School district hires new chief business officer

By Steven Raphael

Dale Thurston is used to overcoming challenges. In fact, you could almost say that he's based his life around it.

"I'm just not afraid to jump into something new," he said.

It was this drive for challenge that led Thurston to apply for the job of chief business officer for Campbell Union School District. Thurston started on Oct. 1, replacing Richard McCann, who retired after seven years in the position.

The chief business officer is responsible for overseeing the district's budget, accounting, contracts, insurance and purchasing.

The position is a step up for Thurston, who held a similar position at Live Oak School District--a Santa Cruz district that is about one-third the size of CUSD--for the last 19 years. During that time, Thurston said, he was involved in many projects, including the creation of a maintenance department, the renovation of many district buildings, and the implementing a system to rent buildings to the community.

Thurston also worked to make the school budget something the community could understand, and he held classes on the subject for anyone who was interested.

So why leave after 19 successful years?

"I came to CUSD because I needed a bigger challenge," Thurston said. "We had fixed many of the problems and I was looking for a change."

Thurston said he also took the job because it came with a pay increase: His three-year contract with CUSD is for $112,128 a year.

But it was certainly not money that led this 50-year-old father of four into education. In fact, when he accepted the position at Live Oak, Thurston took a pay cut from his previous position as a product control manager and marketing analyst with Intel.

Thurston's payoff was of a different sort. "I got to spend a lot more time with my family," he said. "At that time, people typically worked long, long hours and rarely got to see their families."

Thurston isn't afraid to log in some serious work when it's needed. "Right now, I'm still looking. I'm trying to get my feet on the ground," he said.

And after plowing through piles of paperwork, Thurston heads home to plow his fields. The Santa Cruz resident is a self-described "weekend farmer." Ten years ago, he purchased several acres of "raw land" in the Santa Cruz mountains, full of nothing but overgrown poison oak--and a challenge.

Over the next decade, Thurston designed and built a house, accepting help when he needed it, but doing the majority of the work himself. He bought horses and began learning to plow the land.

"It's my therapy. It gets me away from the real world and gives me a chance to learn something, while at the same time just getting outside," he said. "It's different than what I do in a regular week."

Campbell Union School District hires Dale Thurston as its new chief business officer

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