The Superintendent Knows His Role. Thoughts & Prayers for the Board Majority.
Dr. Don Austin appears to understand exactly where the Laguna Beach School Board’s job ends and his begins. The question is whether the Board majority will let him stay there.
I did not react to Dr. Don Austin’s hiring by thinking, Man, what a terrible résumé.
The résumé is obviously impressive. He has led Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified, spent eight years as superintendent in Palo Alto Unified, and now serves as president of CalSupts. He also has more than three decades of experience in California public education and already knows Laguna Beach from his five years as principal of Laguna Beach High School.
My reaction was more along the lines of: We have a new superintendent already? This is because less than 48 hours after the Board approved Dr. Jason Glass’s separation, Austin was announced as his replacement. There was no public search, no community input, and very little explanation beyond the Board majority’s apparent confidence that it had found its person.
I have already written about the process and legal questions surrounding it, so I will not reassemble that entire crime-scene board in this article. The short version is that the speed was shocking, transparency was lacking, and the process did not follow the superintendent selection policy our district previously approved.
None of that was Austin’s doing.
The Board majority owns the process that brought him here, but Austin now owns what he does with the job.
That distinction is important because it is possible to object strongly to how someone was hired and still sincerely want that person to succeed. In this case, I need him to succeed; LBUSD cannot afford another broken superintendent relationship, another leadership exit, or another year of teachers and staff holding the district together while the adults above create fresh material for closed session.
So I reached out to Austin.
Many current LBUSD parents were not here when he was the high school principal (in fact, lots of parents were in high school when he was principal). I want them to hear directly from him, not just through a district announcement that focuses more on rankings than on explaining who he is and how he plans to lead.
His response was long, personal, and refreshingly human.
Austin wrote about moving to Laguna Beach in 2006 without knowing anyone. His three children attended LBUSD schools and often joined him at school and community events. He also described growing up in a blue-collar home in Chula Vista near the Tijuana border, his path through the Inland Empire, and the perspective he believes that background gave him in the high-achieving districts he later served.
He also made clear that he is not returning to recreate Laguna Beach as it existed when he left, nor is he arriving with plans to turn us into Palo Alto-by-the-Sea.
“I only wish to see Laguna Beach as the best possible version of Laguna Beach,” he wrote.
I liked that answer.
Laguna Beach does not need to turn into someone else’s district. It also does not need rescuing from academic collapse because that is not happening here. Our teachers, staff, and administrators continue to deliver strong outcomes while handling extraordinary leadership turmoil. The district needs stability, clarity, and enough breathing room for the people doing the work to do it without wondering who might be investigated, criticized, or reorganized.
Austin appears to understand that structure.
“In the simplest way of looking at things,” he wrote, “the school board governs, the superintendent is responsible for implementation and operations, and our staff members do the hard work with our students and families each day.”
There it is.
The Board governs. The superintendent runs the district. Staff members educate and support students.
This should not feel like a breakthrough concept, but after watching LBUSD governance over the past year and a half, I have seriously considered having it printed on a yard sign.
While Austin’s answer reassured me, it did not surprise me. He is a highly experienced superintendent who works with other superintendents across California on leadership and governance, which means he knows what his job is supposed to be.
What we do not know yet is whether this Board majority will allow him to do it.
Governance boundaries are easy to support when the superintendent agrees with you. The real test comes when he does not.
What happens when Austin defends a staff recommendation the Board majority dislikes? What happens when he says an operational decision belongs to his administration? What happens when he asks trustees to slow down, accept greater context, or recognize that an individual board member’s priority is not the same thing as collective Board direction?
Austin wrote that one of his former board members used to say most problems benefit more from an eraser than a pencil. That may be the most useful philosophy anyone can bring to LBUSD in this climate.
This Board majority has often reached for the pencil.
When Dr. Glass did not agree to place a discussion of graduation location on the agenda, the response was not simply to accept the superintendent’s judgment or work through the existing process. Instead, the Board moved to change its agenda-setting bylaw.
When district communications did not satisfy Howard Hills, he criticized the work publicly and privately, even though the district’s communications remained professional, timely, and substantially better than the political messaging swirling around them.
The pattern concerns me; when professional judgment becomes inconvenient, the process suddenly needs revision. If staff members do not deliver the preferred answer, their work becomes the problem.
Those are big red flags for any superintendent entering the district, even one with Austin’s experience.
His response suggests he knows where the lanes are, and I hope he is prepared to hold them.
Austin said he intends to work with the Board to establish its “collective goals.” Those two words matter.
The superintendent works for the Board as a whole. He does not work separately for the Board president, the loudest trustee, or three members carrying their own operational wish lists. The Board should set priorities publicly and collectively, then allow Austin and his staff to determine how to implement those priorities.
That is the difference between governance and management. It may also determine whether Austin lasts.
The first few months should not be about dramatic restructuring or proving that the new administration has arrived by moving furniture and eliminating positions. LBUSD has had enough drama presented as decisive leadership.
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Austin should, and likely will, begin by listening to others.
