San Diego Unified’s board members are convinced Fabiola Bagula is the right person for the superintendent job she took over days after sexual harassment allegations against her former boss surfaced.
The district has no intention of searching for other candidates, one board member said. And while new allegations surfaced last month that Bagula also engaged in harassing behavior, board members haven’t changed their tune.
Bagula has not commented on the allegations against her. But Mike Murad, a district spokesperson, told Voice that the allegations were “thoroughly investigated and resolved.”
Murad declined to say if the complaints were substantiated or not.
Days before the allegations against Bagula became public, she spoke to education reporter Jakob McWhinney about the path forward.
“I’m not a leader that looks away from a problem, I actually dive in headfirst,” she said. “Whenever I see something that’s wrong, I address it.”
Is Something Broken?
On her first week as acting Superintendent Bagula held a virtual meeting with district principals. She let everyone know that she wasn’t going to take questions. She had a script and talked about the need for a “stable thriving environment” and how committed she was to “equity, belonging and thriving.”
What she didn’t mention was the victims of the allegations that were substantiated against former Superintendent Lamont Jackson. That omission rubbed some principles the wrong way.
McWhinney asked her why she left the victims out of the conversation.
“My whole purpose was to make sure that we continue moving forward,” she said. “I knew I was going to step into this role going, ‘OK, I need to make sure the schools are still functioning, that everyone’s moving forward.’”
She added that her husband, an attorney, advised against it.
“I’m a ‘believe women’ sort of person,” she said, “I have lots of feelings associated with all of that but right now my whole purpose is to make sure that children are coming to school learning and happily learning and experiencing school and the adults are healthy to be able to do that.”
She wouldn’t comment on what happened, but she said educators are models for students and society, so she has high expectations of herself and others.
“That’s something that’s not tolerated and the actions the board took show that,” she said.
As far as how she intends to lead the district and approach allegations of sexual misconduct, she said, “Not tolerated, transparent and honest.”
“I know there’s a lot of building back that we have to do, but I also think that there’s good things happening at the same time,” she said.
The Path Forward
When asked how the direction she intends to take the district will differ from her predecessors, Bagula hesitated.
“It’s not necessarily a different direction but it…well, yeah, maybe it is,” she said.
“It’s the direction of accountability, of monitoring, of setting goals, of making sure children are learning and that we’re being held accountable for outcomes.”
Bagula’s answer is informed by the fact that, while she’s new to the top spot, she’s not new to the district. As a San Diego Unified principal a decade ago and then an area superintendent, she got to know how the district worked. And she said it wasn’t always pretty.
“When I was principal … every single document had a different goal on it, and when you added them all up, there was always about 30 or 40 things happening. And I always laugh at that, because I’m like, ‘that means none of it is happening,’” she said.
Then as deputy superintendent, Bagula oversaw instruction districtwide and had the opportunity to tinker with how the district ran. That includes realignments and streamlining of everything from how educators access district data to how administrators approach goal-setting documents.
Now, at the helm, she wants to walk down the path she’s built over the previous two years. Though she shied away from directly addressing the blooming scandal that led to her elevation, she insists that she will usher in the kind of accountability the district seems to have lacked and acknowledged that the district needs to increase communication and transparency.
“If we set goals, we set public goals. And then we’re going to be held accountable to those outcomes,” Bagula said.
For stakeholders concerned with a perceived lack of accountability, whether Bagula is accountable to that pledge will likely be a key test of her leadership.
The Budget Elephant in the Room
While San Diego Unified’s superintendent upheaval has dominated headlines in recent weeks, the district officials are facing another pressing crisis: a ballooning budget deficit.
“I’m thinking it’s going to keep growing. That’s bananas,” Bagula said. “I want to get out in front of it.”
That’s why she’s calling for a detailed audit of the district’s financial picture. Exactly what that audit will entail is unclear, but Bagula said she wants to better understand every aspect of the district.
“I need to understand … how it is that we’re spending our money or investing our money? Where is it bleeding out from? Is there a place where we can actually stop it?” Bagula said.
One thing the audit will inevitably show is that the vast majority of district spending – nearly nine of every 10 dollars spent – is on staff wages. But Bagula claims things she saw while deputy superintendent made her concerned the district was spending irresponsibly.
“I had to intervene several times, especially my first year, where people were getting directives to spend, like, $300,000 within a week. And that’s not okay. There should be a strategy plan around how to spend those funds,” Bagula said.
She wouldn’t specify what that money was spent on, or where those directives came from, other than to say “prior leadership.”
Bagula said she wants to keep cuts out of classrooms and focus on attrition as a means of driving down the deficit. The deficit is projected to rise to about $175 million in the next year, though, which will likely be too hefty a sum to tackle with attrition alone.
Bagula wouldn’t say whether she foresees more layoff notices being issued this year. But given that the district’s deficit last year was half of what it is expected to rise to, layoffs seem all but a certainty.
Bagula said in addition to budget cuts, she also wants to focus on finding new ways to bring in money. She floated the idea of enrollment campaigns that could help the district court San Diego’s large military population, saying she wants San Diego Unified to become the “Military School District of San Diego.” Part of that focus will likely include creating a grant writing department to solicit funds from organizations or philanthropists, she said.
“There’s always a lot of money that’s out there. Why don’t we have a mechanism to actually seek those out? Departments are kind of on their own. There should be an actual place that says, ‘Did you hear about this? Did you hear about that?’” Bagula said.