Ready and willing

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has many construction and

renovation challenges in store for it in the coming years and, in

June, it hired someone with experience as its new assistant supt. of

business services.

Paul H. Reed, a Catalina native, spent 26 years with the Irvine

Unified School District overseeing a building program larger than

Newport-Mesa’s plan to renovate 28 of its campuses through the

Measure A facilities improvement program. So Reed’s more than up to

the challenge.

On Thursday, City Editor James Meier sat down with Reed at his

district office in Costa Mesa to discuss the new job, his past and

his future.

What convinced you to take this with Newport-Mesa?

[Supt.] Rob Barbot is very persuasive.

You’ve had the job now for about three months. What are your

thoughts so far?

There are a number of challenges that Newport-Mesa faces with

Measure A that I have a pretty good background in dealing with -- the

facilities, construction issues and so on. So that makes it kind of

fun. I think the district, from what I’ve seen thus far, overall is

in incredibly good shape, with the exception of the facilities

challenge. I’m fortunate in that I’m walking in and inheriting a

great deal of work that was done before I got here to pass Measure A

and bring the community together to understand that it takes money to

take care of all of those facilities and dedicate the effort to do

that. So that’s the biggest issue floating out there, certainly.

Did you know all of this coming in, as well?

I knew about 95% of it coming in. There have been one or two

surprises that I won’t go into. But I knew most of it, yeah.

You were also with Orange Unified for a brief period. Are there

many similarities between the two districts?

Not really. Orange has a huge facilities challenge as well, but

Orange doesn’t have the resources to deal with it at this point in

time, so that makes it very difficult for them. The only other

similarity I can note is they both have seven-member boards.

You were with Irvine Unified for 26 years. Do you miss that

longevity or was it time to move on?

It was time to move on. I got to participate in the building of

Irvine Unified from the ground floor and that was an exciting thing

to do. But when you spend your whole life doing one thing, there is a

point at which new challenges are a good thing, so I’m very happy to

be here.

Is there anything you miss about it at this point?

I miss some of the people, certainly. One of the difficult things

coming into a new district is you don’t have the history.

You don’t know how they did a certain things five years ago or 10

years ago, and that was an easy reference for me in Irvine that I

don’t have here. But I’ll get there. I’m a trained historian. I’ll

work on it.

What would you say has been the highlight of your career so far?

The P.C. answer is coming to Newport-Mesa, of course. In anyone’s

experience, there are good things and not so good things. And I’ve

had my share of both.

There’s nothing that stands out as a highlight. I was fortunate to

come to Orange County when I came to Orange County in the ‘60s. I was

in the charter class of UCI. I’ve seen a lot of changes both in

Irvine and Costa Mesa.

Actually, my first teaching job was in Costa Mesa. I started out

as a special ed teacher. I worked for six years at the Mardan School

of Educational Therapy, which used to be on West 19th Street, but is

now, ironically, in Irvine. When I worked there, I lived on Balboa

Island, I was in graduate school and I could ride my bicycle to work.

It was a great thing to do. Traffic, even then, was a little scary.

What would you consider the roughest moments of your career?

Well, the Orange County bankruptcy was by far the least fun of

anything I’ve ever had to live through. It was a scary time for

anybody involved in public agencies.

What do you look forward to here?

I look forward to being able to do great things with Measure A. I

look forward to hopefully being able to keep the district on the

right path for its financial front. I look forward to many nice

relationships with lots of nice people, and I’m looking forward to

the community. This is a nice place to be.

You grew up in Avalon, Catalina. What was that like?

It was small town America for nine months out of the year. For

three months out of the year, it was a standard tourist economy and

everybody went to work, so I went to work when I was 12 because that

was what you did. Because if the big boat didn’t run in the summer,

things got a little tight in the winter.

They have a much more evenly balanced year-round economy now than

they did when I was a kid. So it’s quite the same now, but at the

time, if the steamer didn’t run, winter was real tough.

What did you do at age 12?

I was a clerk in a photo studio, selling film and postcards. The

photographer who owned the place was the town photographer. He was

also kind of a rock hound. He polished rocks, so we sold polished

rock jewelry and stuff like that.

Any final thoughts?

People have been very nice to me. I’ve felt very welcome from both

the staff and the board and the community I’ve met, and I’m looking

forward to the school year.