Behind a district's rise to success

Alfonso Jiménez EdD ’12 became superintendent of  Hacienda La Puente Unified School District (HLPUSD) just months after the state ordered schools closed amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the global health crisis that ushered in a new normal for education didn’t stop him from starting in July 2020 with multiple goals for HLPUSD. One of his ambitions was to gain recognition for the district far beyond the East San Gabriel Valley.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of activity on the national scene,” says Jiménez, who was previously deputy superintendent of educational services at Santa Ana Unified School District. “When I was hired, the school board said, ‘We want you to move our district forward. We want you to make sure that our district is known outside of just this area,’ and I believe I have done that with some of the honors that our district has received.”

Those honors include National Blue Ribbons—awarded to schools by the U.S. Department of Education for excelling on standardized assessments or in closing achievement gaps between students. HLPUSD has also won the Golden Bell Award for education programs and governance practices designed to better serve students in districts statewide. California Schools to Watch, the Educational Results Partnership and the Civic Learning Award for California Public Schools have all recognized the district, too.

HLPUSD, which serves over 15,000 students at 31 schools, is racially and economically diverse. Hailing from Hacienda Heights, La Puente, Valinda and City of Industry, the student body is 75.7% Hispanic, 17.1% Asian, 2.5% White and 1.9% Filipino. Three-quarters of students qualify for federal free or reduced lunch, but nearly 93% percent of students graduate from high school, compared with 86% statewide. Jiménez, in his 28th year in education, attributes HLPUSD’s strides largely to an innovative pedagogical framework used only in select schools before he became superintendent and adopted it districtwide.

Four of HLPUSD’s schools won National Blue Ribbons this year, more than any district in the country.

With the support of the school board, Jiménez has also launched his own initiatives, including partnerships with a local business council to help students land internships, and a youth cinema project that introduces students to career roles in film—from writer or director to boom operator or set designer. He expanded the district’s coding initiative and started aviation and speech-and-debate programs as well.

A multi-pronged approach has moved the district forward, one that has involved planning, collaborating and innovating. That four of its schools won National Blue Ribbons this year, more than any district in the country, can be traced to this strategy, Jiménez says.

“That’s the highest award a school can get, so obviously that doesn’t happen by accident,” he says. “These schools have been really working hard on teacher collaboration, teacher planning, teacher professional development—and, also, the administrative leadership that is at the schools really embodies everything that we ask teachers to do.”

Teachers who share struggling students discuss intervention methods with each other, while administrators examine districtwide data to improve academic outcomes and get children the appropriate support. That teamwork, particularly around raising the performance of marginalized youth, landed the district on the Educational Results Partnership’s prestigious honor roll list for advancing educational equity last year.

A FRAMEWORK FOR LEARNING

The foundation for all of HLPUSD’s efforts, Jiménez says, is the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL) framework that he has implemented in each school. A global initiative of families, teachers, administrators and policymakers, NPDL has partnered with over 1,800 schools in 20 countries to create learning environments in which students develop six main competencies: character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking.

“New Pedagogies for Deep Learning talks about having the right content instruction happening in the classroom,” Jiménez says. “What is the learning environment? How do we use digital? How do we form partnerships in the community, and how do we use our pedagogical practices in the classroom? If all of those conditions are met, then we’re able to really focus on the six C’s.”

The NPDL framework emphasizes a global perspective on education. HLPUSD has hosted tours of some of its award-winning schools for international educators who also use the framework. The district also collaborates directly with Michael Fullan, a globally recognized researcher on education reform and the co-leader of NPDL, to push the initiative in its schools.

The district plans to hold a virtual international conference on the pedagogies in February and an in-person conference once funding is secured, an idea his assistant superintendent was instrumental in developing, Jiménez says. “We collaborate with people in Uruguay, Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong and Taiwan,” Jiménez says. “Learning has become global.” The deep learning competencies, he adds, benefit students academically and professionally.

The district’s focus on partnerships, Jiménez says, led to it winning a Golden Bell Award from the California School Board Association this past year. It received the honor for developing an initiative called Project LEAD (Learning Experiences About Democracy) that saw district personnel connect schools with city government officials while instilling in students the self-efficacy needed to hold discussions with them.

