Latino Community Supports Acting Supe Melara

Local parents heaped praise on Acting Superintendent Adolfo Melara at a community meeting on Monday afternoon.

The meeting with Leadership Associates, the search firm that is , was called after a school board meeting Thursday where that they hadn’t been notified of a previous community feedback meeting.

On Monday, Leadership Associates partner Walt Buster se from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and took notes as teachers, parents and community members spoke about what they are looking for in a superintendent. The tone was very different from Leadership’s previous community meeting on April 7, where about a lack of transparency and rigid educational requirements handed down from district administrators.   

“In the past two years that I’ve been working in the South San Francisco community, I’ve seen nothing but greatness from Adolfo Melara,” said Domingo Jarquin. “He’s brought out a lot of the Latino parents and community through the DELAC [District English Learner Advisory Committee]. From a community perspective, Adolfo Melara gets it.”

“I was involved in the [Parkway Heights] summer program last year,” said Rosa Gomez, a religious educator. “Adolfo Melara was there and he was exceptional. When he would approach the children, he would call them ‘mijo’ or ‘mija,’ which means daughter or son. He’s very committed to the youth. He’s a man of action.”

Before serving as acting superintendent after , Melara was an associate superintendent and focused partially on English learner programs. He worked for the Stockton Unified School District before coming to South San Francisco in 2009.

Melara has faced sharp criticism in the past from teachers and community members who feel he was too close to former Superintendent Howard Cohen and don’t like the district’s current management style. He of permanent superintendent before the board , partially as a response to community concern over the narrow choice of candidates.

But the recent public outpouring of support shows strong connections to the district’s Latino students and parents. Although some people at Monday’s meeting still felt the district needed new blood, many advocated that Melara be made superintendent.

“If someone from outside the district comes and ignores the challenges that affects the English learners group, we will lose the progress that has been done and go back to where we were before,” said South San Francisco City Council member Pedro Gonzalez. “I recommend that you consider Mr. Melara as superintendent of the South San Francisco Unified School District.”

The district will hold a special closed-session meeting today at 10 a.m. to review the applications submitted for superintendent.