by Mark McDermott
Devin Serrano was 20 years old on a mountain in New Zealand when she caught the first glimpse of her future.
Serrano grew up in the Lake Tahoe area, where skiing, hiking, and breathing in the alpine air of the Sierra Nevada were a birthright. She then attended college at California State University in Chico, which is nestled beneath the foothills of the Cascade mountain range and the western ring of the Sierras.
Serrano majored in political science, with a minor in women’s studies, with the intention of entering law school. But first, she set out to see more of the world. She was only 20 when she obtained her undergraduate degree, so she took off for the mountains of New Zealand.
Serrano found work as a ski instructor. And there, high up in the stark, wild beauty of New Zealand, she became a teacher for the first time in her life. Watching her young charges learn how to navigate the slopes, falling down but always getting back up, improving day by day, Serrano realized she’d found her calling.
“I found I loved teaching,” she said. “I loved kids, I knew that, but I found I was pretty good at teaching skiing, and started thinking, ‘Hey, if I can teach skiing to kids, I bet I could have fun teaching in a classroom.’”
She returned to the States and obtained a teaching credential from Sierra Nevada College. She became an elementary school teacher. Her first job was in the large, diverse Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district in North Carolina, where she was quickly nominated as teacher of the year. She moved back to the mountains, to Denver, Colorado, in 2000, and immediately made a name for herself as a teacher who had a special gift for teaching young children how to write.
“I like to brag that I was a great teacher,” Serrano said. “I enjoyed students. I enjoyed going to the classroom, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the flow of a school day. All of that was really meaningful for me.”
At this time, she also enrolled at Naropa University to pursue her master’s degree. The name of the degree she would eventually obtain at Naropa — a master’s in Contemplative Education — is indicative of the school’s approach. Long before mindfulness became a buzzword and a mainstream element of education, Naropa was using meditation and yoga to teach teachers how to better teach.
“It was transformative for me as an educator, my master’s degree, the entire experience,” Serrano said.
At Naropa, graduate students learn in a cohort model in which a group of students go through the entire program together.
“It was a small group and they were global educators,” Serrano said. “We had a teacher from the Netherlands, another one from Brazil, and a lot from the United States. It was intensive, in the summer. For six weeks, we would live and study together. Part of the experience was daily meditation and yoga practice, and using that to inform both the academic work and our teaching approach.”
Naropa is in Boulder, but the intensive summer program took place an hour north, in the mountains above Fort Collins, at a Buddhist meditation retreat called the Shambhala Mountain Center. The retreat was on 600 acres in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forest, at 7,500 feet elevation, in the meadow of a sweeping valley in the Rocky Mountains.
“We lived in tents over the summer, ate every meal together, studied together, and had this really interesting experience living in community,” Serrano said.
It was a highly interdisciplinary program. One class was taught by a theater instructor from Naropa. “In that class, we did a lot of work around how you stand, where you hold your gaze, and what your body language says about you and your energy,” Serrano said.
The teachers would all return to their respective teaching assignments for the school year, but continue working on their master’s degrees. Throughout the school year, they stayed in touch online.
Serrano’s master’s thesis was titled “Happiness in Education.”
“It was about teaching, and how teachers experience joy over the course of their careers, whether they are a new teacher versus a mid-career teacher or a teacher closer to the end of their career,” she said.
Serrano obtained her master’s in 2003. The experience would remain a fundamental part of her life, both professionally and personally. It’s where she learned, as a teacher and soon-to-be educational leader, the importance of truly being present for her students and colleagues throughout the day-to-day slog of a school year.
“It definitely is a big part of who I am,” she said. “It was very transformative for me. It’s where I learned the value of meditation and a daily practice around gratitude.”
Back in the Denver school district, she became a literacy coach and specialist. But Serrano also began to realize she aspired to become a leader in order to broaden her positive impact on the world. She was appointed as a vice principal in 2006, and then became a director of instructional networks, charged with coordinating the professional development of vice principals and principals in 2007.
Serrano became a principal in 2008.
“I am a teacher at heart,” she said. “Starting out, I saw how important the role of the principal was, how important it was to have a strong leader, to me as a teacher. And so that initially is what inspired me to want to be a principal. ‘Hey, this position has the ability to impact an entire group of teachers. How cool would that be?’”
During this time, Serrano also began to understand the transformative power a superintendent could have in a school district. Denver Public Schools was in the midst of a remarkable transformation. The district had been struggling, financially and academically. A mass exodus of students were leaving for suburban and private schools. In 2005, 31,000 of its schools’ 98,000 desks for children were empty. The district was not financially sustainable. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper appointed his chief of staff, Michael Bennett, as superintendent. Bennett had no background in public education, but was a dynamic, deft, and creative leader. He created something called “The Denver Plan” that rallied communities around their schools.
Serrano became a principal during the unfolding of one of the most remarkable success stories in the recent history of American education. Under Bennett, Denver schools’ enrollment skyrocketed, and test scores improved across the board. He focused on developing better teachers, fostering leadership, and the creation of alternative models that gave schools unique identities, thereby giving parents more choices for their children’s education.
