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Las Lomitas Elementary School District’s new superintendent, Erik Burmeister, will be leading the school district into the 2025-26 school year. He joins the district after a controversial year that led to its former Superintendent Beth Polito to go on leave.
After a difficult school year, Burmeister is committed to reviving the district through increased transparency, responsibility budgeting and engaging with the public.
Burmeister previously served as superintendent of Menlo Park City School District but after 10 years at MPCSD and a pandemic, Burmeister said he was looking for a new challenge. He returns to superintendency after starting his own education consulting company Solutionary Advisory and serving as the interim superintendent of Fremont Unified School District.
When the opportunity opened at Las Lomitas, Burmeister felt that it would be a perfect fit for him — as someone who is familiar with the community and an experienced superintendent.
“I feel like I’m back at home,” he said.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
The Almanac: How did you feel taking on the role of superintendent after the controversial year that this district had?
Erik Burmeister: I came in at the tail end of it, which was good because, I think it helped the district to have a leader that had contextual knowledge, but wasn’t a part of the conflict or a part of the immediate solution. I was able to come in with the objectivity that I think the moment required, and yet I wasn’t so objective that I didn’t know the players, the context or the community.
It was the right job at the right time and moment, and I just happened to be the right person. I feel like the universe came together to make this the right moment for me and the right moment for the district, and I’m thoroughly enjoying using my contextual knowledge and my experience to bring stability, excitement and enthusiasm for the future. Because at the end of the day, no community wants their schools to be in turmoil, and no community wants to have a budget crisis.
The Almanac: What plans do you have to regain the community’s trust?
Erik Burmeister: We’ve already started doing that. In the spring, I did a whole series of community conversations. I filled (two notebooks) full of community, staff and student feedback and also engaged the community in a robust feedback survey.
I spent the summer with my local team here at the district office, really focusing on where each of the functions of the organization can get better, more efficient, and more focused on customer service. And I think that is doing a lot to increase the community’s confidence, trust and excitement.
We are going to be launching a number of design teams this year focusing on high priority deliverables. We’re going to be reimagining our math pathways, looking at our middle school bell schedule and implementing our science of reading approach. We’re going to be focusing on our multi-tiered system of support and social-emotional learning. We are inviting community members, parents and students to participate alongside staff in those design teams.
The Almanac: The district faced a three-day teacher strike that was caused by failed salary negotiations. Do you have a strategic plan on how to approach negotiations the next time around to prevent another strike?
Erik Burmeister: My experience is that when everybody has confidence in the numbers that you’re working with and when the governance structure is transparent about its priorities and why those are the priorities that they have, the conflict and disagreement about the end result can be avoided.
I think that in a small district like ours, it’s difficult to always provide all the details that everybody wants, but we have to do it to avoid the kinds of conflicts that we experienced in the past year.
The other thing is, we’ve got to be transparent from the get go about where we’re spending our money and how much we’re spending. We have to be really honest with the public and ourselves about how much education costs today, because the days of Las Lomitas having enough money to do whatever it wants are gone. That means that we have to operate a little bit more like other school districts that are much more constrained financially than we have historically been.
I always try to provide the context that we’re still trying to get rid of a $2.5 million structural deficit, but we have time. It’s all those small decisions we make in the interim that are going to get us there. And so we can’t lose sight of the focus of reducing costs, but also reducing the rate of growth of our increasing costs, because education is getting more expensive.
The Almanac: Looking back on the district’s history, have you taken note of what didn’t work to figure out how to make improvements?
Erik Burmeister: There’s a lot that Las Lomitas has done right for many years. This is a district that only very recently experienced some challenging years, but this has been a district since 1904 and has a rich history of community engagement. I did the survey during a time where I asked people to give me criticism and critiques. By and large, everybody was really happy — even when I asked them at a time where they had just gotten out of the strike.
We have incredibly supportive parents and really talented students. I’d say where we’re challenged is we don’t have the scale. We’re highly dependent on individuals, because usually one department is one person.
We also need to tell our story better. That’s our budget, instruction, assessment, facility and great place to work story. Sometimes in small organizations, when you don’t have a person who is in charge of telling that story, it gets lost. If you don’t tell the story enough, that’s where negativity, distrust or a lack of transparency can arise, not out of any bad intent, but because you’re just so small.
The Almanac: Is there anything that you’d like local families, teachers and students, to know as you’re coming into this new role?
Erik Burmeister: I would say Las Lomitas has an amazing history, and our best days are still ahead of us. I’m really excited about what the future holds and I’m 110% committed. This feels like home to me, and I can’t wait to support the staff and really deliver the experience that Las Lomitas has been known for and also improve upon into the future.
These are going to be some really great years for the school district and I hope everybody is really excited, parents, students and staff alike. I wish everybody a safe, happy, thriving school year and I want everybody to know that Las Lomitas is back.
