Rachael Maves: Hello everyone, you are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today we are talking with Peter Livingston. Peter is an experienced K-12 superintendent and education leader who has served as superintendent of Lucerne Valley Unified School District since 2016. He brings deep expertise in district operations, labor relations, budget oversight, curriculum and instruction leadership, and educational technology with a track record

of expanding STEM labs and CTE programs to support student success and enrollment growth. Livingston also serves as a board member of the Mitsubishi Education Foundation, president and board member of the Lucerne Valley Public Education Foundation, and president of the BESTNET Board, a forward thinking technology JPA serving school districts across San Bernardino County. He holds a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from Chapman University.

and a bachelor's degree in elementary education and teaching from Minnesota State University, Moorhead. Peter, thank you for joining me today.

Peter Livingston: Appreciate being here. That doesn't sound like me read all that like who are you talking about? I don't think that's me. That can't be right

Rachael Maves: So.

Rachael Maves: I have expected you to say, sure.

Peter Livingston: Yeah, you bet. That's where I came from. I'll go back to my Minnesota accent. When you do that though, you automatically drop 10 IQ points. So I'll come back and I can answer any questions.

Rachael Maves: sad. Well, Peter, I'm excited for this conversation today and for us to be able to connect in and hear a little bit more about your work in education. we always start with a story. So why did you choose this career in education?

Peter Livingston: June, July, and August.

No, that's it. Went into teaching. I always had a, my mom was a teacher. I, and so was in our family, I would say. And then I wanted to teach him because I really wanted to just help people grow, help kids. I also had an interest in coaching. So I thought, a perfect thing. Get into teaching, you can coach, can support kids, help them grow, work with people. I, and that was, that was the original reason why I literally went into teaching and I got my, as you said, I.

bachelors in elementary education in Minnesota. And in Minnesota at that time in 1996, there were no jobs. know, one job would have 300 to 1000 applicants and you couldn't get one. So at that time, class size reduction was going on in California. And I saw one sentence ad in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune that said, teachers wanted Adelanto Elementary School District call.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: So I called the number and we're interviewing in a hotel. And I said, okay, when? And they gave me the date. And so I literally interviewed in a hotel lobby. And the final question was, when are you available? And I said, my car is packed. And they said, okay, here's the contract. So I drove out and I, Ford Escort that reverse didn't work in. So I'd have to put it in neutral and back up with my foot.

Rachael Maves: I'm

Peter Livingston: I made it out to California in four days and started teaching second grade at that point at Eagle Ranch Elementary School, was the name of it. And that's how I got into education originally. And then at that school, taught there for 12 years and I enjoyed it, did coaching at the middle school and elementary school. And that was the initial step into it, I guess. So I'll leave it at that. But it was really about helping the kids and helping them grow, helping.

you know, students find their way. had some great coaches when I was in school who helped me grow and guided me. Of course, along with my parents, but I really stayed in school because of sports and that was my interest. And so it's like, if we can get kids a reason to hook to stay in school, that's what we want. really it was helping, wanting to help kids get through school. couldn't, I'm going to go on a sidetrack here, but I couldn't even imagine during the pandemic when

Rachael Maves: Mm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Peter Livingston: Sports were shut down in California. It was like, if that would have happened to me as a junior or senior, I don't know what would have happened to me. I probably would have dropped out literally. And that resonates with me all the time. so first 12 years was a teacher. I don't know if you want to keep talking the journey, but from there, I did get my master's degree along the way to move up the pay scale. Once I learned the pay scale, it's like, wow. You mean if I get a few more credits, I can earn more money?

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, please. I'd love to hear it.

Rachael Maves: Hahaha

Peter Livingston: Yeah, let's do this. Let's go build a rocket and buy three credits from University of San Diego for $400. And I moved three ranges across a pay scale within seven months. then it was, now I need to get a master's. So I went to Chapman University and enrolled in the master's program. And they said, well, we have two options. You can do a master's in admin or you can do a master's in curriculum and instruction. And I said, well, I'm going to do curriculum and instruction.

And they said, we don't recommend that because you really can't do much with it. And I said, well, I no interest in ever becoming an administrator. I want to take two more classes. And I don't need those two classes. I'm going to do C &I, curriculum and instruction, because there's no way in hell I'm ever going to become an administrator. So I got my master's in curriculum and instruction. Never got a master's in admin at that point.

