New DCSD Superintendent Walks Into the Fire As A ‘Cycle Breaker’

Douglas County School District (DCSD) has faced a number of controversies, lawsuits and headlines since the 2022 election, an election which ushered in a new slate of conservative trustees and lead to the resignation of former Superintendent Keith Lewis. With the hiring of a new superintendent, Frankie Alvarado, the trustees believe that the drama from the past can be overshadowed by his leadership and, ultimately, the district’s success. Superintendent Alvarado sat down for a lunch interview with The Globe in Gardnerville, Nevada.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found Douglas County?

I’m born and raised in Southern California. I grew up in the San Bernardino County, the Victor Valley region of Southern California, in a community that’s a rural area and very similar to Douglas County. I’ve always wanted to be a superintendent ever since I was a high school junior. I was the Associated Student Body (ASB) president and played multiple sports. I was connected with the school administration through ASB leadership, and at an early age, I got to see the ins-and-outs of the work that happens at the school district.

I really enjoyed that work. I also had an aunt who was my principal’s secretary in the middle school level, so I’ve always been connected to the principal and got to learn the operations of a school and the decisions that are made. It always fascinated me.

Personally, I’m what I refer to as a cycle breaker. Unfortunately, I did lose my parents at a young age. I have two older siblings and we were raised by my grandmother. I am the youngest and the first member of my family to go to college and earn a bachelor’s degree, as well as a master’s degree. I grew up from poverty, so I came from a situation where I utilized education as a way for me to gain opportunity and access to the world. I knew that if I didn’t get an education, then I would be limited in terms of opportunity and access.

What is your career experience?

My first teaching job was in Nassau County, NY. When my wife and I started a family, we wanted to be closer to our family in California. I was a HR Director, principal, and member of the superintendent’s cabinet in Mammoth, CA. I was able to give recommendations and guidance on the action plans that we needed to develop and set the goals we needed so that the school district could thrive.

I held the role of assistant superintendent at Ukiah Unified in Mendocino County, California. We had about 6,200 students and 800 employees in that district. I was a solo administrator in the HR department for all of those employees. What I tried to develop there is a distributed leadership program. I focused on capacity building, training, and supporting our site leaders to be an extension of the HR department. The biggest role I had there was Chief Lead Negotiator in which I had to negotiate with multiple unions, develop agreements for the collective bargaining process, and work with the school board to gain authorization and direction within that process. I was successful in that position in that district. I was sad to leave, but very happy to join Douglas County. This is my first role as a superintendent, per se.

How does Douglas County School District compare or not compare to Ukiah?

It’s slightly smaller, but the same amount of schools with less employees. It is in a rural agricultural area, very similar and nearly identical.

What immediate challenges have you identified that are of importance to the community?

I’m going into my sixth week here in this position in Douglas County. Right now, the challenge is declining enrollment. When you experience declining enrollment, there’s always a loss of revenue. Whenever there’s a loss of revenue, you can expect there to be layoffs or reductions of staff. So, I would say that’s our biggest challenge right now is determining what are the root causes for declining enrollment and ultimately seeking authorization from the trustees to do a study around the root causes for declining enrollment to get a solid handle on projections. It’s very easy to just roll up student numbers from one grade level to the next, but the district has averaged over 400 students per grade level–that’s what we currently have at the high school level. But, if you go all the way down to kindergarten, we’re under 300 students.

We’re forecasted over the next five to six years, and we’re looking at another 2,000 student reduction. Unfortunately, we have not started conducting a boundary study or determining whether we should close a school down. So, that’s the work that I’d like to do here in the near future, with the trustees, and get authorization from them to hire an outside entity to come in and study our enrollment trends, study our boundaries, and then help us make a decision as to what’s best for the community, the students, and in DCSD moving forward.

