Valerie Arbizu will succeed Patricia Kurtz as Aragon’s principal starting July 1. Arbizu has extensive teaching and management credentials and worked as assistant principal at Burlingame and Mills High School in years past. Arbizu deeply values Aragon’s diversity, which is one of the reasons why she decided to apply for the position in the first place.
“When the position at Aragon opened up, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go,’” Arbizu said. “I love Burlingame, but I really wanted to get back into a school that felt more culturally diverse. I mean, that was my history growing up.”
Arbizu began her teaching career at Evergreen Valley High School in San Jose after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English at San Jose State University.
“I wanted to work at Evergreen because it has a really diverse population,” Arbizu said. “We had kids speaking 48 different languages at home, and then they would come on our campus and they formed a community there. And I loved it.”
During college, Arbizu discovered her desire to work with others through various part-time jobs. From counseling to accounting, she found a common thread that tied them together.
“When I was working at the counseling center, I enjoyed helping the people who were there. When I was at the real estate office, I enjoyed working with the office managers. And then I started [working as a substitute teacher] and I loved working with the kids,” Arbizu said.
Coupled with a natural liking to teaching, Arbizu found her niche.
“I think all of my experiences coalesced into me going, ‘Maybe I do want to be a teacher.’ It’s one of those things where I was really interested,” Arbizu said. “I was interested enough that I got my teaching credential, and then I got really excited by the place where I was teaching and the kids I was working with. It was my jam.”
“I was interested enough that I got my teaching credential, and then I got really excited by the place where I was teaching and the kids I was working with. It was my jam.”
While teaching English at Evergreen, she found the school had a low retention rate for administrators and it strained her colleagues. This instability served as the impetus to earn her administrative credential.
“It was almost like a revolving door where it felt like [the teachers] were holding this place together, not the administrators. And so I wanted to be the opposite of that. I wanted to be supportive of teachers and supportive of kids and help smooth the way.”
“It was almost like a revolving door where it felt like [the teachers] were holding this place together, not the administrators. And so I wanted to be the opposite of that. I wanted to be supportive of teachers and supportive of kids”
After some time, Arbizu relocated to San Mateo and became assistant principal at Mills.
“I feel like I got lucky that I happened to be the right person at the right time,” Arbizu said. “And that was the right school to go to. This is an amazing school district. There are six amazing comprehensive high schools and some really great programs for kids. And people stay here for a long time.”
At the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, Arbizu aims to familiarize herself with the new environment and challenges unique to Aragon with the guidance of other administrators.
“I think my first several months are going to kind of be the listening and learning tour if you get in classrooms and see what’s going on,” Arbizu said. “I will be elbow deep in the conversations with the administration that’s already on site, and I’m really lucky that all three administrators are returning because there’s a lot of knowledge that’s there to help me make those decisions. There’s a lot of power in the collective.”
Arbizu, like other district leaders, remains undecided on how school should reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That’s something that all of the administrators in our district are trying to puzzle through and figure out what that looks like, because we don’t know,” Arbizu said. “And we’ve never looked for anything like this. The last time this happened was over 100 years ago. My role is going to be to help facilitate whatever we need to do.”
In her spare time, Arbizu enjoys reading, sewing and visiting national parks. As an avid planner, she likes to bullet journal and finds it very cathartic.
