_{Thumbnail photo courtesy of Michael Hawkins}

Nearly two months after the early childhood education director retired, Del Norte Unified School District officials are considering turning the job into a position that requires a teaching credential.

Superintendent Jeff Harris presented the idea — and a job description for a certificated ECE director — to the Board of Trustees on Feb. 12. The district has been hiring for an ECE director as a classified position since October and has had no applicants, he said.

Harris referred to the proposed certificated ECE director position as another option for the Board of Trustees to consider as it looks to fill the two-month-long vacancy. DNUSD Assistant Superintendent of Education Services Tom Kissinger is currently the acting ECE director.

Both administrators also floated the idea of the ECE director overseeing DNUSD’s transitional kindergarten program. 

“The minute you move to that next piece that requires a credential, you can no longer use the current job description, you would have to use the certificated job description,” Harris told trustees.

Long-time employee Melissa Ferguson, an ECE specialist at Mary Peacock Elementary School, however, said she felt turning the classified director position into a certificated position was an insult.

“It’s insulting that instead of being willing to pay a classified person a little bit more, you’re willing to pay a certificated person a lot more to do the same job,” she told trustees. “And you’re trying to add more to a workload that shouldn’t have any more added to it.”

Though the Board didn’t get into the nuts and bolts of the ECE director’s salary, which currently is set by the DNUSD Personnel Commission, Ferguson said she’s not surprised that the current classified position isn’t attracting any applicants. 

Both she and her colleague Crystal Fry, an administrative assistant in the ECE department, told trustees that they should ask the district’s Human Resources department to make more of an effort at recruiting for the position before turning it into a certificated role.

Fry suggested partnering with colleges, First 5 Del Norte and local workforce agencies to offer incentives to hiring for ECE positions. She pointed out on Feb. 12 that the classified ECE director position had been removed from the district’s website.

Following their comments, four trustees approved the proposed certificated ECE director job description. Board Clerk Michael Greer, who presided over the meeting, also directed staff to re-post the classified position.

Harris said the position should be advertised unless and until the Board of Trustees approves a certificated ECE director position. He noted that any time a position moves from classified to certificated there’s an increase in its cost to the district.

Under the certificated job description trustees approved on Feb. 12, the ECE director’s pay would be dictated by DNUSD’s certificated management salary schedule.

DNUSD Board President Charlaine Mazzei was absent.

Currently, the ECE director oversees four state preschool programs, which operates seven classes, and a district preschool program that includes two classes, Ferguson told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday.

There’s also the Early Head Start program at Sunset High School, Ferguson said. The ECE director is also the coordinator for the Local Planning Council, which plans for childcare and child development services in the community.

The position requires a Bachelor’s degree and a child development program director’s permit through the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Ferguson said. Obtaining the permit requires 24 semester units of ECE coursework, six units of childcare administration coursework and two units of childcare supervision coursework, she said.

Though the terms permit and credential are often used interchangeably in early childhood education, Ferguson noted that the child development program permit is not a teaching credential.

In addition to the potential pay disparity between the classified and certificated positions, Ferguson said she worried that if the ECE director becomes a credentialed role, academics will take precedence over a preK student’s social and emotional development.

During her 35-year career, Ferguson said she worked under multiple principals, some who had ECE experience and were great and others who often gave preschool teachers curricula that were not developmentally appropriate for their students.

Ferguson told Redwood Voice that she sees this issue in the district’s transitional kindergarten program as well.

“What I’ve seen with the TK program is we have taken certificated teachers and said, ‘Get some (ECE) units and you will be qualified to teach what is a preschooler,” she said. “There are a few teachers that understand this, but a lot of them focus on academics instead of the social emotional growth of the kids. That social emotional piece gets missed and I’m afraid that’s what’s going to happen if we make it a certificated director position again.”

California’s transitional kindergarten program has been in place since 2012 and was originally offered to youngsters whose 5th birthday occurred between Sept. 2 and Dec. 2. However, as of the 2025-26 school year, all children who turn 4 by Sept. 1 are eligible for transitional kindergarten.

Ferguson and Fry weren’t the only ones who raised concerns at the possibility of making the classified ECE director position a certificated job. Amber Tiedeken-Cron, president of the Del Norte Teachers Association, said during the “bad budget years” of 2008-09, one of the things the district did was have a principal oversee its preschools.

“That was a train wreck ‘cause your focus is your site,” Tiedeken-Cron said. “Maybe the preschool at your site is alright, but if we had something blow up at Joe Hamilton, it ended up being our admin that had to deal with it. Our preschool staff at Joe Hamilton didn’t get a lot of support because they didn’t have a person that was dedicated to that position.”

A big fear, Tiedeken-Cron said, is that if the ECE director position is a certificated position, it would end up becoming a secondary job for a principal at a specific school site. 

“I want to make sure that if the job description changes, it’s still dedicated to preschool and doesn’t become the second hat of a site administrator to save budget because you can pay half their salary out of this,” she said.

Harris agreed with Tiedeken-Cron and noted that when he first became superintendent in 2015, the ECE director was part-time. Both the position and the department have grown since then, he said.

“A few years ago we were talking about (whether) we need all the programs… because we weren’t able to fill the p.m. classes,” Harris said. “Now all our preschools are filled except for maybe one or two kids.”

In addition to addressing pay, Ferguson discussed the workload of the ECE director as it currently stands.  To oversee all state preschool classrooms, the district preschool classrooms, Early Head Start and coordinate the Local Planning Council is to work 12 to 15-hour days to get it done, she said.

“There is just no way that one person is going to be able to do it all,” Ferguson told trustees. “Lindy worked really hard and she did a great job. She was amazing. We miss her, but she couldn’t do it all either.”