District Welcomes New Schools Chief

After a 50-person cheese-and-juice reception in his honor, Simi Valley’s new schools chief is ready to get busy.

With less than a week’s tenure in the massive Simi Valley Unified School District, Supt. Tate Parker has already visited his first school--Garden Grove. He has been meeting individually with the five trustees. And he attended his first school board meeting Tuesday.

“Everyone here has been extremely kind and helpful,” Parker, 56, said in his first report to the school board. “I’m very pleased to be here, and I’m excited about our prospects for the future.”

Soon Parker will have a chance to get to know trustees better at board retreats scheduled for Jan. 15 and 17. In upcoming weeks and months, he will guide the district through thorny issues including whether to continue class-size reduction in three grades and whether to bump sixth-graders from elementary to middle school.

Praised as a consensus-minded, fiscally conservative administrator, Parker left the 9,100-student Murrieta Unified School District in Riverside County to come to sometimes-tumultuous Simi Valley. In his new post, Parker will earn $108,000 annually.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Parker praised interim Supt. Robert Purvis and district staff for easing his transition to a district twice as large as Murrieta.