Fresno Unified’s interim superintendent, Misty Her
Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
Since assuming the role of interim superintendent of California’s third-largest school district, Misty Her has been doing two things that she hopes will shape her tenure: listening and learning.
Despite being in the school district for over three decades, she’s conducting what she calls “listening” sessions with those in the Fresno Unified school community. In the two months since taking over, she’s held 16 sessions with students, district leaders, principals, retired teachers, graduates, parents, city officials and other community members, with more scheduled for next week and in the new school year.
Interim superintendency
On May 3, the school board appointed Misty Her, previously the district’s deputy superintendent, to lead the district on an interim basis during a national search to fill the permanent position. She started the interim superintendency on May 8 with outgoing superintendent Bob Nelson moving into an advisory role until his last day.
“People have been asking me ‘Why are you doing that?’” she said. “They were like, ‘You’ve been in the district for 30 years. Why would you still need to go listen and learn? Shouldn’t you already know a lot about the district?’”
Up until May, Her’s entire career in Fresno Unified, not including her time as a student, encompassed roles as a bilingual instructional aide, teacher, vice principal, principal, districtwide instructional superintendent and, in 2021, deputy superintendent, when she became the nation’s highest-ranking Hmong leader in K-12 education.
“My role, now, is different,” she said, “so I’m really intentionally listening and learning.”
She’ll continue the sessions throughout her tenure and expects to make changes as progress is made, she told EdSource in a sit-down interview.
What she believes, even now, is that knowing and identifying each student “by name” and “by need,” much like she did as a classroom teacher, will define her time in the role.
“Sometimes when you step away from the classroom, people don’t see you as a teacher anymore … because they start to see the title,” Her said as she talked about her journey, her interim superintendency, the “teacher within” and her focus on students – first and foremost.
“At the heart of who I am, before anything else, I’m always going to be a teacher.“
First woman to lead district
When the Fresno Unified school board named Her as the interim superintendent, she became the first woman to lead the district since its 1873 inception.
“I’ve walked this hallway a thousand times,” she said about seeing her picture on the wall of the district office. “It took 151 years in this district, as diverse as this district (is), before a woman’s face got on that wall.”
Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource 
Lasherica Thornton/EdSourceA Hmong leader
According to Her and the Hmong American Center in Wisconsin, Hmong people, an indigenous group originally from parts of China and other Asian countries, have continually migrated, first to Laos, Thailand and Vietnam with many eventually coming to the United States, settling in states such as California and Minnesota, so “we don’t have a country.”
Based on 2019 data from the Pew Research Center, Fresno has the country’s second-largest Hmong population, after Minneapolis-St.Paul in Minnesota.
“The reason why Hmong people came here to the U.S. was because of the Vietnam War,” she said.
The CIA recruited Hmong soldiers for the “secret war” in Laos to prevent communism from spreading further into Southeast Asia. Congressional investigation and other events eventually brought the war to light.
“It was secret because no one knew that we existed, and no one knew that we were used to help the Americans fight,” Her said. “When the war ended, all the Hmong people were just left to die because (following their victory), the communists started coming after anybody who was helping the U.S. That’s actually how my family ended up here.”
Her face on that wall – and as the face of the district – embodies the fact that she is the first woman at the helm of the district as well as its first Hmong leader.
Born in a prisoner-of-war camp in Laos, Her’s family escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand after the end of the Vietnam War before coming to the United States and moving to Fresno when she was a young child, according to a district statement announcing her appointment. That firsthand experience and her understanding of the challenges faced by students from diverse backgrounds have shaped her into a passionate and effective leader, the district’s statement said.
Of the more than 92% of Fresno Unified students who are from ethnic minority groups, around 6,500 are Hmong. Behind Spanish, the Hmong language, which was only developed in written form less than 75 years ago, is the second most common home language of Fresno Unified’s English learners with over 10% speaking Hmong.
“Having someone that knows our kids, looks like our kids — that representation matters,” Her said.
