RANCHO CORDOVA, CA (MPG) - Speaking at the August Rancho Cordova Luncheon at City Hall, Dr. Sarah Koligian, superintendent of Folsom Cordova Unified School District, said, “Really our focus this year is on connections, relationships, and rebuilding the ability to talk with one another, to interact with one another.”

During the pandemic, students, teachers, and all the other FCUSD staff sacrificed that person-to-person interaction. “That is not the way education is intended to be,” Koligian said. “It is not how we experienced all the wonderful things that we remember from our educational career.” 

Koligian spoke extensively about what the FCUSD team is doing to support students and bring them forward across the finish line so they can all successfully graduate and have their next step in life in front of them. “There were so many important people in my life in my educational career, from kindergarten all through college, all through my doctoral program,” Koligian said. “It’s a chance to give back in a profession that we’ve got the most important job in the world, which is working with our most precious resource of our children, our grandchildren, our community’s children and helping them to be successful. Really, that is my North Star and what drives me in every day, but I also thank the team around me for their support.

Katie DeKorte, teen and adult services librarian at the Sacramento Public Library, Rancho Cordova, was at the luncheon, and said that the library just recently got approval to return to in-person outreach at the schools. “This is a good way at the start of this new school year,” DeKorte said, “to dive deep into it and be able to go in and foster those relationships that we had, prior to COVID, with all the teachers.”

There are 36 schools in the District and over 2,400 employees.

“We opened up a new school this last year,” Koligian said. “Mangini Ranch Elementary is the first school to be built south of 50.” The District serves 21,000 students. The majority of students are white or Caucasian, next highest group are Hispanic, followed by the Asian category. About 13% of students are classified in Special Education, about 2,000 English language learners, and over 90 languages are spoken by the students in FCUSD schools. Together homeless and foster children number around 600 students. “We have refugee students as the waves of the economic/political climate change,” Koligian said. Currently there are just under 800 immigrants that were counted over the course of three years.

As a child and youth, Koligian attended school in the Central Valley. “You think it’s hot here, it’s really much hotter in the Fresno area,” Koligian said. “I went to Sanger Unified Schools.” Her husband Wayne is a retired teacher, football coach, athletic director. “I couldn’t do what I do in my roles without his support in all these 36 years I’ve been in education.” The two have five grandchildren and one more on the way. Shelly Blanchard pointed out in her introduction that Koligian was named California’s Superintendent of the Year for 2021, and is also one of the Sacramento 300, Sacramento Magazine’s listing of the most powerful leaders in the region.

Cordova High School principal Jerad Hyden said that the return to school this year is “a completely different feel and different atmosphere” than coming back last year after 18 months at home due to COVID. “The kids are more engaged, they’re more excited, they’re talking to me about all the club events, all the rallies, all the sporting events,” Hyden said. “I think we’re starting to see that light at the end of the tunnel, we’re getting back to what school was, because connection is the most important thing . . . We have almost 2,000 students on our campus and for the most part they’re all really excited and happy to be there, so it’s been great.”