The title is officially new, but Pedro Garcia is no stranger to students, parents or teachers at Edison Middle School. He has been the school’s Assistant Principal for the past five years, in charge of curriculum and instruction.
As of November 28, he is officially the school’s new principal, replacing Coleen Kaiwi, who retired in August of this year.
“It’s been a good transition,” says Garcia. “I know there will be some challenges, but I feel like I can make a difference. I have high expectations for the teachers here – as well as for myself. You have to lead by example in order to get positive results.”
Edison Middle School currently has 1,175 students – 97 percent of them are Latino. Less than 3 percent are African-American. Among the biggest challenges Garcia faces is a 20 percent transiency rate.
“Two out of 10 students are checking in and out of the school in a semester, because parents usually need to move to cheaper housing, often far from the school,” he explains.
In spite of this, Garcia is particularly proud that his school has a 97 percent attendance rate. He partially attributes it to having very involved staff in the attendance office that are always checking with parents if any students miss school. No one is left off the hook.
While he was Assistant Principal, Garcia was known to walk the hallways and pop in to classrooms to check in on students and teachers to see their progress and provide feedback.
“My priority is to get these kids to learn and to feel safe here.” Garcia emphasizes that throughout the years, he’s worked hard to nurture students and create a safe environment for them at the school.
As principal, with an average 10 hour work day that involves overseeing all aspects of the school’s operations, from payroll and budget development to teacher evaluations to supervision of building maintenance, it’s getting harder for him to visit the classrooms as often as he’d like.
“I try to make a presence every day, because a good principal always knows what’s going on in the classrooms. But with the mountains of paperwork I have to deal with in my new role, it’s a challenge,” he says.
During his tenure as Assistant Principal, Garcia focused on planning and implementing professional development for the teachers, supervising classroom instruction and overseeing testing and periodic performance assessment. He also insisted on maintaining a low student to teacher ratio.
Edison currently has a ratio of 23 students per teacher in 7th grade and 22 students per teacher in 8th grade.
One of his goals for the near future is to add 6th grade to Edison Middle School, so students can have a better transition into 7th grade and improve academic performance in the long run.
“Giving more personalized attention makes a great difference in student achievement.”
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