On May 19, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education honored the recipients of the 2022 Santa Cruz County Educator of the Year Award, which is awarded to staff who exemplify educational excellence and embody the values of the school community. They are:
Teacher of the Year
Janet Stahl
San Lorenzo Valley Elementary School
Janet Stahl
She joined the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District in 2004, where she has taught grades K-2 and Recovery Reading and helped spearhead making San Lorenzo Valley Elementary School a Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports school.
Stahl started her teaching career in the winter of 1988 with Modesto City Schools. She taught what was then called Sheltered English classes for 1-3 grades, was a Success For All reading teacher and team taught a full inclusion Sheltered English and Special Day Class at a year round school. She developed a passion for teaching beginning readers and writers, creating a professional lending library and after school reading clubs for students.
Her favorite day of the year is the Santa Cruz County Reading Association Student Authors’ Fair where she has the pleasure and delight of interviewing young authors and listening to them read their work. Stahl is retiring this year.
Classified Employee of the Year
Patty Freedman
Alternative Education, Santa Cruz County Office of Education (Highlands)
Patty Freedman
Freedman is a project specialist at the Santa Cruz Office of Education’s San Lorenzo Valley Community School. She has lived in Santa Cruz County for the past 47 years with her husband and three children.
She joined the Santa Cruz COE in 2002 after working with SLVUSD as an instructional aide at Redwood Elementary School.
“I love the students, their families, our community in the San Lorenzo Valley and I am so grateful to have spent the last 20 years working in Alternative Education,” Freedman said.
Counselor of the Year
Daisy Nuñez
Socio-emotional counselor at Watsonville High School, her alma mater, and an adjunct counselor at Hartnell College
Daisy Nuñez
A first-generation Mexican-American raised by migrant farm working parents, Nuñez has worked in education for 14 years, striving to promote and contribute to a diverse environment that welcomes individuals of different social, gender, and cultural backgrounds.
She is a hopeologist and follows the philosophy that students are able to move toward healing and can achieve tremendous success when they are supported, heard and validated.
She has a bachelor’s degree in global economics from UC Santa Cruz, a master’s degree in education from San Jose State University, and a certification in thanatology (death, dying and bereavement) from the Association for Death Education and Counseling.
Administrator of the Year
Dr. Jessica Kiernan
Assistant superintendent, Soquel Union Elementary School District
Jessica Kiernan
A loving mother, partner, daughter, and friend, she began her career in education in 1999. As a classroom teacher, she quickly saw the institutional inequity her students faced. No students from her middle school had ever gone on to honors level courses in high school.
Within three years, 36 of her students were prepared for and enrolled in honors-level courses. As an assistant principal, she found the same themes existed, so she organized a core of teachers to begin an AVID program, which within only three years became AVID certified schoolwide.
In her principalship, she found a new challenge in a different socio-demographic community. High test scores were easy to achieve, but building a whole-child mindset became the new charge. With nearly 40 staff, she traveled the country year after year seeking the best and next practices.
As a director and then as an assistant superintendent of education, she continued to engage in the quiet, yet focused path of understanding and truth-finding. Bringing together collaborative forces, speaking truths, seeking experts, and forging relationships have helped Jessica and her district to grow.
She is humbled daily by the work of the great friends and colleagues with whom she works and shares this quest.
Community Partner of the Year
Heather Norquist
Manager for Youth Programs and Services at Santa Cruz Public Libraries
Heather Norquist
Norquist is recipient of this inaugural award. She works with a team of librarians to provide access to books and other library resources in a variety of formats, early literacy programming, support for academics, STEAM programs, the Summer Reading Program, and opportunities for creative expression and community involvement to the youth in our community and their parents, caregivers and teachers.
She has worked in Youth Services for 25 years, and was responsible for instituting the library’s K12 outreach, offering Lunch@theLibrary popup programming at school food distribution sites. Heather attended Live Oak Elementary and has lived here most of her life.
In her free time, Norquist enjoys singing with jazz combos and taking walks with her dog.
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A selection committee chose these honorees from 74 nominations using the California Standards and criteria such as ability to create a passion for learning, high expectations for all students commitment to the community they serve.
Honorees receive a plaque and their names will be engraved in the Educators of the Year perpetual plaque hanging in the foyer of the County Office of Education.