“That program has since expanded,” Jiménez says, adding that the district is still exploring ways to innovate. “How do we change instruction so that it is meaningful, authentic for students, and it’s real-world? That’s been my big push this year. The theme this year is ‘transformative learning pathways for student success.’”

Through HLPUSD’s partnership with the Industry Business Council, a group of business leaders from the City of Industry, the district is giving students opportunities to develop skills in manufacturing and other sectors. Many of the parents of the roughly 15,800 students in HLPUSD already work in the small industrial city, which is home to over 3,000 businesses and a population of under 300. Altogether HLPUSD offers 28 career and technical education (CTE) programs, including 13 CTE pathways in 10 industries. In his previous school districts, including Santa Ana Unified in Orange County—a district triple the size of HLPUSD—Jiménez capitalized on partnerships. That district, which he joined in 2016, entered partnerships with large organizations that allowed staff to connect with school personnel nationwide.

“How do we change instruction so that it is meaningful, authentic for students, and it’s real-world? That’s been my big push this year.”     

—HLPUSD Superintendent Alfonso Jiménez EdD ’12

Jiménez has a history of collaborating with universities to help students develop career skills and receive college scholarships if they qualify for admission. With the Youth Cinema Project, which he oversaw in other school districts over a decade ago, he hopes to do the same. In the program, which is affiliated with a foundation by actor Edward James Olmos, students learn from entertainment professionals who also train HLPUSD teachers.

“We launched this program at an elementary school,” Jiménez says. “We also have it in a middle school and at a high school, so all of these schools feed into each other, such that we have a pathway now for film. 

“My goal is to build this program in partnership with the best university in the whole wide world, which is the University of Southern California. I would love to partner with the USC film school to be able to do a full elementary-through-university film pathway.”

While the arts matter to the superintendent, so do the sciences. Over the past four years, the district has expanded its computer coding program to each school. With the University of California, Davis, as a partner, students advance their understanding of mathematics and robotics through the coding initiative. Since artificial intelligence heavily depends on coding, Jiménez believes the skill is the way of the future. There’s also a perk for teachers in the program: If they complete coding training in affiliation with the University of California, Riverside, they get a supplemental authorization credential in computer science, which not only helps students prepare for the future but also could move teachers up the salary scale.

Knowledge experts have told Jiménez that it’s important to expose students to a coding language at a young age so they become familiar with it and learn to problem-solve early on.

“There’s an initiative from the California Department of Education to ensure that kids are taking a computer science course by the time they graduate high school,” he says, “so we’re very lucky that we’ve been able to expand [our program].”

A SUBTLE AND TRANSFORMATIVE LEADER

Pedro Noguera, the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, recently visited a fifth-grade classroom in the district. Although the class was large, with 36 students, Noguera observed that they were all on task. He was also impressed with their responses when he asked how they defined success.

They’re successful, they told him, because they’re kind and work hard. Their focus on these characteristics rather than on performance alone “says a lot about the culture of the school,” Noguera says.

The dean applauds Jiménez for his willingness to discuss professional challenges and successes alike. When Jiménez began as superintendent during the pandemic lockdown, he closed a school because of declining enrollment, a decision that strained his relationship with some community members. Noguera says it’s important for Jiménez to share this chapter of his tenure, since the public may not realize “that success isn’t easy because you still face issues.”

“He’s a very subtle leader. At the same time, he is a very transformative leader. He pushes the student outcome in education because he does a lot of reading and research into the leading pedagogies.”   

—Manoj Roychowdhury, HLPUSD associate superintendent of business services

Jiménez started his career as an elementary school teacher for Long Beach Unified, where he grew up, and later transitioned into administrative roles for Bellflower Unified, Fullerton, Anaheim City and Lynwood Unified school districts. As his career progressed, Jiménez has responded to challenges—from devising strategies to raise graduation rates to closing student achievement gaps.

He’s also been inspired by the adversity his parents overcame. Both emigrated from Mexico, with his father arriving in 1960 at 18 to become a migrant farm worker under the federal Bracero program, which allowed Mexican men to obtain U.S. employment on a contractual basis. Jiménez is one of three brothers, including a fellow educator.