He should meet with teachers, classified employees, administrators, parents, and students. The listening sessions need to lead somewhere. People have participated in enough surveys, meetings, and strategic exercises to know that “we heard you” can sometimes mean “thank you for providing content for the appendix.”
Austin should report back publicly. What did he hear? Where are the clearest points of agreement? What concerns require immediate attention? What needs more review? What will change, and what should remain stable?
That last question matters.
Cabinet stability will be one of the first things I watch. A superintendent has the right and responsibility to evaluate his leadership team, but there is a difference between Austin deciding a change is needed and the Board pressuring him to remove people it has already labeled part of the problem.
By December, success would look remarkably uneventful: the current cabinet still in place, no key staff departures, and no sudden cuts presented as proof that someone is supposedly rooting out a conspiracy certain trustees have suspected exists inside the district.
At this point, boring would be a triumph.
Special education also needs attention, though not another abrupt reinvention. My children are not in special education, but I regularly speak with parents whose children are, and many are nervous about what leadership instability could mean for services, staffing, and continuity.
Austin does not need to arrive with a grand solution before he has listened and reviewed the work. Families need to know who is responsible, what the priorities are, and whether the district plans to build on existing work rather than start over just because starting over looks good.
Teacher and staff morale should be another early measure.
Our employees have continued to show up for students while the leadership above them has been engaged in conflict, investigations, legal disputes, and public criticism. They have kept the district functioning through conditions they did not create.
Austin will need to rebuild trust with people who may reasonably wonder how long the next period of stability will last.
Compensation negotiations will be part of that. Success does not mean the district agrees to every proposal, but it does mean the process becomes credible again: honest numbers, professional relationships, and employees who do not feel they must fill Board meetings to make their concerns visible.
And then there is the lawyer.
One of my personal early signs of improvement will be seeing legal counsel leave the dais.
This is not because LBUSD should stop consulting attorneys. Given recent events, I assume the legal invoices have developed their own gravitational field. But counsel should advise the district only when legal advice is needed. The attorney should not appear as a permanent member of the governing team or the Board’s most consistent public partner.
Like all other school boards, the superintendent should be the primary professional voice sitting beside the Board. Cabinet members should speak to their areas of expertise, and legal counsel can remain available without making it look like we have entered season three of a school-board-drama television show.
Austin’s arrival should give the district a chance to reset that dynamic.
He has said he believes in organizational clarity, defining success, working backward from shared goals and reporting progress publicly. Those are promising commitments. They also create standards by which the community can judge his leadership.
What are his priorities for cabinet stability and special education? What did he hear from teachers and staff? How will that feedback shape his decisions? How will the district explain its budget and compensation choices more clearly? When he disagrees with the Board, how will he protect the organization and employees while maintaining a productive working relationship?
Those are difficult questions, but answering difficult questions is part of rebuilding trust. Austin should be held accountable, but so should the Board.
Supporting his success does not require pretending the hiring process was acceptable. Watching the Board closely does not mean hoping Austin fails so critics can declare themselves correct. Parents and community members can hold two thoughts at once, even if some Board trustees have not modeled that skill.
We can give Austin a fair opportunity to lead while insisting that the Board stay in its lane. We can hope he succeeds while expecting him to explain his priorities and decisions.
We can recognize that the district remains strong because teachers and staff have continued doing excellent work, not because the governance turmoil somehow improved classroom instruction through exposure.
The community has a role in what happens next, which means attending meetings, submitting public comments, and paying attention to what happens after major announcements are removed from the district website’s front page.
It also means thinking carefully about November.
Voters will have to decide what kind of school district they want and what kind of Board behavior makes that district possible. Do they want trustees focused on policy, outcomes and accountability? Or do they want board members scrutinizing staff work, inserting themselves into operations and treating every professional disagreement like evidence of something darker?
The answer will shape Austin’s ability to succeed as much as anything he does himself.
I have spoken with many parents and community members who are concerned about what comes next and have asked what I think.
I think Austin’s response gave me a reason to be hopeful. He understands the distinction between governance and operations, speaks about the Board’s collective goals rather than individual demands, and values organizational clarity, public reporting, and taking the time to understand complex problems before adding another solution.
He also brings enough experience that he should not need the Board to explain how a superintendent’s job works.
Now the Board needs to show that it understands its own.
It owes Austin space and trust. Not unquestioning loyalty, not freedom from oversight and not automatic agreement, but it owes him the opportunity to exercise the professional judgment it supposedly hired him for.
I hope he can hold his ground when that judgment is tested.
I hope the Board can hear “no,” “not yet,” or “that is an operational decision” without deciding it has another superintendent problem.
I hope that by December, the cabinet is intact, morale is improving, special education families feel more secure, and the lawyer has rediscovered the audience seating.
Most of all, I hope Austin works out because LBUSD cannot afford for him not to.
Like many parents, I find this appointment high-stakes. My children still have over a decade ahead of them in these schools. Teachers and staff will still be here after the latest controversy is replaced by the next one. Families need the district to become steadier, not simply better at announcing that it is.
Austin said he wants Laguna Beach to become the best possible version of Laguna Beach.
So, right now, I am rooting for him.
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