not complex, I'm pretty simple. I believe success comes if you work hard, be yourself, and do the right thing. And I will tell my successor that.
We can never forget that we're a public institution, and the public has a right to know what we do. I know I've tried to be transparent. I never want to forget, if we aren't getting the most bang for the buck for the taxpayers, then we need to revisit that. And I believe in respecting people. I believe that you have to earn respect, and respect people back.
What areas do you think this office needs to be focusing on now?
Two areas. Fiscal accountability and instructional accountability. We work hard with local districts to maintain fiscal solvency. We work very hard. No one in a school district is served if that district can't function.
There have to be standards, quantitative results, and when you do that there's two good things. Keep a district financially and instructionally solvent, and the kids stand a chance of getting a good education. If not, the kids end up being the losers. If you've got turmoil, it's important to keep an organization stable. The more stable school districts are, the better the results.
Turmoil is an apt term for where things are now. There's a lot of frustration out there, how should people deal with this situation with less of a lot of things in schools?
It's society's problem. Governmental, educational problem. Affects the parents, the kids. Everyone involved has to keep going forward. One thing I know for sure is we'll get through this, it won't be without pain and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there will be an end. We have to try to work together so we don't rupture relationships so we can come back.
What's happened now is things are so polarized, we have to get past that. Let's keep focusing on what we can do with less money than last year. Let's not whine, let's get the best we can with what we have. Roll up our sleeves and fix it as best as we can.
My dad was a farmer, and we knew there would be a good year coming along, but there were bad years, too. It may not have been like I wanted, but the fact of the matter is we got through it, and we were stronger for it in the end.
What next?
I'm going to stay involved in the community, it's been good to me and I owe it. I really think it's a hard working community, let's get things done. And I'll be more involved with the Bakersfield Rotary Club.
What line defines your tenure?
He worked hard, and did the right thing.