Still, she wants to be in classrooms, constantly gaining a better understanding of the district’s students.
Classroom-centered, kids-first approach
With a mindset that keeps classrooms and kids first, Her started the listening and learning tour by seeking out student perspectives from elementary, middle and high school students.
“Our students … can teach us a lot about our system,” she said, “the things that we’re designing for them — what’s working, what’s not working.”
And she has gained insight from those conversations.
Among the students’ comments and questions that have stuck with Her: “We want to be engaged in classrooms” and third graders asking, “What are you and our teachers preparing us for?”
“I started with kids first because I wanted to put their voice in the middle of designing my 100-day plan,” she said.
Her drafted the plan for the district in May and June, following the initial listening sessions.
The crux of the plan: Focus on student results.
Goals and plans for interim superintendency
“Student outcomes is priority,” she said.
Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, most Fresno Unified students failed to meet the state’s standards in 2023: 66.8% failed to meet English language arts standards, and 76.7% failed to meet math standards.
For third grade — the school year believed to be pivotal in determining reading proficiency and predicting future success — just 29% of third-graders are at grade level, a GO Public Schools 2023 student outcome report for Fresno Unified showed.
Her plans to implement, measure the effectiveness and monitor the progress of the district’s recently launched literacy initiative to achieve first-grade reading proficiency for students, two years before third-grade, when future success is predicted.
The Every Child Is a Reader initiative includes literacy plans to address students’ unique needs. The plans, designed for each of the seven high school regions, embrace high-quality instruction, interventions and parent and community partnerships, according to the initiative description.
“Every Child Is A Reader is a groundbreaking initiative that will lead our district to better instruction of reading for our youngest learners and ensure far better academic outcomes for our students,” she said.
Based on the 2023 GO Public Schools report, only 20% of seventh graders are at grade level in math, an indicator that most students are not prepared for algebra.
Her said the kids she has talked to reaffirmed the need to focus on those student outcomes, but also challenged her to reshape how student comprehension and application are taught.
“I was talking to (a) group of students and they said, ‘Don’t just teach us how to read and write and do math, but teach us how to apply that,’” she said.
An eighth grader told her his test scores indicate that he’s on a sixth-grade proficiency level.
“He said, ‘I’m so much smarter than that. I can do this, this, and this, but it’s just that, in my home, I never got books. I don’t have a tutor that comes in to help me. I rarely see my mom … because she works two jobs. My test shows that I should only be in sixth grade, but there are things that I can do. Can you guys use what I know to help me get me there?’” Her said.
“It really shifted what I thought would be goals for us to what are goals that can resonate with our students.”
Improving student outcomes
Her said she wouldn’t be leading Fresno Unified, based on what her test scores showed, if not for the support of teachers and mentors.
“If I was just measured by my proficiency level when I was a kid, then I probably wouldn’t even be here,” she said. “A lot of people poured into me because I had counselors who said, ‘You can go to college.’ Coming from a home where no one knew how to fill out a college application, my counselor filled out the application for me.
“But why do we reach some students and not others? That’s my question. (My brother) and I had some of the very same teachers, but there was an investment in me and not in him.”
That lingering question guides her.
To improve student outcomes across the entire district, she said, “We have to get everybody across the finish line” of proficiency.
“The goal is to get them there in whichever way works for them,” she said. “That’s really going deep to understand every single child by name, by need.”
As part of Her’s 100-day plan, Fresno Unified gathered state, district, school and student data to identify and prioritize ways to enhance learning for each child while also focusing on historically underserved student groups, such as English learners and students with disabilities, who have significant achievement gaps compared with other groups.
This upcoming school year, educators will be able to adapt teaching and leadership strategies based on real-time data via a district dashboard, according to Her’s plans.
“And, then, how do we provide the appropriate scaffolds and interventions so that we do get them there,” Her said, “but that we never take away their grade-level rigor that is needed for them to excel.”
