By Kathleen Acuff
 Justus |
Tim L. Justus, with 16 years’ experience heading elementary districts, will take over from Marge Gratiot when she retires at the end of June after 18 years as superintendent of the 4,300-student Los Altos School District.
Justus has led the 2,800-student Rincon Valley Union Elementary School District in Santa Rosa for the past seven years. He was superintendent of the K-8 Foresthill Union Elementary District in Placer County for nine years before that.
LASD trustee Duane Roberts said, “We got the right guy. He’s been a superintendent almost as long as Marge has. He knows what he’s doing.”
Gratiot said, “I’m delighted that the board found somebody they can be enthusiastic about.”
Interviewed Monday morning as he met Gratiot and district staff for the first time, Justus said he was attracted to the district by its high level of community and parental involvement.
He described himself as “someone who sees the big picture” in school finances.
“You have to direct funds so that students receive the best possible education,” he said. “It takes some creativity sometimes - maybe you open up new programs. That can be a financial positive in the long run.”
Victor Reid, vice president of the Los Altos board, described Justus as a visionary. The incoming superintendent has dealt successfully with some of the same financial challenges the district is contending with, such as the rising costs of special education,
which school districts must provide to a subgroup of the student population growing at an unprecedented rate.
To cut those costs in Rincon Valley, Justus proposed a nine-district consortium, three years in the planning, that will begin offering special education classes next fall. The Rincon Valley district will serve as the Local Education Authority for the new Redwood Consortium for Student Services. Overall special education savings to the participating districts are estimated at $1 million for the first year of operation.
Justus’ most recent accomplishment as Rincon Valley’s top administrator was to charter a junior high to accommodate seventh- and eighth-graders who spent their elementary years in the district’s small K-6 schools, then faced Santa Rosa junior highs of 850-1,000 students.
“The parents were concerned about the larger junior highs and wanted to keep their children in a similar setting and have a more creative curriculum,” Justus explained.
Rincon Valley Charter School has separate facilities on the district’s largest campus and is treated as a separate district with a separate budget. It opened its doors to seventh-graders in the fall. An estimated 160 students are expected for next fall’s seventh- and eighth-grade classes.
Justus is proud of the Rincon Valley capital facility plan and the passage of the district’s $24 million general obligation bond, which, with developers’ fees and $4.6 million from the state, built an eighth school, now in its fourth year of operation, and enabled modernization of the seven older schools, including the building of libraries and computer labs for each and 19 kindergarten classrooms. Renovations began last summer.
While head of Foresthill, Justus established mutual-benefit agreements with future developers and secured local, county and state funding to develop playing fields and hard courts and buy playground equipment.
Justus has been on both sides of salary and benefits negotiations. In the Foresthill district, he implemented an interest-based bargaining model. Earlier in his career, while a teacher in Three Rivers Union Elementary School District, he served three years as the chief negotiator for the Certificated Association (the teachers’ union).
While he was superintendent of the Rincon Valley and Foresthill districts, all their schools received California Distinguished School Awards, according to Justus’ application. Rincon Valley schools each have an API of more than 800, and the average for that district is 854. LASD has been the top-ranked elementary district in the state for the past five years.
