Iglesias must immediately deal with this year's $9 million budget deficit, the state's educational cutbacks and the probability of near-future school closures due to declining student enrollment.

He must also work with concerned Willow Glen parent leaders on the issue of enrollment losses in their neighborhood schools, because families are choosing to send their children to the district's magnet schools outside the Willow Glen neighborhood.

Yet as far as Iglesias is concerned, he thinks he has a great job.

"I'm here to stay," the 55-year-old Iglesias says. "I'm infatuated with San Jose Unified. I think it's a great school district, a great place to be. It will be a great adventure and great challenge. I'm up for it."

Iglesias has had considerable practice navigating through rough waters. At the age of 14, this San Francisco native fell in love with surfing and learned to ride the waves in the dangerous waters off Ocean Beach. Decades later, Iglesias attributes his confidence and fearless attitude about life and decision-making to his surfing experiences. He still rides the waves near his Santa Cruz home.

"I've learned a lot of things as far as risk taking," Iglesias says. "I've learned to challenge myself, to face fear and to know that you're going to survive at whatever it is. I think that's helped in my professional life, because I'm willing to take risks that are in the best interest to kids or to advocate for issues that may not be popular but are necessary. I think if you are in a leadership position like this superintendency, you have to be willing to take risks. Surfing has taught me that. I've been held under, almost drowned a few times. I've got scars."

Early Years

Yet during his early college years, Iglesias was a Berkeley biology major and had planned to become a dentist until he began volunteering as a tutor in Berkeley schools during his senior year.

"I made a connection with kids and just realized that I like kids," Iglesias says. "I like their energy; I like to help them process and sort issues. Once I tutored, I was hooked."

After graduating from Berkeley with a history major, he spent two years during the early 1970s in Santa Paula, Calif., as part of the Teacher Corps Rural Migrant Program. It brought new teachers into rural areas of greatest need, focusing especially on second-language students.

"Santa Paula was a hard place to be, because when you're 22 or 23, there is absolutely nothing to do," Iglesias says. "They roll the sidewalks up at 5 o'clock and everybody disappears. But it was great training."

His first job afterwards was in San Jose's Berryessa School District, where he remained for seven years, holding positions as a teacher, counselor and assistant principal.

Then he relocated to Santa Cruz and spent 24 years working in its school district, eventually becoming its assistant superintendent. The location was also ideal, providing Iglesias with a one-mile commute, where he was content with his work, family and the nearby surf.

Then, in 2001, he became president of the Association of California School Administrators—a job that required frequent travel throughout the state to lobby for more than 16,000 school administrators—and that changed his educational direction once more. During that year, Iglesias realized how much he missed urban areas.

"I decided it was time to do a little give-back," Iglesias says. "I didn't have anything to prove, since I've been successful in the educational area. I could have stayed in Santa Cruz where there was the potential to be superintendent. But I wanted to come back to urban education for whatever amount of time I have between now and retirement."

It was the San Jose Unified School District that impressed him the most.

"They had the guts to take on the 'A-G' requirements," Iglesias says. "No other school district in California does that."

A-G is a college prep curriculum sequence of courses all San Jose Unified School District high school students must take. If they pass each course with a grade of "C" or better, they can enter the UC and CSU systems.

"Every one of our high schools for every subgroup of kids has made tremendous growth, particularly the Latino kids," Iglesias says. "They went from about 23 percent to 38 percent of the kids who are graduating and who complete A-G. Overall, for all kids, it went from about 38 percent to 65 percent, the highest in the state."

District priorities

Even with improving academic statistics, district enrollments continue to decline. Factors include lower birth rates and families moving out of the expensive Bay Area. Iglesias says private-school enrollment is staying about the same, but the district is projecting a loss of about 500 elementary school children and 300 middle school children during the next two years; high school projections, for now, remain constant. The district currently serves about 31,000 students in grades kindergarten through 12.

"We need to send a message in the community about the challenges we face, including possibly having to make drastic cuts in expenditures within the next couple years," Iglesias says. "We cut $11 million the last year or so. We've cut the things, and we're down to people."

Cutting people translates into school closings, and it appears that in addition to three district schools—Hester, Hammer-Montessori and Erikson—that closed earlier this year, additional schools will meet the same fate beginning in the 2005­06 school year.

Karen Fuqua, district spokeswoman, says Iglesias and his team will concentrate this fall on meeting the public and business leaders to get the pulse of the community on the district's budget crisis. She says the district will aggressively continue to seek donations and grants from local foundations.

Fuqua, who worked with retiring San Jose Unified School District Superintendent Linda Murray for 11 years, has noticed that Iglesias does a lot of information processing prior to making decisions.