Identifying student needs: ‘It’s ‘personal’
Her knows all too well the importance of providing such intervention while still offering challenging, grade-level content.
“This is very personal for me,” she said. “I remember when I was in first grade … I was put in a remedial class, pulled out for like three hours a day, missing core instruction,” she recalled. “There was no way I was ever going to get caught up.”
At the time, the young Her was learning English as a second language as she primarily spoke Hmong.
“And so if we keep doing that with our students, we’re actually doing them a disservice,” she said.
Challenges in leading Fresno Unified
There is no “silver bullet… to fix this,” Her said, so “I think people have to be open to new ideas that may be unconventional.”
This week, she and the district leadership team were at Harvard University for the Public Education Leadership Project meant to foster greater educational outcomes.
While employing new ideas and methods may be key to reaching her goals, there will be times when she must say “no.”
Fresno’s teachers union leadership has criticized the district for initiating programs just for the sake of expanding, rather than implementing the programs well.
“We are a district that says we want to do a lot of things,” Her said. “I am going to say no.”
But not without noting ideas that can work — at some point.
“Everybody knows I have a for-later folder, and it’s pretty thick right now,” she said, laughing. “So, as people bring really great, wonderful ideas, I just have to say, ‘Let me put it in my for-later folder.’”
Quality over quantity: Top priorities first
To Her, the district has had so many objectives that it impacts the quality of the goals. She spent weeks narrowing down those goals to what will be the most important for the entire district: improving student outcomes and achieving operational excellence.
“When a kid enters our system, we have to be able to say to our parents, ‘These are the … goals we’re working on. These are the guarantees that we can give you.’”
Student outcomes
- Identify and focus on the needs of each child
- Implement and measure the district’s first-grade literacy initiative
- Empower educator autonomy, but with accountability measures
- Adapt teaching and leadership strategies based on real-time data
- Visit schools to observe the goals in action
Operational excellence
Her characterized operational excellence as each part of the Fresno Unified school system working together instead of in isolation.
“I think that sometimes we’ve created this very complicated system for our parents to figure out, and we need to simplify … for people to understand,” she said. “I took a call from a parent. By the time the parent got to me, the parent had gone through four different calls” because her English wasn’t strong, and people didn’t know what to do with her.
“I finally got on the phone; she’s like, ‘I just need my child’s homework, but I need it modified.’ And it was as simple as that.”
Holding interim position impacts chances for permanent role
The interim superintendency is an opportunity for Her, board members, students, staff and the community to see if she’s the best person to lead the district.
“It could go either way,” she admitted. “If I can’t get results, then, I shouldn’t be the superintendent.
“I just want it to be a win for our students.”
A change in perspective because of the search
So far, the search process has been engulfed in community angst over an alleged lack of transparency and accusations that the process had been tainted by politics, EdSource reported.
The school board in April said it would broaden its search — a shift from its initial decision to interview district employees first. Community outrage spurred the changes.
The district employees at the center of the search, including Her, faced racial harassment and threats.
“Having gone through the challenges of the search, it really has strengthened me. It’s given me resilience that I didn’t think I had,” she said. “I describe it as (being) in a tornado, and you don’t quite know what you’re going to get hit with. Then, you start to get centered.”
That centering moment was in April when the search stalled.
“I just got up and said, ‘Cancel everything on my calendar for this week. I want to be at schools,’” she said. “I spent every moment with kids. I read. I did recess duty. I did lunch duty. (I told teachers), ‘I’ll teach your class for a little bit.’ I had to go find myself again. I went back to being a teacher and that got me centered (and) saved me in every way.
“I started to … dig deep to really understand why I want this job.”
‘More than a test score’
“I want to be superintendent because … I’m tired of people defining them by a test score at the end of the year,” Her said. “I want to find a holistic way in which we can still get our students there, but that our students feel valued and they feel important and they feel like they’re a part of something greater than just that proficiency level that is given to them.”
