In 1993 she had walked into a district rocked by more than a decade of strife that involved strained relationships between teachers and the district, financial insolvency and a federal desegregation case.

"I wasn't really prepared," Murray says, referring to the job she accepted more than 10 years ago. "I didn't realize there were so many issues."

Suddenly she found herself embroiled in a district struggling with turmoil and high superintendent turnover.

The problems in school administration, which began in the 1980s, encompassed a rocky teachers' union relationship, the district's bankruptcy in 1979­80 and a federal mandate to desegregate San Jose schools in 1985, she says.

She also walked into a district of 45 schools that had no strategic plan to help educate its approximately 32,000 students.

"It forced me to take on a role that I didn't anticipate would be required," Murray says about her attempts to bring consensus within a divided community.

More than 10 years later, Murray has decided that she will retire and turn over the reins in September 2004. But she leaves behind a stable district that ranks among the top five large, urban districts in the state, she says.

Ironically and unknowingly, when this Willow Glen resident accepted the position, she thought it would be a good fit, wanting to work in an urban district and be closer to her only daughter, who lives in California.

Willow Glen High School Principal Elaine Farace remembers thinking that Murray seemed like a quiet person when she joined the district, but says, "It's amazing to see what she's done and accomplished."

Murray, who previously held the position of associate superintendent in the Broward County, Fla., school system, had a background in school psychology. So she approached the situation the only way she knew how—face to face. Using her listening and people-interaction skills, her strategy was to work out the conflicts.

"I learned it isn't about telling people what needs to be done; you have to listen and work on critical issues together," she says.

One early example was the biennial task of negotiating teacher contracts. San Jose Teachers Association's president at the time, Kathy Burkhard, says that before Murray's tenure, the relationship between the teachers' union and the district was "acrimonious."

"We'd had a series of superintendents who'd jumped ship, so the tenor of the relationship was there was no relationship," Burkhard says.

Murray's resolve to mend the partnership with the teachers' association spoke volumes to an organization that had been fighting with inflexible administrators for a new contract every two years, Burkhard says.

The first year Murray served as superintendent, she helped to narrowly avoid a teachers' strike by her willingness to compromise and to make an agreement work, Burkhard says.

"It was the first indicator of her style and that she would become personally involved and commit to a solution," says Burkhard, who worked with Murray for more than eight years.

In the past, the association threatened to strike when the district ignored its claims, striking in 1980 and 1989 for a few days before the district settled the teachers' contracts, Burkhard says. Even in the years when Murray and the association could not reach an agreement, Burkhard says the union grew to trust the superintendent's "good-faith efforts" and has not struck since the 1980s, although the union came close in 1996, she says.

But rebuilding teacher-district relations was only one of the many problems Murray faced. The residents, parents, and students felt excluded from district decisions when Murray first arrived, she says. In addition, litigation between the board of education and the Latino plaintiffs over whether the district should be released from the desegregation order "was also in the mix," she says.

"They were very strained times," she adds. "I was surprised and probably not prepared to take on all those issues." Yet she was familiar with desegregation from her years as an associate superintendent in Florida. And this prior experience helped her work through the issue in San Jose.

"She was very professional in trying to understand all the sides," San Jose Unified School District Board President Jorge Gonzalez says.

The Latino plaintiffs filed the case alleging intentional segregation by the district in 1971. A federal court ruled the district was guilty of segregation in 1985, and the district adopted a voluntary integration plan in 2003.

In 1994 Murray launched an effort to engage the public in the district's decision-making and invited 150 people from all over San Jose to help the district come up with a vision and a strategic plan.

Murray says she realized early on the importance of having everyone's input. She sought accountability from the five elected board members, established a Latino Advisory Committee, met monthly with parents at a lunch, held formal community conversations every year and met personally with the plaintiffs in the desegregation case, which the district ultimately settled out of court.

Willow Glen school board trustee Carol Myers credits Murray's 11-year tenure with giving the district the much-needed stability that was necessary to move it forward.

After settling the district's most pressing needs—negotiating teachers' contracts and the voluntarily integration of schools—Murray says she was able to "focus on student achievement, which is what I wanted in the first place."

"We're very focused on raising the bar, and we want to close the achievement gap," she says. "That's it, that's what we talk about all the time."

She says that working as a superintendent, she had to remember that "you can't do everything, so in order to be an effective leader you have to focus on what your main thing is."

She says her passion to close the achievement gap for the disadvantaged was paramount.

"If we believe in them and teachers believe in them, they will achieve," Murray says. "It's that fight where my passion really lies."