"He listens very well and takes everything in," Fuqua says. "He doesn't necessarily give you an immediate answer, but he will think about what you say, and he wants to listen to a lot of people. That is critical to being a leader."

Jerry Matranga, the district's associate superintendent, says Iglesias' collaborative skills are already well respected by the board.

"We are going to see a seamless transition," Matranga says. "I am impressed with Don's enthusiasm and his realism. He has a good sense of what can work and what should wait."

As was the case with his predecessor, Iglesias is focusing on narrowing the academic-achievement gap between low-income and middle-class children.

Even with the looming budget crisis, Iglesias wants to protect what he calls the "vital few priorities": student performance, highly trained teachers, the district's financial stability, and community involvement. He also wants to push hard for a universal preschool program to give all children a solid start in academic success.

"We have to be fiscally sound, so that means we're going to have to make some tough calls, but that's OK," Iglesias says. "I'm prepared to work with staff, make recommendations and listen to the community. Ultimately, the board decides where we go with that. I want the community involved to the point of satisfaction that they have a legitimate voice, that they trust us, that they feel they want us to operate at the highest level of integrity and honesty. And, even if it takes longer to make the kind of decisions we have to make, we take the time."

Open Choice

Prior to becoming the district's superintendent-elect in 2003, Iglesias worked as the district's deputy superintendent through the 2002 school year, during which he became involved in the district's discrimination lawsuit.

In 1984 the district was found guilty of intentional discrimination against Latinos, and a court-supervised desegregation plan was put into place creating magnet schools with specialized programs and open-choice enrollment based on racial criteria.

This month, the district will begin its second year of a new court-approved integration plan based on socioeconomic criteria, not race, since it is now illegal under California's Proposition 209 to use racial information. The district is also no longer under the watchful eye of the court system because it demonstrated to the courts that it has been able to correct the problem.

All students within the district can apply to the magnet schools, but the district gives first preference to students in economically disadvantaged families. Next on the list are children who live in a magnet school's neighborhood, followed by siblings of students at the school and, lastly, all other students.

At the high school level, Iglesias says, about 90 percent of students wind up in one of their top three schools of choice. All parents can now send their elementary age children to their neighborhood schools, which the majority does, or they can apply to a magnet school.

Iglesias says, "About 82 percent of the parents that we survey tell us they love the choice program. The concept, to me, is a healthy concept."

Not everyone agrees. Carol Myers, a San Jose Unified School District governing board trustee, says that 50 percent of students living in Willow Glen do not attend its public schools. The district's magnet middle schools and high schools draw many kids from Willow Glen under the "all other" admissions criteria, since Willow Glen Middle and Willow Glen High schools do not have magnet programs.

Many Latino students choose to travel from their downtown San Jose neighborhoods to the Willow Glen middle school and high school, but Judy O'Shaughnessy, Willow Glen Middle School outgoing PTA president, says the two schools do not receive enough funding to accommodate all the special learning needs of those students. Test scores at the Willow Glen middle and high schools have declined in recent years, adding to the perception held by some neighborhood parents that schools are better elsewhere.

"Every school gets a significant amount of desegregation money," Iglesias says. "Magnets get more, but they have a mission to integrate, to provide voluntary choice. My commitment is to both the neighborhood and the magnets. We need to make peace on it and make sure both are quality and people are clear they have choice. Neighborhood schools offer convenience and proximity."

Iglesias says he is committed to improving the test scores at the Willow Glen schools. A workshop on strategic planning will be held this coming school year for parent leaders at Willow Glen High School, and Iglesias says the district might create a magnet program at the high school if it can identify a theme.

In Balance

"I'm trying to keep a balance between work and play, to have healthy habits," Iglesias says. "I think we need to model that for kids and for the people who work with us. If you have a balance and are at peace with what you do, you're a better person as far as decisions that you make."

Iglesias and his wife, Cathy, who also surfs occasionally, now live in San Jose part of the time. Their daughter, Ilysa, whose name Iglesias created from the initials for "I Love You," attends UC-Berkeley. She began surfing at the age of 2 and is now an avid surfer, much to the delight of her father.

"I absolutely love the sport," Iglesias says. "The connection with the ocean—it's still raw, natural, unpredictable. It's a sanctuary for me. It's tranquility and a good stress releaser."

Iglesias also "ocean paddles" on a 14-foot paddleboard, which is used to condition surfers. He can race the six miles between West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz and Capitola in about 50 minutes, and in early July came in second in a paddle race for individuals over 40 in Oahu, Hawaii.

Iglesias' frequent 12-hour workdays interfere with surfing time, so sometimes he leaves home at 5 a.m. to catch a few waves off a Santa Cruz beach.

"I need it," he says. "The adrenaline is good. It's the adrenaline of taking a risk because the waves are unpredictable," Iglesias says. "It's great training for this job—it's the best."