At their meeting on March 8, the Aromas-San Juan Unified School District’s Board of Trustees approved a three-year contract for interim Superintendent Barbara Dill-Varga to become superintendent after besting over 20 candidates for the position.
Leadership Associates began its candidate search in November 2022.
“The agency solicited a healthy pool of candidates from all over California,” Trustee Casey Powers told BenitoLink.”We went through all of the candidates with them and pulled out the top applicants. Then we invited three, including Barbara, to interview. But in seeking feedback from our community, we were constantly told, ‘We want Barb or someone exactly like like Barb.’”
All of the present trustees voiced their support for Dill-Varga. Trustee Monica Martinez-Guaracha was absent from the meeting.
Dill-Varga’s term is effective immediately and will run through June 30, 2026. Her base salary will be $180,881, with yearly increases dependent on satisfactory evaluations and approval by the board. She will be given paid sick leave, a life insurance policy, reimbursements for mileage and cellphone use, a high-speed internet connection at her home, and $3,000 a year for professional memberships. She will supply her own health insurance.
“I’m very excited for the future,” Dill-Varga said. “I’ve got a great team of people, and we are rolling up our sleeves and rebuilding our visions, processes and procedures. Everybody has the kids in the center of their hearts, and we’re using that to guide our decisions. I can see where we need to go and it’s just fun to come to work.”
The process used for offering Dill-Varga the contract was markedly different from the one used in hiring the previous superintendent, Michele Huntoon. In Huntoon’s case, the formal search was halted when the school board balked at the price of hiring consultants, instead acquiring a waiver that allowed Huntoon to be promoted from the interim business manager to interim superintendent to the superintendent’s job.
The district agreed to pay $21,000 for Leadership Associates’ services in November 2022.
Since being hired as the interim superintendent in August 2022, Dill-Varga has faced major obstacles, including dealing with the lack of sufficient air conditioning in the schools during last year’s heat wave and the possible relocation of San Juan Elementary School. There have been high spots as well, including opening the basketball courts at San Juan Elementary to the public and a week-long series of parent, teacher, student, and community workshops aimed at shaping the curriculum at district schools.
While the seismic study determining the fate of San Juan Elementary School has not yet been released, the campus is already being evaluated in anticipation of the results.
District Maintenance and Operations Manager Daniel Carrillo provided a small update at the meeting.
“We’re working with the Division of State Architects to determine what are the deficiencies in the current structures of the facility that could lead to us getting funding from the state,” he said. “Recently, they gave us a letter saying we do have deficiencies. Our next step is to determine exactly what the deficiencies are so that we can determine the costs.”
One building so far, the multi-use room, has been determined to require repairs or replacement.
A moment was taken at the start of the meeting to acknowledge the high school’s winter sports teams’ placements in the PCAL-Arroyo league, in which the boy’s soccer team placed fifth, the girls’ soccer team placed third, and the girls’ basketball team placed second. Coach Rance Hodge handed out certificates of accomplishment to members of the boy’s basketball team, which took first place in the league.
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