Senior School Official Leaving the District

One of the school district’s most senior administrators, Deputy Supt. Susan Parks, is leaving Simi Valley Unified come July to become the schools chief of an urban school district east of Los Angeles.

Pending contract negotiations, Parks will become superintendent of the 16,000-student Baldwin Park Unified School District in the San Gabriel Valley.

“I’m thrilled,” Parks said in an interview Wednesday. “This is something I’ve wanted to do for the last few years, but every time I started looking [for a superintendency], something would happen. . . . Now I don’t feel like I’m leaving in the middle of something. I’m not deserting anyone or any major programs.”

Many viewed the 50-year-old Parks as Simi Valley Unified’s calm center during times of tumult: the Northridge earthquake, rapid turnover among top staff, a restructuring that added ninth-graders to high school, and board-superintendent tensions that led to Supt. Mary Beth Wolford abruptly leaving the district ahead of schedule last summer.

With Supt. Tate Parker now firmly at the helm of Simi Valley Unified and an uncharacteristic calm pervading the school system, Parks thought the time was right to leave her $90,000 post.

And she liked Baldwin Parks’ emphasis on curriculum development, school-city relations and focus on technology and fine arts.

“It’s a positive place,” Parks said of the gritty, ethnically diverse city, where she and her husband plan to move. “Baldwin Park has a good sense of community. The city and the school district have similar values, like Simi, which I like. And Los Angeles County is a very powerful county educationally.”

In her 19 1/2 years with Simi Valley Unified, Parks has been a principal, director of elementary education, an assistant superintendent for educational services, and deputy superintendent. As a principal, she opened Hollow Hills Fundamental School.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Parks was an elementary teacher and a program coordinator in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and master’s and doctoral degrees in school administration from USC.

Her husband, Gary, is a retired Los Angeles teacher and principal. They have three grown children.