Michele Crncich Hodge may be a newcomer in the race for Marin County Superintendent of Schools, but the Mill Valley School District trustee has a wealth of experience in public education. A Marin native and alumna of Tamalpais High School and the University of California, Berkeley, she holds a master’s in education from the University of Southern Oregon and a doctorate in organizational leadership from the University of La Verne. She taught fourth and fifth grade in Oregon and Nevada for years before coming home to teach at Mary E. Silveira Elementary School in San Rafael, where she was the teachers’ association president, from 2001 to 2014. She was the principal of La Tercera Elementary School in Petaluma for four years before working as an administrator for the San Rafael City School District. In 2020, she was elected to the Mill Valley School District board.
Ms. Hodge faces an uphill battle against opponent John Carroll, the longtime district superintendent of Bolinas-Stinson Union and Lagunitas School Districts who has endorsements from all his fellow Marin superintendents and from exiting superintendent Mary Jane Burke herself. But Ms. Hodge was endorsed by 10 Marin teachers’ unions, and by Anita Collison, president of the Lagunitas Teachers Association. She’ll bring a fresh perspective to the county office, she says, with a focus on retaining teachers and staff and a drive to better communicate the office’s work to the public. The Light sat down with Ms. Hodge this week to talk about teacher retention, public engagement and declining enrollment. Here is our abridged conversation.
Point Reyes Light: What challenges would define your first term as county superintendent?
Michele Crncich Hodge: I think the number-one thing is personnel. There’s a need for more teachers and more support staff. People are leaving the profession and we’re having a hard time engaging young people to want to choose the number-one most noble profession, which is educating our children. We’re having a challenge right now, and the long-term trend is it’s not going to get better. So providing support for people to be able to quickly get a certificate, be able to make a segue from being a paraprofessional or even a custodian, providing support for people that are in Marin already in positions to become teachers.
The challenge is that in Marin and beyond, through Covid, teachers got the brunt of all the negativity about not coming back to school. They were blamed. That has hit teachers hard emotionally, and many are just retiring because of this. The number-one determining factor of student success is our teachers. The research has not wavered for years on that. I’ll address that by making sure that schools that have teaching credential programs know about us, that we’re providing current teachers the resources they really need and that we’re having a campaign of respect and kindness toward teachers that would start at the county office.
The other key piece is being visible in schools. I’m a storyteller. Being an educator is a lot about facilitating learning and engaging children to this process of learning. I think there is a marketing component to that. The other is really addressing the inequities in Marin County that are keeping us from closing the achievement gap, and that are keeping us from attracting leadership that looks like the constituents we serve. We have 17 districts and there’s no mechanism for getting people together. I want to have the county office be that place. A countywide initiative means having an equity coalition—call it an equity advisory board to the superintendent—and clear processes where we have a common vision for this board and clear metrics for what we want to achieve, and a way to provide the public data showing how we’re succeeding or failing.
The other challenge is declining enrollment, which is a statewide issue. You’ve read about it. In Marin County, we have a unique issue in that we have more and more people going to private schools. My idea here is, again, relationships. Reaching out, understanding why people are leaving and being open to be able to hear criticism of what’s not working. Then addressing the public on what is the state of declining enrollment in Marin County and how are we meeting that challenge. Perhaps in Mill Valley, we don’t care so much about declining enrollment, but in San Rafael it’s a matter of life and death now. In Novato, we’ve got pink slips and a problem with budgeting because of declining enrollment.
The Light: You talked about enrollment moving to private schools, but what’s your position on charter schools?
Hodge: That’s a very good question because I see that the legislation for creating charter schools was well-intended: the idea that these would be innovation hubs and sister schools that would inform public schools. The Old Adobe district outside of Sonoma, which I was in, is a dependent charter system. We had sister charter schools with different identities, and there were offerings for all parents, and we supported each other and also had to put our best foot forward because in that community, it’s an area of choice.
Back here to Marin, it’s not working. It’s divisive. It’s well-meaning parents who are following the charter legislation and providing another option for children that they may not have in public schools. As a superintendent, we are charged to not only serve, support and provide partnerships for public schools, but for private schools and charter schools, so that’s part of your job. But the reality is, it’s all about funding. When that funding starts being taken away from public schools, it literally starves the “sister.” It’s horrific, it doesn’t serve any child, and it’s been a story here in Marin that’s created a lot of divisiveness. Ross Valley children and their families have been pitted against each other, by no fault of anyone. As Marin County Superintendent of Schools, my solution is to go up to the state level as an advocate for Marin County children, to say: this legislation must be changed. Parents should have the right to choice if they’re not being heard, but we need to have a different funding system. They should be innovation hubs that are shining bright spots and encouraging our public schools to incorporate these bright spots.
The Light: What have been your biggest accomplishments as a school board trustee?
Hodge: Having encouraged teachers, support staff and parents to show up and share their voice, and know that I follow up in board meetings and let them know they’re heard. This wasn’t happening before, and if you go to many school board meetings, we have forgotten that we need to ask questions so that the public understands what’s behind decisions. We need to show the public what our thinking is before we make these critical decisions to funding, to programs and policy, on their childrens’ behalf.
