DINUBA – Dinuba Unified School District (DUSD) Superintendent Joe Hernandez is putting student safety and achievement at the top of his list of goals going into the 2024-25 school year.
Hernandez presented a draft of his goals to the DUSD Board of Trustees at its Aug. 6 meeting, where board members provided feedback and commended Hernandez for his forward-thinking vision for DUSD. Board President Bev Keel-Worrell said she appreciated how Hernandez organized his goals under a few overarching themes and Trustee Mary Villarreal gave Hernandez kudos for all of his work.
“I just want to acknowledge you, knowing that you take the bull by its horns and you constantly go and pursue what needs to be done, and that includes project manager for Dinuba High School,” Villarreal said. “I know you’re doing a lot, as well as continuing the education curriculum and trying to pursue that, build leadership and work with your team, and … I like what I see on your goals.”
Many of Hernandez’s goals were continuing items, either carried over from the previous year or ongoing student success metrics the district tracks.
Goals for student achievement included improving all academic dashboard indicators tracked by the state education department and having no red indicators, meaning no student group in any subject is at the lowest performance level. Hernandez said he also wants to increase all college and career indicators to show students are prepared to transition into adulthood.
DUSD, as with all California school districts, wants to continue to address chronic absenteeism, which rose sharply after the pandemic. The district would like to see it drop below 10% by next year, which would be more in line with pre-pandemic levels. According to data on the California School Dashboard, the district’s 2023 chronic absenteeism rate — which measures how many students miss at least 10% of instructional days in a school year — was 23.4%, much lower than the 2022 rate of 33.6% but still more than double the 2019 rate of 9.5%.
For maximizing student safety and providing a safe learning environment for all students and staff, Hernandez’s goals included continuing to implement Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) practices and conduct monthly safety reviews at each school site.
Hernandez’s other goals explored areas that he said he wants the district to dive into as soon as possible and, although they may take more time, will benefit the district by setting up students and staff for future success.
“Some of these things – maybe we don’t finish them this year, but we have to get started on the conversation, and some things really can’t wait to be addressed,” Hernandez said.
For example, one of Heranndez’s goals is to build the district’s “leadership capacity,” the ability of current staff members to transition into supervisory roles. Hernandez said a current trend in education that districts are seeing is a reluctance of staff who want to go into leadership; however, the district needs to build stability for the future by having staff move up into leadership positions.
“Leading schools is not easy, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of initiative, a lot of energy, so we need to rebuild that for our district and grow our future leaders,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez also said the district needs to create a plan on how to better address student behavioral issues, specifically in the primary grades. He said that although the district has the resources it needs to address issues, including having two to three behavioral aides at each school site, it needs to take a more data-informed approach to working with students and families on behavior.
Another longer-term goal Hernandez introduced was the development of a district-wide athletic plan that would guide how the district views athletics and its role in education. Hernandez said he wants the district to explore questions about the core values of athletics, character values the district wants to teach through athletics and what that means for DUSD athletic programs.
“Systemically, we need to have a conversation, and then we need to implement that and have those expectations made very public, and that would become the bar that we’re achieving,” Hernandez said. “To address, that could take some time, but we need to get on it and start that conversation.”
This year, DUSD will also see to the achievement of one of its largest goals over the past few years: the completion of phase one of the new Dinuba High School construction and the adoption of the district’s Master Facilities Plan.
Hernandez said the district is at work preparing for the move to the new high school, which will come in January 2025. The next step is to work on the transition plan for the Washington Intermediate School move to the old high school and to determine what will be done with the current WIS site.