Rachael Maves: Ever. Yeah, is that what everybody says? No.

Rachael Maves: you

Peter Livingston: It's funny because then fast forward 12 years and I'm going along through that journey as a teacher, I became an EL coordinator, was called English Language Learner Coordinator at my school. And we're doing all the testing and everything was crazy. And I remember going into the principal and saying, you know what, I'm done. It's not worth it. It's not worth my time. I've got other things. I resigned as EL coordinator. And he pulled me aside and said, what are you even talking about, Peter? He goes,

Rachael Maves: Hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Peter Livingston: Stay on, you'll be fine. I said, no, no interest. I stayed on. And then a few years later, there was an assistant principal opening and he's like, you need to apply for that. So I did, first time around, didn't get it. Second time around, next year I got it at a different school. And it was that for one year. Then it was 2008 or so, think, the budget crisis times. And all the assistant principals were cut.

Rachael Maves: you

Rachael Maves: sure.

Peter Livingston: And I was like, what's going to happen now to me? Do I go back to the classroom? What happens? And there was a principal opening in one of the schools in the district. one of my mentors, Darren Brawley, I don't know if you know him, he was there in that district at that time. And he had faith in me, trusted me, and put me into that principal position after one year as an assistant principal. And so I went over to that school, was there three years, then a principal at another school for one year, back where I originally started teaching.

And then I moved over to the district office as a director for three years. And then at that point, somehow got hired to be a superintendent. The board had trusted me out here in Lucerne Valley and they hired me on to be superintendent and it was a match. I found my fit. I found my people, you know.

Rachael Maves: I love it. So how long have you been in the superintendency since 2016? Yeah, that's a long time. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: 10 years now. Yeah, 10 years in this district, in this district, same district. Yeah. So I initially got hired out here and it's like, I'm thinking, well, now what's going to be next? Cause the superintendent lasts two to three years. What am I going to do in two to three years? And here it is a blink of an eye and it's 10 years later. And I'm not going to, I wouldn't go anywhere else. You know, it's I'm here and it's like, when you find your fit, that's where you need to stay. And when you're supported, that's, you know, you got your relationships with your unions built.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: I love that.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Peter Livingston: You don't leave it, you know, that's the trust takes time to build. You know, you hear the stories of superintendents going to the next district to the bigger district and then they go there and they last six months a year. But we have something great here and I'm truly appreciative of my board giving me the opportunity and just building and trusting in me, allowing me to be me, which those who know me might say, well, you found your fit, Peter, that wouldn't work anywhere else.

Rachael Maves: No, no, no.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love it. I love hearing that, Peter. It's the there's that book when I first became a superintendent that they gave us from the county office and it was like, I think it was the first 90 days. It was just talking about what does that mean and how do you accelerate that. But one of the things that stood out to me in there is that it said, don't wear checkers if everyone there is wearing stripes.

Like it has to be that good fit. And if it's not, if you can't wear the stripes, if you can't be embedded, then it's probably not going to last. And it sounds like, yeah, you, found your fit, which is awesome. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: Yeah, again, mean, it's truly the first 90 days, 100 days, first month, two months, years, till today, it's all about relationships, truly. It's building those relationships and building that trust, because without that, you can't move anything.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. Yes, that's Yeah.

Yep, yep, yeah. So when you think about, mean, you've had such a long tenure in the same community, what keeps you up at night? What, I'm sure it's shifted and changed over the years, but as you think about what's head, what are the headwinds right now, what are those for you and your district?

Peter Livingston: preparing kids for a future that doesn't exist, that isn't defined. I mean, I think that's huge.

Building AI into what we're doing, I would say, is another one. And teaching it ethically and allowing everyone to utilize it, embrace it, and how does that look? And then rebuilding out of the pandemic. Years later, and there's still issues we're dealing with, being aware of that with our students, not only our students, our teachers, our staff, being able to support them so that

they can be the best that they can be.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah, when you think about, I mean, those two things.

the AI, what you're doing around it, embedding it within, I mean, what I heard you say, not just for the adults within your system, but then also for the students within the system, and then managing some of the pandemic. Tell me a little bit more about what you're seeing there. Like just some of the fears or concerns that you have around AI and what that looks like, and then a little bit about what your communities continues to experience post pandemic.