And she's not shy about stepping in and working with kids. She enjoys it so much that she served as a mentor for 10 at-risk freshmen, who graduated in 2000. She met with them monthly, talking to them about grades and self-esteem and going on field trips with them for four years.

"I've never seen a superintendent work to mentor kids," says Paul Kanter, a retired teacher from Lincoln High School.

Because she believes motivating students to graduate works, the district's curriculum was retooled so its graduating high school classes meet the entrance requirements for the University of California and California State University systems.

These new course requirements have raised the number of students eligible for UC schools from 30 to 65 percent, with no increased dropout rate, Murray says.

"For an urban school district, that's a high achievement," she says.

Superintendent-elect Don Iglesias says one of Murray's legacies is that she pushed for high graduation requirements and proved the naysayers wrong.

"This means that 11 percent of Latinos could meet university requirements before, but now 30 percent have a ticket to go to CSU and UC," Iglesias says.

Iglesias was selected by the board of education two years ago from a district in Santa Cruz and has been learning the job from Murray as deputy superintendent; he will take over next fall.

Farace says Murray has set a standard for excellence that has been shown in everything from increases in API scores to better food service.

"I know the parents appreciate how she's worked with our community," Farace says. "She's very accessible. She wants to hear it all, not just the good things."

Murray recently participated in Willow Glen High School's Homecoming Parade, riding in a Hummer with the student body officers, who made a sign for the vehicle that read "Superintendent on Board."

Murray has also supported the Willow Glen Foundation, attending the wine-tasting benefit. The foundation's publicity chair Beth Martinez says that Murray and the district stepped in to provide $14,000 for choir risers last year when the district became aware that the foundation was looking for project funding but did not have enough money. This financial support enabled the foundation to spend its budget on the robotics program and for a career counselor at the high school.

And Murray has advocated for the school district in the larger community as well.

San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jim Cunneen has also worked with Murray, who has chaired the education committee on the Chamber's board of directors for five years.

She has overseen the Chamber's positions on education legislation, supported school bond measures, rallied business support and been "an effective advocate in Sacramento," he says.

Murray also helped create a joint grant program in 2001 with the Chamber and the district called Legends and Leaders, which awards grants to outstanding leaders, including a $1,000 cash grant to a student and $2,000 to a teacher and principal annually.

This year the program's annual dinner on Nov. 14 will feature Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as the guest speaker.

Murray has had the chance to meet Schwarzenegger before when he visited San Jose for the Inner-City Games and was invited to a leadership summit on education by Schwarzenegger before the recall election.

"I hope he's going to keep education at the forefront," she says. "It seems like he wants it to be as strong as it can be in the state."

Murray also took advantage of Silicon Valley high-tech industry to develop corporate partnerships with IBM, Applied Materials, Apple and Adobe.

Iglesias says the support the district has received from its corporate partners has been phenomenal, even in tough economic times.

"She's very pro-business," Director of External Programs Bill Erlendson says. "Businesses feel very comfortable partnering with our district because we have a stable superintendent and board. Some businesses actually contact us" to sponsor programs.

Erlendson says the district has been able to accomplish more things because of Murray's longevity and the effective management she has implemented.

Farace says she's proud to be in the same district and to be associated with Murray, whose philosophy and public accountability helped raise the district from mediocrity to one of the top urban districts in the state, she says.

During Murray's tenure, Farace says she got to know a woman who "is easygoing but also gets her message across."

She describes Murray's nature as "down to earth, fun to be with and very competitive when it comes to golf and tennis."

Cunneen says he has come to admire Murray after working with her on the Chamber of Commerce and appreciates her sense of humor; he calls her "a pleasant, wonderful friend."

The most difficult thing about her job has been seeing the budget slashed after the prosperous dot.com era. While she's very thankful for the $700 million in the capital budget to modernize schools through voter approval of Measures C and F, she was disappointed that voters did not pass the parcel tax. The decreased state revenues in the last two years have caused a loss of $18 million from the district's budget, and they expect $10 million in cuts this year.

"We've made such huge gains that it's very hard to see it jeopardized with the serious budget crisis in the state," Murray says.

Another challenge that remains is continuing to narrow the achievement gap between different groups of students, she says.

"Student achievement is going up, but there's still a lack of achievement between different groups of students, so we want to work on that," she says.

But for Murray, those challenges will be left in the hands of others. After next fall, Murray is looking forward to having free time and visiting her newborn granddaughter in Santa Cruz. She also hopes to teach in a joint doctoral program between San José State University and UC-Berkeley to train urban leaders.

And looking back on the last decade, she says that although she had no idea at the onset as to how the difficult the position would be, even if she had known, she would not have hesitated to take on the job.