Kathy's leadership of Kerman-Floyd Elementary School

The two previous principals had only lasted a year each. A couple of weeks after her start there she had a teacher come to her and say, "We have driven two principals out already. If we don't like you we can do the same to you." The teacher started a movement among some of the staff to hold back support for Kathy. Kathy stood firm in where she intended to take the school. After a couple of years, the school boundaries were changed, and transfers became available to her teachers. The delinquent teachers realized they would not intimidate Kathy and chose to transfer elsewhere. The remaining teachers chose to stay because they looked forward to Kathy's visionary leadership. 

Kerman-Floyd had an impoverished clientele with 98% of its students on free lunch. (The other 2% were her teachers’ kids.) Her master’s thesis on multi-generational poverty proved to be an important tool here. She was Kerman-Floyd's principal for 12 years. During this time, she reopened the music program. She also started a school garden, student video productions, a 3-D printer program, a robotics program, and a drone program. When she started, computers were rare on campus. She wrote and received grants, scrimped on money, and bought more computers each year until every teacher had a laptop and printer, and every student in first grade and up had an assigned Chrome Book. Each kindergartener had an iPad. The students didn't typically have computers at home so Kathy was determined they would experience them at school. There were many students who had their life direction changed. At the end of each morning’s announcements over the speaker system, Kathy would say, “Make it a great day or not. The choice is yours.” When someone got in trouble one of her first questions was, "Did you choose to make it a great day today?" While you will never reach every student, many were helped under her leadership. One sixth grader got in trouble...again. She talked frankly with him about his behavior. She finished by saying "I thought I already taught you this." He started to walk away but then turned around and said, “You taught me a lot more than that, Mrs. Goodlad.”

The school had a part-time IT specialist named Marco. She quickly recognized his potential. She soon had his position converted to full-time with benefits. He saw that the students had no typing skills. He started an after-school typing class on his own time. He started an after-school video program where they learned to plan, shoot, and edit their own video projects. Fresno County had an annual video contest. The students would produce a one-minute public service announcement and compete with other schools. The age group KF fell into was 6th to 8th grades. This made them compete with junior high school students who had actual video classes. The KF students filmed an entry about nutrition, written by several sixth-grade students. They did a rap. They filmed in front of a green screen and edited in the backgrounds. Writing, filming, and editing were all done by students. They took the sweepstakes award. The sweepstakes winner was selected from all age groups, including high school. They had beaten everyone! The following year, they took first place in their age group. The second year was interesting because the film was written, filmed, and edited by a 4th grader. This put him below the age category eligible for the competition. Kathy got special permission to allow him to compete after assuring the county that he wouldn't be embarrassed. He took 1st place in the 6th grade to 8th grade category. Kathy became a fierce writer of grant applications. She would call her IT guy and ask, "What do you know about 3-D printers?" When he said, "Nothing," she told him, "Go study because they just awarded us a grant." This happened on 3-D printers, robotics, and drones. A student team entered an international robotics competition in which teams were assigned tasks for their robot to do and submit a video of its completion. They had to do the programming and design to complete the assigned tasks. The path had to be programmed in advance, with no joy sticks allowed. The competition started with 6,000 teams internationally, and the KF team finished near 125th place. One assignment required the robot to perform a task this robot was physically not able to do. A fifth grader designed a part in CAD that would adapt the robot to complete the task. He then printed it on the school 3D printer and completed the assignment. This student came to Kerman-Floyd from India two years earlier speaking no English. This same student became a successful member of the school's drone team.

 At Kathy’s request, the Fresno County Office of Education provided much computer training for the KF staff. Kathy and her assistant principal, Sandeep, took a difficult class on using computers in the classroom. It gave them both a vision of what could be. In the coming years, grant requests were written and awarded, and budgets were carefully allocated to add computers on campus. Kathy knew these students would need computer skills to compete in future job markets. When this process began, many teachers did not even know how to get on the Internet. One teacher excitedly came to Kathy to share that she just discovered the many options available when you right-click. She never knew that before. This teacher progressed to orienting other new teachers to school computers. Kathy's staff became excited about the new direction and wanted success. They soon discovered that they were always ahead of the educational curve. They would attend training for new educational tools and realize they had been using them for years. She had one teacher tell her that they all knew if they had an idea and could prove that it would help students, Kathy would find the money for it.

She started a school garden project. She got lots of community support from vendors, who donated materials, and parents came and built garden beds. Twenty-five 4’ x 8’ raised bed gardens were built. Each teacher who wanted a garden could have it as a class project. Our sons put the irrigation system together with parts and plans donated by a local vendor. A few months later, someone vandalized the gardens over a weekend. Vegetables were uprooted, and soil was overturned. Bikes ridden through the beds. A sixth grader went to Kathy about the invasion. He was a kid hanging out with people who were getting him into trouble. He was nearly in tears over what had happened over the weekend. He told Kathy that he and his friends would help rebuild. Kathy had a prompting that something special could happen here and asked him to be the school’s garden captain. He took it seriously. He studied gardening, went to teachers when it was time to plant or harvest, or reported when irrigation was not right. He and his friends weeded during recess. When the Lions Club and school board members came to look at the garden, he led the tours. He moved on to junior high school so Kathy lost track of him. There is a tri-county educational leader's professional group. Every year they picked some students for special awards. One award was for the student who had overcome the most to succeed at school. In his senior year, Kathy's garden captain was given this award. He was a champion shot putter, and he was college-bound. 

Kathy received a prompting at school each mid-year concerning a focus for the following year. This happened every year for her twelve years at Kerman-Floyd. Finally, she received no prompting concerning the 2018-2019 school year. In November, the prompting was to wind things up and retire. She didn’t tell anyone except her assistant principal. To announce this to the district would have voided her effectiveness as an administrator. During the wind-up period, she was disappointed to see how little her superintendent recognized the accomplishments made at Kerman-Floyd. She saw that those who went drinking with the superintendent were the ones recognized as accomplished leaders. Kerman-Floyd was praised throughout the region for its successes. The Fresno County Office of Education brought leaders from other schools to display what had been accomplished. But at her retirement party, her superintendent said very little about what she had done, and he then raved about another retiring principal who had done little to improve her school. The superintendent of another district stepped up and spontaneously spoke about Kathy's accomplishments at Kerman Floyd. But when it was over, Kathy knew she had done her best for her students. And that is the most important thing.