Let’s expand on the budget situation…

Right now, we are dipping into our reserves. We do have an overspend of general fund money. So, we need to take a deeper look at our declining enrollment forecast, what our budget will be next year, forecast enrollment, and take an in-depth look at our staffing. I know the district has made cuts to our staff and teachers. We’ve also reduced hours on the classified staff, which has saved some money. However, we have not made any reductions to our administrative staff. We need to focus on preparing for the next school year and figure out how we can reorganize the administrative staff, without losing any quality of service to our kids.

Ukiah experienced some declining enrollment, so we focused on building the Arts and Career Technical Education pathways, and then we enhanced our athletic programs. We provided these additional services that the neighboring districts did not provide, and it worked.

Here, the lake schools has been experiencing declining enrollment for years, probably closer to a decade. It has gotten to the point where we have just over 300 students. Unfortunately, the California side in South Lake Tahoe has taken many of our students for many different reasons, and that could be for electives, career technical education, or for athletics. The work that has been done on the Nevada side, so far, has been led by Sean Ryan, the principal of George Whittell High School, and he has done some outreach with the local fire department. That started with the partnership of having to do a shared facility agreement to house a fire engine that needed repair. That led to discussions of creating a fire science program that was a shared responsibility of Tahoe Douglas Protection Fire District as well as Douglas County School District. Through that discussion, they went out for a grant. Last year, they developed a Fire Explorer program. The Fire Science program is a 2-year pathway.

Chief Scott Lindgren has agreed to is to provide instructors for the program. We provide this facility and he provides instructors. We utilize that grant money to purchase supplies and equipment for the students to access and utilize within their education. We’re just starting it off. This is our first year launching the program. We have about seven kids, registered for the program. I would anticipate that this program can take somewhere near 50 students.

We entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the fire department so that they can conduct a feasibility study. Chief Lindgren has ideas of partnering with the district to place a helipad at the back of Whittell High so that he can mitigate and put out fires when they’re small. He believes that if we can get to those fires early and put them out, we’ll have better success in keeping the Tahoe Basin safe.

I firmly believe that these ideas are a great opportunity for the Tahoe Basin and Douglas County School District in order to do something that no other district in the nation has done, and that is to bring a cutting edge fire science program, as well as bridging that fire science program, into an advanced program that provides training for aeronautical fire science.

As of late, Douglas County has had some challenges, specifically with some backlash from certain members of the public against the new board. What has been your experience since taking on the roll of Superintendent?

My first goal is to come in and listen and learn. I need to understand where we’re at, where we want to go, and how we’re going to get there. That all starts by meeting community members, meeting our leaders, getting to know them as people, getting to know the ins-and-outs of their work, and developing relationships. My goal is to stay connected with our workforce, but also to make connections with outside entities such as the fire department, the sheriff’s department, Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, and really understand the dynamics of the community. I think it’s important that we honor traditions that have been in place, but that we develop new traditions that we can be happy about. In addition to that, what I’m preaching to my staff and the school community is having individual accountability. We need to make sure that we are performing to high standards and that we’re holding ourselves accountable for our conduct and our performance.

I just want to share that being a superintendent is a complex position. Right now, there’s a lot of public outcry around the legal situation. Not only due to the attorney that we hired, but the amount of legal fees. My research of these legal fees is that they were all required. We have to be able to defend litigation against the district, and we need a lawyer to do so. Even though some in the community are upset about that aspect of it, these fees would have come no matter what attorney was hired–and, directly due to the amount of legal action filed. The fees are coming because we are trying to protect the district. 

I can tell you the only constant in life is change. I can also tell you only good things come from conflict. I’ve received nothing but love and acceptance from all of our trustees and all of our school community. I can tell you we have outstanding people that are leading our school district. Sometimes conflict happens because we don’t have a focus or a direction, or we don’t have a common understanding of what our focus and direction is. My goal is to work with the trustees, understand what their vision is for the school district, and then set that vision in motion, and and do all the work that’s needed with our leadership team. Then, that will trickle down into our site leadership, into our teaching force, and then down to our kids and our community.

Editors note: the original article misstated the student population and has been corrected.