The Light: What had been some of the failings of the school board to let the public know what was going on?
Hodge: A process and a culture that people came into that is more administrative. We hear a presentation, and then we say, ‘Thanks, passed.’ We’re not alone in Mill Valley. Many school boards don’t know that they’re in a culture where we’ve forgotten about representative government. We’re part of the democratic process at governance level. Some of the failings were—and certainly Covid exacerbated it—that you had parents coming like never before. Imagine, you’d been a trustee when no one shows up and all of a sudden you’ve got 40 people and they’re not happy. That’s hard to navigate without training, but what happened is that people came, they said ‘Thank you,’ and never followed up. My understanding of education, which is deep, has helped to see that people want to participate, and that it makes our decision-making better if we take into account what the public is responding to.
We have created a board governance handbook. Many districts don’t have this. It creates the unifying principle of why we do the work. Believe it or not, that, I think, is the golden nugget to how we’re going to move all our institutions forward. There’s a communication piece I feel is needed at the county level. To sit down with stakeholders and my cabinet, and say ‘Let’s craft a mission and a vision for our work. What are our bedrock values? What are our guiding principles?’ If you go on the county office of ed website, you won’t see that. I’ve heard from numerous constituents: ‘What does the county office really do?’ Somehow it got lost. The educators know, but the general public doesn’t know. So I feel that communication is a priority and I plan on retooling the website and retooling messaging so that you will know what the county office does, and how the county office can be a resource for you.
The Light: Your board and district superintendent endorsed John Carroll, and two articles in the Marin Independent-Journal covered you allegedly calling your colleagues ‘idiots’ at a board meeting earlier this year. Are these things going to hold you up in the race?
Hodge: I think not at all. Actually, all of the feedback that the I.J. received from constituents was that we need to be focusing on what’s really going on in the boardroom. That the Mill Valley School District started videotaping was a positive result of that, and was something I’d been asking for, because we’d just stopped videotaping. That would have conclusively told people what happened. I think that all leaders are human. I’m human. Whether I said those words or not is not relevant. That someone heard them means I take ownership. That night, I apologized in a private setting, and I read a statement at a board meeting that unfortunately, the I.J. missed. At that meeting, I was very encouraged that my trustee colleagues said ‘Let’s get back to the work.’ That’s what it’s about. Let’s get back to the work of supporting children and working collaboratively.
Part of the ongoing challenge of true representative government in a climate like Marin County where there’s been a lot of status quo is that the work is ongoing. My superintendent and board of trustees endorsed John Carroll before they knew I was running, because I came in on the last day. When you join a board after such a long time and you are not the person they endorsed, there’s this process of endorsement that can inherently create issues when a new [candidate] walks in. These are longstanding, potentially systemic challenges that stop people from being inclusive without them knowing it. They’re structural issues that make it hard for people to really listen to divergent voices.
The Light: Do you see yourself as the candidate for a voter who is dissatisfied with the county office or wants a new voice?
Hodge: I’m the candidate saying, ‘We’re in a new era and we need to look forward.’ There’s been a lot of good work that Mary Jane Burke has done. Let’s bring that forward, but understand what’s been working. Looking at what’s not working is important to address inequities and declining enrollment. John Carroll is being supported by Mary Jane Burke, and there’s a proud legacy there. I think it’s important for people to listen to both candidates and decide. If they’re completely satisfied with the way public education is in Marin County, and just want a blueprint to be repeated, I’m not that candidate. I’m the candidate who’s going to look at the blueprint from the past, engage stakeholders that have not been at the table and do the difficult work where you sometimes have to say I’m sorry, to really look at our processes to solve these problems.
The Light: Why vote for you?
Hodge: Because I am the candidate who has the varied experience to bring empathy and understanding to the leadership work, to develop coalitions of true cooperation and collaboration, to deal with this new era and the challenges we face. I recognize that people in this county are looking for a superintendent who wants new voices, brings a fresh perspective, and is actively interested in bringing educational leadership, including teachers, into Marin County that are more representative of the community that we all serve. The three basic bullets are preserving what’s best about education, developing a countywide equity initiative to tackle the inequities head on, and looking at declining enrollment seriously by bringing out the bright spots and communicating, which is something that, because of my passion for public education, is natural for me.
Editor’s note: In our Q&A with Michele Crncich Hodge, a candidate for Marin County Superintendent of Schools, Ms. Hodge asserted that the superintendent and trustees of Mill Valley School District, where she sits on the board, endorsed her opponent, John Carroll, before they knew she planned to run. Mr. Carroll’s campaign manager, Peter Silvestri, said this was incorrect: The four trustees endorsed Mr. Carroll after the filing deadline, and all told the campaign they were aware of her candidacy before they offered endorsements. Mill Valley superintendent Kimberly Berman endorsed Mr. Carroll before Ms. Hodge entered the race, but she reaffirmed her support for him to the Light this week. For her part, Ms. Hodge said she could have been mistaken in her comments, but added: “My impression was that [the trustees] endorsed him and now they just don’t want to double endorse.”