He knew he wanted to be a teacher after volunteering for the Mobile Science Museum as a student at California State University, Long Beach. The museum traveled to local elementary schools to teach students about science, and Jiménez felt called to inspire youth to attend college—especially those who grew up in under-resourced neighborhoods, as he did. His wife, Maria, is also an educator, and they have three children.

When Jiménez began his doctoral program at USC as a school principal in Fullerton, he received preparation for a wide range of situations as an educator, he says. He found Professor Rudy Castruita’s superintendent leadership course especially helpful.

“The fact that he shared with us decisions that he had to make as a superintendent was fascinating because we got to see what kind of thinking is involved to solve real, complex problems,” Jiménez says. “I always rely on that. I think, ‘OK, well, if I were Dr. Castruita, how would I solve this? What would I do?’”

While Jiménez credits deep learning for much of his district’s success, Manoj Roychowdhury, HLPUSD’s associate superintendent of business services, said the superintendent deserves credit as well. Last year, Jiménez was a featured speaker at NPDL’s Global Deep Learning Lab. Before that, he was named a 2022 Superintendent to Watch by the National School Public Relations Association.

Roychowdhury also worked with Jiménez at Santa Ana Unified, where many students were economically disadvantaged and had socio-emotional challenges, he says. There, they were both motivated to focus on the success of all students and not just a select group of high-performing youth. That mindset, Roychowdhury says, has proven helpful at HLPUSD.

“He’s a very subtle leader,” Roychowdhury says. “At the same time, he is a very transformative leader. He pushes the student outcome in education because he does a lot of reading and research into the leading pedagogies. He also is practical and pragmatic, so he will subtly influence the principals, assistant principals and even the educational leaders to explore the new pedagogies.”

Judy Fancher EdD ’05, who was HLPUSD’s assistant superintendent of curriculum, assessment and instruction until she retired last year, appreciates that Jiménez isn’t afraid of innovation.

“I once worked with a superintendent who didn’t ever want to be first,” says Fancher, “whereas Dr. Jiménez says, ‘We like to be ahead of the curve. We want to be thinking about what we’re doing now but also what we need to be doing in the future.’”

At the same time, Fancher says, Jiménez respects the programs that were implemented before his tenure—if they’re effective, that is. He champions and builds on initiatives that best serve students.

“He talks a lot about action, outcomes, vision, but then also accountability,” she says.

One of the first programs Jiménez established as superintendent was speech and debate, beginning at a middle school four years ago. The program expanded to high school during the 2023–24 academic year and is available at the elementary school level for the first time this fall. Now that there’s a full pathway, about 700 K–12 students are enrolled. Students have traveled to debate tournaments in Kentucky and at Harvard University. Jiménez’s objective, he says, is to provide students with opportunities they may not know exist. To that end, the superintendent is now launching a four-year aviation curriculum for students. The idea came to him after attending an aviation conference with an administrator and two school board members. The district has secured state funding for equipment and has a flight instructor on tap from a junior college that is an existing community partner.

Jiménez notes that the district is about a 30-minute drive from multiple airports—LAX, Long Beach, Ontario, John Wayne. “There are so many airports here that I said, well, why not have an aviation program where students who want to go into the industry could easily make that transition, either by going to the local community college and finishing their aviation program or getting hired by an airline to go into their flight school,” he says.

While high school students will be the focus of the program due to age restrictions, middle schoolers may take part in a program to prepare them for aviation and the drone pilot license test, which they can register for at 16. Jiménez says it’s important that the district build pathways rather than standalone programs that lack context from previous grade levels.

This layering of knowledge across subject matter and grade levels has benefited students while giving the district a competitive edge. Over the last two years, nine HLPUSD schools have earned California Civic Learning Awards for making great strides with civic learning. The honors, Jiménez says, resulted from the district’s emphasis on the citizenship and character components of the six C’s from its deep learning framework.

Additionally, this past school year, three HLPUSD schools were named California Schools to Watch, an honor recognizing high-quality middle-grade instruction.

As Jiménez begins his fifth year as superintendent, he says he has no plans to stop pushing the school district forward. He will work to ensure that all schools receive outside recognition. But what matters most, he says, “is knowing you definitely make a difference for your students.