After months of public criticism about his performance, Cary Matsuoka abruptly announced his retirement Tuesday night as superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
Matsuoka’s retirement, effective at the end of the current school year, comes after members of the community called for the school board not to extend his contract, alleging failed leadership and mismanagement of the district.
Matsuoka, 62, said that his decision had been in the works for years, “but that my decision to retire has nothing to do with public comments.”
“There’s been public comment that ‘this is not personal, but you should resign or retire,’” Matsuoka said. “I agree. This is not personal, from my perspective. I do not take any criticism about my work personally. Here’s what you need to know about me.
“My identity as a person is not tied to my job performance, what people think about me or the approval of people. I know who I am. I bring a grounded identity to my job every day. Nothing you can say or do will move me off my identity, my integrity and how I do my job.
“I will continue to lead with courage and integrity until my last day and beyond.”
Matsuoka plans to submit a written letter of resignation later this year.
The announcement came in the middle of an odd school board meeting that was moved from the normal location at district headquarters to the Marjorie Luke Theatre at Santa Barbara Junior High School to accommodate the more than 100 people in attendance.
A group of the typical critics from Fair Education Santa Barbara and others spoke out at the meeting against Matsuoka, but for the first time people showed up to voice support for the embattled superintendent.
Educators in support of Matsuoka organized a platoon of principals and other employees to speak at the meeting in support of the superintendent, and against Fair Education.
“This group has continued a false narrative of our superintendent, and by our extension, our schools,” said Dos Pueblos High School Principal Bill Woodard.
“Blurting out ‘lock him up,’ during public comments, creating a petition using a misleading photograph of our superintendent that falsely suggests he gave the finger?” Woodard said. “And flat out misrepresenting facts to further your narrative are tactics that should be strongly and universally condemned. They are tactics that are anything but fair.”
Woodard urged members of the Fair Education group to meet with him directly.
James Fenkner, one of the founders of Fair Education, congratulated Matsuoka for his retirement, but also continued his criticisms of the superintendent and his supporters.
In response to the three principals who spoke at the meeting, Fenkner said: “It was nice to hear those three principals with their presentations. What’s nice there is that they won’t have to worry about suffering the fate of Ed Behrens anytime soon.”
Matsuoka has been under fire almost since he was hired in 2016 from the Milpitas Unified School District.
Members of the public blasted his decision to demote Behrens from his principal job at San Marcos High School, in a move that led a lawsuit; the district won the wrongful termination lawsuit, but Behrens has since filed an appeal.
Matsuoka also has been criticized for his oversight of the Multimedia Arts & Design Academy, after a then-employee allegedly sent inappropriate texts to a student that were not immediately reported to authorities.
Lately, he’s been the target of the parents who are skeptical of the district’s financial partnership with Just Communities Central Coast, which provides cultural-proficiency and implicit-bias training.
Then recent test scores released by the district showed that only 56 percent of students in grades 3-8, and 11, were proficient in English, and 45 percent were grade-level proficient in math.
Fenkner even recently presented a petition that now has more than 800 signatures of people calling for Matsuoka’s contract not to be extended.
“I am not here for myself,” said Santa Barbara High School principal Elise Simmons. “I am here for our students and our families. For more than a year now, I have watched as a small minority of people attempt to control the Santa Barbara Unified School District narrative, and I will not stay silent anymore.”
Simmons said in 21 years this was only the second time she has spoken during a board meeting. She said members of Fair Education were trying to disrupt and dismantle the educators’ hard work.
“No matter who they attack, they can’t break our strength,” Simmons said.
Each of the board members made comments after Matsuoka spoke.
“I can’t actually imagine a more dramatic, more tulmutuous, more challenging, more interesting year than this past year,” said board member Kate Ford. “I want to thank you for your perspective, for your perseverance in the face of lots of challenges, and also for the candor and the honesty that we shared with each other about this world of being an educator and what it means to be a leader.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