“He had a vision around a couple of things,” Serrano said. “One was teacher feedback, and making sure the principals were trained as instructional leaders, and were in the classrooms observing and providing feedback on a regular basis. There was a strong focus on leadership development and teacher quality. The second emphasis was around school choice and innovation, making sure we are creating pathways around things like International Baccalaureate, arts and science, STEM at schools, Montessori…So, really giving identity to the schools where maybe the enrollment was waning, and ensuring that families felt they had options within the district.”
Bennett would become a U.S. Senator in 2009, leaving behind a district that had been infused with new life, in part because of his own exuberance and ability to lead.
“He was an amazing superintendent, and for me, I was incredibly inspired by his leadership, vision, and ability to steer the district in a new direction,” Serrano said. “At the time, I don’t think I had known how important that role was. But I saw through his leadership the transformation we were able to have in Denver Public Schools. I think that was the first time I was inspired by a superintendency.”
Serrano took over a school, Marie L. Greenwood elementary, that faced several challenges. It was an incredibly diverse campus — 97 percent of its population were students of color — and was in a very poor neighborhood, with over 91 percent of the students qualifying for free lunch. Academically, the school had a basic literacy problem. Serrano implemented a program called “Each One Teach One: No More Gap,” which gave struggling students in grades 4 through 7 what one observer later described as “rigorous and joyful small group literacy instruction.” The school won statewide awards three consecutive years under Serrano’s leadership, and became a school that produced future teachers.
Serrano was a rising star as an educational leader. She obtained her Ph.D. in Superintendency and Educational Administration from the University of Denver in 2011, something she’d worked towards for most of her time in Denver schools.
In 2012, Serrano was recruited to become Instructional Director and Director of Common Core at the Los Angeles Unified School District. She oversaw instruction, made hiring decisions, and worked with principals at 17 schools. She was so effective that soon she was leading the implementation of the state’s newly adopted Common Core standards in 150 schools throughout the region.
She also learned from observing then-LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, who had a tumultuous tenure, but was influential among the district’s other leaders. He was “relentlessly focused” on students, Serrano said, down to details such as demanding to know why students in some schools were given sugar-based “orange drink,” and students in wealthier areas received orange juice. Deasy did deep dives into educational data and probed the differences in student achievement rates.
“He wasn’t exactly calling people out, but in a lot of ways, calling people to action,” Serrano said. “He moved with such a sense of urgency around improving outcomes for kids.”
Serrano was particularly impressed when Deasy dove into the Common Core standard adoption process. He assembled the district’s directors and supervisors and modeled the teaching of a new Common Core math lesson.
“He put himself out there as a teacher in front of us, ‘Hey, I am learning this, too, but here is how this might look,’” she recalled. “ He had the courage to be vulnerable as a learner, and as a leader himself.”
In 2014, another transformational leader, Antawn Wilson, then superintendent of Oakland Unified School District, recruited Serrano as that district’s chief academic officer. He had also been part of the success story in Denver. As a principal, Wilson had achieved startling results with high schools located in poor areas, drastically increasing student achievement and attendance.
“He may be another controversial superintendent, but you know what? I think you take a little bit with you from those you work with and those you serve,” Serrano said. “With Antawn Wilson, it was, again, his relentless focus on student achievement, and also a strong focus on social, emotional, learning and also mental health support in Oakland — those are things I was able to learn from him.”
The impact of working in three major school districts under three very different kinds of leaders was akin to attending a master class in superintendency.
“All three had incredible work ethics, very early risers, workaholics, a little bit,” she said. “I definitely have that tendency, as well, I think it’s required for the job. You have to have a certain level of stamina, drive, and passion. Because you can literally work 24 hours a day and not have the job done.”
Serrano rose to become deputy superintendent and then, after Wilson’s departure, served seven months as interim superintendent at Oakland Unified, a district of 37,000 students. The time had clearly come for her to take the helm of a school district. But while she was in between positions — now overqualified to serve at most school districts as anything less than as a superintendent — she took a job that in retrospect looks like the finishing touch on her self-created master class in educational leadership. She served as senior executive director of New Leaders, a national organization that develops educational leaders.
“I was training principals and superintendents across our nation, going into districts all over the U.S., from Philadelphia to Florida, some rural districts near Spokane, just all over,” she said. “If you throw a dart at a map of the U.S. I was probably there…. I really enjoyed learning from all these districts and training principals and superintendents.”
In 2019, she was appointed the first superintendent of the newly established Pre K — 12 schools at UCLA, a small but innovative network of schools that serves children of UCLA faculty, employees, and the surrounding community.
“Most of the schools are early childhood schools, so I was able to focus a lot more intensively around early childhood, and learn more about infants, as well as ages 2 to 5. I had served ages 3 to 5 in all of my other experiences,” Serrano said. “But a child’s education really does begin at infancy and a strong childcare or school experience, even at that stage of life, can be foundational for a child’s development, and where they end up throughout the system.”
