Elk Grove Unified Superintendent David Reilly engages with students in the classroom as he begins his leadership at Elk Grove Unified.
Credit: Elk Grove Unified
Top Takeaways
Elk Grove Unified superintendent David Reilly inherits a growing school district.
Reilly, a former band member, prioritizes listening and collaboration in his leadership style.
Reilly visits special education classrooms to assess school culture.
Elk Grove Unified School District’s new superintendent, David Reilly, has inherited one of the few school districts in California that is still growing. Although that makes balancing the district’s budget a little easier, the need to build schools and recruit staff in a district of more than 64,000 students can be challenging.
But Reilly, who was once in the Bay Area punk band Twain and quotes jazz great Miles Davis, is the epitome of cool. He recently sat down with EdSource to talk about his new position.
“One of the things I got when I was studying music, but I applied to active listening and my career here was advice from Miles Davis: ‘It’s not the notes you play, it’s about the notes you don’t play.’ ”
This advice has served Reilly well over his decade as the associate director of human resources at Elk Grove Unified, where he was the district’s chief negotiator in its contract talks with its unions. He also led the Special Education and Student Support and Health Services departments.
“When you’re working with people and collaborating, it’s not what you say, it’s how you listen and what you choose to say,” Reilly said.
Elk Grove Unified, the state’s fourth-largest school district, serves students in Elk Grove, as well as parts of Sacramento and Rancho Cordova. The district has two elementary schools under construction and a combination middle and high school in the planning stages.
Despite Reilly’s experience in the district, he feels there is still more to learn. He spent his first six weeks as the district’s leader talking to students, teachers and staff in its schools.
Last Friday, Reilly visited the fire academy at Valley High School in Sacramento, which includes a firehouse complete with lockers for storing fire gear and helmets with the students’ names printed on them.
“Even if the students don’t end up pursuing a career in fire, the exposure to that, and the lessons that they glean from that experience can be applied to a number of different contexts,” said Reilly, who calls himself a firm believer in career technical education. “Participating in a program such as that breaks down the unknowns.”
Reilly’s first stop when he visits schools is special education classrooms. He observes student lessons and looks for evidence of inclusion. Taking care of the district’s most vulnerable students — English learners, students of color, and homeless, foster and special needs students — should be the district’s first consideration, he said.
“I can tell a lot about the culture of a school in terms of how they implement that,” Reilly said. “So, that’s very informative to me.”
Elk Grove Unified Superintendent David Reilly celebrates student success during a campus visit.Credit: Elk Grove Unified
Riley is still visiting schools and compiling a list of priorities gleaned from his conversations, but he says the people he has spoken to are overwhelmingly positive.
He gives a lot of credit to his predecessor, Christopher Hoffman, who is staying on to help with the transition until the end of the school year before retiring.
“The foundation that has been handed off by Chris Hoffman, it’s very strong, and I don’t think that we need to reinvent what we’ve set out to be our priorities and goals,” Reilly said. “We just need to get better at resourcing them and better at doing them.”
Part of that foundation includes a partnership with labor that has improved the administration’s relationship with staff. Elk Grove Unified’s union members help to determine the district’s budget and priorities, which makes contract negotiations easier, Reilly said.
“We don’t play a lot of the games,” Reilly said of negotiations. “Like they come in very high, and we come in very low, and let’s tap dance to the middle. It’s no secret what our ongoing dollars are. Everybody knows the situation. And everybody had a say in terms of where we’re spending money.”
Reilly has been responsive to the concerns of its teachers union, often dropping by the offices of the Elk Grove Education Association to collaborate, said James Sutter, union president.
“Mr. Riley has that same philosophy (as Hoffman),” Sutter said. “He’s coming in with that same collaborative approach. He wants to understand all the nuts and the bolts all the way to the very top and how it interconnects.’’
The constant influx of new legislation that has to be implemented in school districts makes this sort of collaboration more difficult, Reilly said.
“It seems to be coming more rapidly and with very abrupt deadlines,” Reilly said. “For example, a bill goes into effect January 1, and we need to update board policies by March 1.”
Reilly first worked as an English teacher at Woodside High School in the Sequoia Union High School District in the Bay Area. After nine years as a teacher, he served as a vice principal at Sequoia High School and then as principal at Woodside High School, both in Redwood City.
Reilly learned the value of education from his mother, who, as a single parent of two boys, worked as a para-educator while earning a master’s degree. He was the only boy in fifth grade whose career goal was to be a special education teacher.
“I watched her after a long day of working and taking care of two kids, sitting at the dining room table every night until midnight with her note cards, writing her master’s dissertation,” he said.