First in a series
He must have been wondering what he got himself into.
Last month, the School District hired the consulting veteran Mike Reynolds as the next Assistant Superintendent of Business Services.
Mike Reynolds of Temecula, that is.
A serious commute to Culver City.
“One Monday morning,” he said in his second floor office on a recent evening, “I got up at 3 o’clock. By 4, I hit the road. And I got here,” he said with an Irish grin, “by 9:45.
“The freeway was a parking lot. Unbelievable. Five hours and forty-five minutes. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.
“It was really a weird morning. People were running out of gas in the middle of lanes.
“I didn’t think it would be that bad every Monday. There are people to make this commute regularly.”
For the time being, Mr. Reynolds bunks several miles from his office during the week, going home for weekends.
“Hopefully, we will get settled in by the middle of December,” says the married father of three sons, ranging from 30 years old to 41.
Born 63 years ago in Los Angeles, he has lived away from here for many years, and took a circuitous path to land in Culver City.
How he came to be the assistant super goes back to the early days of his relationship with Sandy. He credits her with providing and guiding the compass to a jackpot professional career.
Only One Subject
You don’t have to wonder what the Reynoldses talk about at the dinner table.
“They are all about school business,” he says with a laugh.
Sandy Reynolds has served as a chief business official for a school district, the same responsibility her husband has now.
“We talk about ‘how is your ADA going?’ ‘Are you going to make your budget?’”
The Reynolds’ How I Came to Education yarn starts four decades ago.
“I got out of the Air Force,” says Mr. Reynolds, “and I was attending American River College in Sacramento. I was taking two classes. One was weightlifting. The other was film appreciation.
“Sandy’s perspective was, ‘You should take some classes and learn something that people will pay you to know.’
“This is a true story. We got the catalogue, and we started in the a’s.”
Mike and Sandy didn’t need to use up the whole alphabet.
“We picked two that seemed like something someone would pay me to do,” Mr. Reynolds said. “One was accounting and the other was auto repair.”
Can you guess which field he selected?
(To be continued)
