New superintendent search narrowed

Jeffrey Hubbard, the school superintendent for Beverly Hills, is the top candidate to replace Newport-Mesa Unified School District Supt. Robert Barbot in July.

On Monday, the Newport-Mesa Board of Education announced that it had selected Hubbard, who has helmed Beverly Hills Unified School District for three years, after a lengthy search and interview process. In the coming weeks, the school board plans to visit Hubbard’s district to speak to his colleagues, and to negotiate a contract with him if the visit goes well.

The board is slated to hire its new superintendent on May 16.

“We have formally selected our top candidate in the superintendent search, and it is Jeffrey Hubbard from Beverly Hills Unified,” said school board President David Brooks. “As a board, we are really excited. The superintendent search advisory council spent a lot of time on this. We’ve had a large pool of candidates, and we believe he is the best match.”

Hubbard did not return calls for this story. In a letter to Beverly Hills Unified staff, however, he said he made the move to Newport-Mesa in part to be closer to his family.

Working in Beverly Hills Unified, he wrote, “has changed my life and all for the better.”

The Newport-Mesa district began a nationwide search for Barbot’s replacement after he announced his retirement in November. He had been Newport-Mesa’s leader since 1998. In February, district officials appointed a 38-member Superintendent Selection Advisory Council, consisting of parents, teachers, administrators and others, to help in interviewing candidates.

Last week, the district held two rounds of interviews: one led by the school board, the second led by the advisory council. On Saturday, the board reviewed the council’s input and named Hubbard as its top candidate.

“I’m very pleased with the selection of Dr. Hubbard,” said Costa Mesa Councilwoman Katrina Foley, who was on the advisory council. “His experience in the Beverly Hills district gives him a lot of similarities, believe it or not, to ours in dealing with a district divided by haves and have-nots, diversity of culture and economics.”

Hubbard, who had previously been assistant superintendent for human resources for Beverly Hills Unified, took the superintendent job when former leader Gwen Gross resigned in August 2003. Prior to his job in Beverly Hills, he had served as assistant superintendent for personnel services in the Rim of the World School District in Lake Arrowhead.

A graduate of the Rim of the World district himself, Hubbard started as a drama teacher at Rim of the World High School and later became president of its teachers’ association. After a stint as principal of Grandview Elementary School, he moved up to administration.

Terry Stanfill, the current personnel leader of Rim of the World, called his former colleague “a real dynamic leader who looks out for the interest of the kids and the district.”

During his tenure in Beverly Hills, Hubbard won acclaim for starting a multicultural committee to ease ethnic tensions in the district. That experience should aid him nicely in Newport-Mesa, which has a widely diverse population.

In other respects, however, Newport-Mesa is much different from the other districts where Hubbard has served. The student population is around four times that of both Beverly Hills Unified and Rim of the World, and there is more disparity in terms of income. Last year, according to state demographics, 42% of Newport-Mesa students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches, compared to 26% in Rim of the World and none at all in Beverly Hills.

Still, Stanfill said, Hubbard had worked with students in varied enough circumstances.

“We have a diverse district up here, multimillion-dollar houses on the lake and some ? [poorer] groups in trailer parks and that nature,” he said. “So I think it’s in line with Newport-Mesa. You have beach homes, and then almost the inner-city type.”dpt.25-hubbard,jeffrey-CPhotoInfoKO1Q9H2720060425iy93mxnc(LA)Jeffrey Hubbard