The Ubiquitous They – Janice Adams

Who are you and what is your role in the community? I am the Superintendent, and I am a parent of 3 children that went through , from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’ve taught in the District, was a principal in the District, and now the Superintendent. I’ve lived here for twenty-two years.  I love this community. I love this District. It’s been great to me and my family. I care a lot about it. It’s very difficult to be its leader in these horrible times.  You certainly do not become an educator to dismantle public education…the way our economy in the state is going, it’s getting more and more difficult to provide high quality education.

What made you aspire to being the Superintendent of Benicia Unified School District?  I didn’t aspire to be a superintendent.  I aspired to being a principal. I loved being a principal. I was a successful Principal at and loved it.  The Board (of Trustees) bought out the previous Superintendent, I think that happened on a Friday, and on a Monday morning the Board President was in my office, and asked me if I would step up and be the interim to help get a sense of calm in the District and be a peace-maker.  They wanted somebody in the District that they felt could take over.  I did the job for most of the year, and then the Board posted the position, and at that point I did apply, and did get (the job).  This is my fifth year.  That’s a long tenure for Superintendents  (she laughs).

What’s the biggest challenge in your job?  Unfortunately it’s the budget and it takes over too much of our conversations and too much of our resources and energy trying to deal with this ongoing difficulty with finances. We are an institution that’s about student learning and about preparing kids to be productive citizens. That’s what we do and that’s what we love. We have an amazingly good staff in Benicia.

What’s the most important thing that you do?  Hire great people. Listen to the community, meet with teachers and staff and find out what’s going on, keeping the pulse on this whole district, and that’s challenging. There are 5000 kids and 500 employees. We’re the biggest employer in Benicia…there’s a lot to do.  Kids are changing and the needs of kids are changing…we are an adapting organization because we have to adapt to meet the needs of our changing population and the world these kids are going into.

Besides closing the budget gap, what is the one thing you would like to see the District accomplish in 2011? To utilize and implement technology more effectively because our students are way more technologically savvy than we are.  I think we have to adapt to them as learners. They are changing the way they learn and the way the access information. In some ways the most out of date time they spend is sitting in our classrooms. We need to upgrade our delivery to address that, incorporating more critical thinking, problem solving skills into our curriculum and have it less content based. Kids need to read, write, problem solve (math) and think.