School district names new superintendent

CITY HALL — Burbank Unified School District’s fiscal future will lie largely in the hands of a Northern California schools chief starting in July, when Supt. Gregory Bowman retires.

Kevin Jolly, who serves as superintendent of the nine-school Center Joint Unified School District in Antelope near Sacramento, will take the post, the Board of Education announced during its meeting Thursday.

Jolly, 43, was chosen from a pool of 19 candidates that was whittled down with the help of search firm Leadership Associates.

His four-year contract, with a starting salary of $210,000, was unanimously approved by the board Thursday.

“We have every expectation that this will be an absolute wonderful selection for this district, that he will carry on all the wonderful programs and successes that Dr. Bowman brought and have all of those attributes and bring new attributes as well that will hopefully bring the district to new, higher levels,” said Trustee Larry Applebaum, who was part of a subcommittee that oversaw the superintendent search process.

Jolly will make the switch from a district of 5,334 students to one more than three times that size, with 17 schools and 16,577 students, according to the Department of Education.

But the transition in size will not be his biggest obstacle, Bowman said.

Jolly will have to navigate the district through the worst fiscal crisis in California history, Bowman said.

Jolly is familiar with the state and its web of laws and funding streams related to education, a qualification that not all of the candidates for the job had met, Applebaum said.

Jolly’s background as a California educator will allow him to start off with an experienced perspective on the state’s financial challenges and how they affect schools, Bowman said.

While Bowman will remain superintendent until the board enacts a budget at the end of June, the state’s fiscal uncertainty will continue to complicate matters for Burbank Unified and schools across California, Bowman said.

Jolly will take over at a time when officials are bracing to lose an extra $10 million over the next three years, on top of the $13.1-million cut they had already been planning to make up for by 2012. The district’s total budget is about $100 million, and more than 85% of it is dedicated to employee salary and benefit costs, which may force trustees to authorize further teacher layoffs in coming years, on top of the 34 instructors cut earlier this month.

Although the district’s budget may loom as Jolly’s greatest immediate challenge, it wasn’t the main consideration in the board’s decision on whom to hire, Applebaum said.

“That is a transient concern of the district, albeit a very important one, but the job of the superintendent encompasses much more than that budget issue,” he said, adding that Jolly’s vision for the district is what set him apart from other candidates.

Jolly took over as superintendent of Center Joint Unified in 2003, having previously served as superintendent of the Modoc Joint Unified School District in Alturas, which is near the Oregon border, since 2000.

He received his education doctorate from a joint program at UC Davis and Cal State Fresno. He has also earned degrees from Cal State Sacramento and Humboldt State University.

Among Jolly’s accomplishments at Center Joint Unified were the establishment of a class-size reduction program in the kindergarten through third grade and a successful campaign for a voter-approved $500-million bond measure for school construction.