Peter Livingston: Sure, I think with AI, it's, in our district is pretty bought into it, I would say. There's still a few folks out there, know, the veteran teachers who, and I shouldn't say veteran teachers, that might come off wrong. A lot of veterans are bought into it, but who is cheating. And it's like, well, what was encyclopedia when someone sat down and copied that, that was cheating. So it's about ethically, you know, utilizing it and you can't keep it away from the students because it's there.

Rachael Maves: that's great.

Peter Livingston: And now how do we leverage that to get them ready for the job market that doesn't exist? So I believe we're making headway on that. We're really focusing on in-services training, getting our teachers to be the leaders of it. So it's not coming, you know, as a district office initiative and then allowing them the time to share with their peers what they found and how they utilized it, whether it's, you know, downloading their lesson plan into a platform and now it creates a podcast that

delivers their lesson to the kids. Kids can type in and ask questions and the podcast changes immediately. And now you have the student who isn't into reading a book or whatever that can interact with a podcast and learn the content that's being delivered.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Peter Livingston: And it's like, that's OK. That's OK. You don't need to be the deliverer of the message because our students today are not designed to sit for 45 minutes straight. They're interacting with these devices post-pandemic, especially if you want to jump over to that, where we told them to be on devices. We forced them to be on devices. Now we're saying, no, you can't be on a device. To me, it doesn't make sense. And that's where you get the push for ban all cell phones in schools.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Peter Livingston: Well, ban them at times, but you can't ban them when they're sitting with a Chromebook in their lap telling them to use that for instruction. So how do you find the mediation? And if the teacher says it's time to put those away, it's time to put it away. And then we'll support it if they don't. But if you're approaching it from that matter other than

You can't use it. Now we're going to build students who can use the technology, especially post-pandemic, to their advantage to learn it, to utilize in the real world and jobs that it's going to be used in everywhere in reality. then the post-pandemic side, it's still the, you've got learning loss that we're still struggling with in reality. mean,

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, go ahead.

Peter Livingston: If a kid doesn't learn a math concept in fifth grade and now they're in eighth grade because they were virtually learning, it's like taking out the second floor of a 10 story building. At some point as you get up and those floors still aren't built, the building's going to fall over. So, you know, it's trying to fill in those gaps. And that's where the AI technology will help a teacher when you've got an eighth grade teacher who's teaching kids from a third grade level to a 12th grade level.

and curriculum can be delivered through a platform that meets everyone's needs, it's only going to make the job easier for the teacher.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I'd love to hear a little bit more because you touched on a few things of what you guys are doing to move this forward like that teacher driven approach to AI, some of the tools that you're using, being mindful of learning gaps. Are there other ways that you and your district are thinking about addressing those issues?

Peter Livingston: the learning last side of it.

Rachael Maves: the learning loss and anything else in AI you'd like to add.

Peter Livingston: Well, one of the incredible things with AI right now, and I've got a board member who's really into this, he's using it for his health.

And so he's developed a system where he was, and I think he'd be fine with me sharing the story. He's going to present on it at our S SDA conference, but he was on medications for diabetes. And, you know, he's like, I don't want to be on medications anymore. So he started putting everything into different AI pieces and it developed a menu for him to eat. go into restaurants, he literally Photoshopped or takes a picture and I don't know how he does it of the menu and AI will tell them what he

should eat and that's what he eats and he's literally got his numbers under control and now he's a veteran and so the VA is the hospitals are saying you need to turn this into an app and we need to like start

Selling this utilizing and it was just about trying to get off medications normalizes numbers and overall he's been successful with it So it's you know, you start taking that and sharing it with your staff teachers classified everyone of okay This is how it can benefit kids, but this is how it could benefit you in your health and your personal

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: That's right. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: journey. It's like I'm still I'm not an expert, but it's like those who are your early innovators are the ones who are going to lead the way in the district. And then we had a teacher at our high school recently who was kind of anti AI or know, anti tech and he was the one who presented two weeks ago at the staff meeting of how he utilized it to the rest of the staff. And once once people see the ease of it and they're allowed to do it, I think it's going to just

turn in to help them free up time. And I don't know if you're Christian Jackson, but you sound like him. It's like, how do I free up three hours in my life so I can take care of myself now? So that's my vision of it. And it's like, let's help our kids. Let's teach them ethically. Then what can we do with it ourselves to make our own lives better?