UCLA also contains a “lab school” the university uses to bring new ideas to bear on the classroom, as well as the Geffen Academy, a cutting-edge grade 6-12 school focused on adolescent learning.
“I had a lot of takeaways from my experience at UCLA,” Serrano said. “One is about how we can partner more closely with universities and scholars to make sure their research is having true, practical application in the classroom.”
While serving at UCLA she was also pursuing a two-year program in advanced educational leadership offered by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. The program had modules on utilizing data, managing people, and personal leadership, or “how you show up,” as Serrano described it.
“All these elements are integrated into this program, which is about deepening your own leadership,” she said. “You are engaging with educators from different places, globally. Sometimes in K-12, we get a bit insular, where we’ll be looking at what is happening in education in California, and we pay attention to what is happening nationally in the United States. But there is a lot we can learn from seeing what other countries are doing. So being able to dialogue with educators from different countries was a part of that, just continuing to sharpen my focus.”
Every step of her path through the educational world, Serrano believes, in retrospect seems perfectly designed to prepare her for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District. The highly educated parent demographic reminds her of UCLA, and even the drive up the Hill from her home in Redondo Beach reminds her a bit of Lake Tahoe, particularly the physical beauty and small-town community feel of Palos Verdes. She took the helm of PVPUSD on August 23, and though these early weeks and months are more about getting the lay of the land than implementing new ideas, she feels she has finally arrived at her destination as an educational leader.
“I’ve had a lot of really good experiences in my career. It’s been a lot of fun,” she said. “But I think the most fun I’ve had has been in the last three and a half weeks. It truly is a dream come true. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
PVPUSD Board of Education president Ami Gandhi said Serrano stood out from the moment she first appeared in Palos Verdes during the interview process.
“She comes with so much experience,” Gandhi said. “We knew that from her resume before interviewing her. She’s incredibly smart, yet she’s humble. She’s very calm and collected, and just thoughtful in the way she answers questions. Her professional experience has set her up to step into this role seamlessly. from day one.”
“It’s only been about three weeks since she’s been here, but it feels like it has been so much longer, in a really good way,” Gandhi said. “She’s always willing to listen if you come up with an idea. She’s already been to every single school, and that’s not easy. We have 10 elementary schools, three middle schools and two high schools. And she’s been to some schools multiple times.”
One of the schools Serrano has visited repeatedly is Peninsula High School. Principal Brent Kuykendall has been impressed.
“I think she has what I would consider a calm confidence while also being kind of a humble servant leader,” Kuykendall said. “It hasn’t even been a month, but based on my interactions with her, she seems to have a good understanding, and a willingness to be patient and ask questions before coming to solutions.”
High-performing school districts come with high expectations. And PVPUSD campuses, though physically beautiful, are the oldest and least modernized among the South Bay’s high performing schools. The question of a school bond looms. But Gandhi said that question remains for another day, and she’s been impressed that Serrano is not looking at the “what ifs” that would follow a bond measure, but instead at more immediate facilities needs and improvements that may be within PVPUSD’s abilities now.
“I met up with her earlier today,” Gandhi said. “She’d just gotten back from one of the middle schools where she’d attended a PTA meeting, and she said, ‘You know, I just can’t stop thinking about our facility concerns. It’s top of mind for me. Everywhere I go, there are facility needs.’ And the district may eventually go out for a bond, but even immediately, there are things that need to be done. And she said, ‘We need to start prioritizing how we are going to look at our facilities. There are things that are urgent that need to be figured out now.’ And she had ideas on what we could do, without just waiting for the big fix, which may or may not happen one day.”
What has most struck people who have met Serrano in her first days as superintendent is how she communicates. She does not speak loudly, and is very comfortable not speaking at all. Her mindfulness practice, perhaps, gives Serrano a stillness even in the midst of meeting hundreds of new people, and learning the needs of the school district.
“There is a vulnerability to this which can be hard to balance,” Kuykendall said. “I’ve heard her say, ‘I don’t know about that yet. But let me get back to you.’ She’s got lots of answers to a lot of things, responses I thought were great and on-point, and going to help the direction of our district. But when she doesn’t have an answer, she hasn’t been afraid to say, ‘I’m not sure. Let me look into that.’”
“When you’re looking for a superintendent, you want a strong communicator,” Gandhi said. “But the other piece is you want somebody who has a strong database of knowledge. Because it’s those two things combined that make a really strong leader. That is what we saw in Dr. Serrano. Over the last month, we’ve already seen that play out in various situations.”
Serrano sees her job as first understanding, and then articulating the story of PVPUSD.
“In a lot of ways being superintendent is about being the storyteller for a district, where you have a vision, and then tell the story of where you have been, where you are now, and where you are going,” she said.
Kuykendall has worked within PVPUSD for a quarter of a century, and seen five superintendents come and go. What he believes he is seeing in Serrano is the right leader, at the right time.
“She’s a different type of leader,” he said. “Her tone, her approach, I think is what the district needs. It is a very calm and patient approach, but also a willingness to say things and be in charge. And not because she’s the loudest voice in the room.” Pen
