Santa Barbara Unified Superintendent Hilda Maldonado Resigning at End of School Year

The Superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, Hilda Maldonado, announced on Wednesday that she is resigning at the end of the school year.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the students, families, and staff of Santa Barbara Unified,” Maldonado said in a statement. 

The announcement noted Maldonado led the district through a complex time. Her six-year tenure was wrought with controversy. She was hired in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and soon after, more than 30 of the district’s top administrators resigned or took early retirement, including members of her cabinet. 

The year after, in 2021, district teachers and staff expressed their explicit disapproval of Maldonado’s leadership in a survey — and again, in 2022, they noted strong disagreement with Maldonado’s leadership qualities. In early conversations with the Independent, in which many employees refused to be quoted publicly for fear of retaliation, staff and former administrators described a sometimes hostile workplace under Maldonado, compounded by stressors brought on by the pandemic. After this discontent became public, the district hired a consultant for $13,000 to coach Maldonado in leadership. 

When labor negotiations with the district’s teachers began in 2023, and then dragged on for a year, staff and students sharply criticized Maldonado in board meetings and public rallies. Students even walked out of class to protest against their superintendent and in support of their teachers, viewing the stalemate between negotiators as the fault of the district. Teachers were ready to strike, but it was averted at the last minute in 2024 when the school board approved a new contract, one that included big gains in salary and benefits but still fell short of what many teachers were demanding. 

Teachers’ frustration has not abated. 

At a recent board meeting, York Shingle, current president of the Santa Barbara Teachers Association, took the opportunity to blame Maldonado’s leadership for ongoing anti-Black incidents in the district. Community members and activists filled the board room last Tuesday to sound off on the most recent incident: a group of San Marcos students posting a TikTok in which they artificially darkened their skin to mimic an AI picture of four Black children. Black community members described this as the racist practice of “blackface.”

“Unfortunately, nothing is going to change under Hilda,” Shingle said. “We know her.”

He described what he expected to be Maldonado’s response: inviting student leaders to a meeting and talking to them but ultimately taking no action.

“The classic Hilda move of isolate, placate, and manipulate, without any actual changes,” he continued. “This is going to be the case until we get a new leader, who is actually strong enough to make changes in this district.”

Questions swirled around whether the school board would renew Maldonado’s contract for the next year after the scheduled time for the board to consider it came and went this June without action. Then, at a forum for the two school board seats up for re-election hosted by the Santa Barbara Reading Coalition last month, not one of the candidates raised their hand when asked if they would vote to renew Maldonado’s contract. Some community members have claimed Maldonado could have done more to raise student proficiency rates in English language arts and math, which have increased slightly during her tenure but still remain at 53 and 44 percent, respectively. 

Maldonado’s last day will be June 30, 2027. 

She came to the district after three decades at Los Angeles Unified, boasting a résumé as a bilingual teacher who rose to assistant superintendent of partnerships and leadership development. 

Maldonado was the second woman and the first Latina immigrant to lead the district, the district said in its email announcement of her resignation on Wednesday. 

She received praise from County Supervisor Laura Capps and current board president Bill Banning for doing the “challenging” thing of leading a public school district.

The district’s announcement included some of the initiatives that Maldonado oversaw during her time: reopening schools after the pandemic; implementing a new literacy curriculum; expanding transitional kindergarten across the district; championing a mental health campaign to expand mental health programs and create new student wellness centers; adopting new ethnic studies curriculum and implementing a 2023 racial climate survey; establishing a student boardmember position on the school board; exploring opportunities for workforce housing; and implementing stronger regulations on technology in the classroom, including the district’s “off and away” policy for students’ personal devices. 

The Board of Education will acknowledge Dr. Maldonado’s retirement at its next regular meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, October 27, the district said. 

It said Maldonado will “work to support an effective leadership transition as the District’s next leader is identified.”

“After 36 years in public education, the time is right for me to turn my focus to preparing the next generation of leaders,” Maldonado said. “I look forward to finishing the year strong, and to giving my family and friends the same devotion and care I have given to public education.”

The district said the Board of Education will outline the process and next steps to select a new superintendent at an upcoming meeting. “Community collaboration will be vital in this process,” it said.