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love that. It's funny because there's so many, I think, really practical ways to utilize it that...

get lost in some of the big shiny things. Like even for myself, we were doing kind of an audit of how many meetings that we were in and I could pull in all of my meetings and have AI review it and then give me recommendations on how I can more effectively use my time. And it was like just things I wouldn't have thought of. I was like, yes, that makes so much sense, but it saved me hours.

Peter Livingston: Yeah. And probably the best use of mine when I remember to do it is when I have an email typed up ready to send to the California Department of Education or someone else that's loaded with profanity and other things that I shouldn't be saying. said, make this sound professional. And I'll say, here's a professional version that you can send to them. And I read it. like, OK, yeah, that sounds a lot better. But keep it firm.

Rachael Maves: But keep it firm. Well, having been at CDE, I've been on the receiving end of many of those emails and I always appreciate AI.

Peter Livingston: Have you? Hopefully none of mine. I sent one yesterday or two days ago. I haven't yet to apologize to the person I sent it to and I don't plan to because it's the truth. So it's okay. And I didn't use profanity in it because AI fixed it for me.

Rachael Maves: Good job! Well this is our last question Peter and I'm excited to just hear your thoughts on it. But what question in education are we not asking that we should be?

Peter Livingston: That's a great one. I, you know, personally for me, I think it's talking about, and I never thought I'd say this funny, but it's like, when I started as a superintendent, it was all about test scores. What are we doing to raise student achievement? And I think when we hit the pandemic, that shifted and it was like, does that matter? You know, or are we creating?

pathways for kids to succeed in the future. Not every kid's going to go to college and that's reality of it. So what do we provide as an educational system that gets them to be successful in the next level? And that could be a career, you know, a pathway. It could be going to college and that's great.

or a four year college, or maybe you go to the community college where fiscally it's going to make a lot more sense for students in a low socioeconomic community like ours, which is 90 % free and reduced lunch. And so not everyone has the same pathway and that's okay. And when you look at, everyone needs to go to a four year college. No, they don't. They don't. And I think it's creating that reality with students and asking the question of what is the reality? Is it more important to have

a college degree or to have certifications that an employer is going to look at and get you in the door and then elevate you in their company to have a good job. And I think today it's not necessarily about the college degree, it's about the certifications and then building off of that. Kevin Fleming, I don't know if you ever listened to him, but he talks about that all the time where you're overeducated and underemployed. And my goal would be to have us

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Peter Livingston: Sound horrible as a superintendent, but undereducated and over-employed. Get the education you need to get where you want to get your foot in, then figure out what you need to advance so you can be successful in your own life, make a living and contribute to society, hopefully in a career that you enjoy and is meaningful to you as opposed to somewhere where you're punching a time card and miserable your entire life. It's tying all that together.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: I don't know if it's questions that's not being asked, but it's a question that I'm asking and we've done presentations with our staff on it or and they're like, really? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, it is. It's like, let's guide these kids to something that's meaningful to them. So they're not dreading going to work hopefully, but it's meaningful to them. It's impactful. They're able to make a living with it and be successful in their journey and contribute to society at the end of the day too.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: So for me, it went from stop chasing compliance to how do we make productive citizens of the United States?

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that Peter and I think too what really strikes me about it is so often I think people think when about career pathways as entry level positions as opposed to it is just as rigorous when it's done well in a different way that it is in preparing somebody for a four year education.

so that there's career mobility, so that if they want to, they can, start in that entry level, just like when you leave college, but there's a pathway for them to end up being a manager, a leader, whatever it is within that organization. So I think it's work that is very underrated and the story is not told enough. Well, it's not told well and often enough when it's done well. Yeah.

Peter Livingston: 100%.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Well, Peter, thank you for joining me today. It has been wonderful to connect with you and laugh with you. really appreciated our time together.

Peter Livingston: I did too. like I said, I usually am not comfortable in a one-on-one. I'd rather talk with a group of people. So I've appreciated it. You've made it great.

Rachael Maves: Good, that's so good to hear. Well, everyone remember the end of the calendar year is an ideal time to check in on your school's social emotional health. Parsec Real is an AI powered platform built for gathering input from across your community.

Our platform's ability to engineer questions for all audience types and in multiple languages grants accessibility to students and families who previously may have been unable to add their voices to the conversation. To learn more on engaging your whole community through valuable feedback, check out parseceducation.com.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.