The co-principals at Antioch’s Deer Valley High School, Scott Bergerhouse & Clarence Isadore, are the current ACSA Principals of the Year. They describe how their school was never as bad as its reputation and is now better than its former detractors could imagine...

Since Antioch’s Deer Valley High School first opened in 1996, residents of East County have heard stories about our terrible learning conditions. The undeserved reputation is based upon unfortunate associations, inappropriate innuendos, and poorly researched press articles.
Even though the school has always been a good place for learning, we are moving towards greatness, creating a learning environment that is characterized by cheerful and enthusiastic participation by students in the school’s social and educational life.

Clarence
Scott and I began our association at Deer Valley High by working together for two years as vice-principals. After Scott was promoted as principal at Park Middle School, we remained in friendly though not very consistent contact until three years later, when I became principal at Black Diamond Middle School.
We were effective administrators because of our single-minded commitment to serving students, and our passion for making learning effective. Scott and I maintained regular communication with each other — meeting together for breakfasts and conducting regular phone conversations, during which we shared the problems and challenges we both were facing, together with the solutions and remedies we were discovering. Scott became like a mentor to me. Beyond our professional relationship, the two of us developed deep social and spiritual connections with each other.

Scott
During our middle school service, people were continually asking if one or the other of us were going to take over at Deer Valley, but we always maintained that it was never going to happen, as far as we were concerned. The fact is that neither of us actually wished for the task, because the burdensome problem in most large high schools is the pace at which such institutions consume the principals who try to manage them. We knew that the school’s challenging ethnic, social, and economic diversity offered far more risks of failure, and far fewer opportunities for success than those in our much smaller and more manageable middle schools.
Everything changed when Dr. Deborah Sims, who was superintendent of the Antioch Unified School District at that time, met with me and drew a plan showing the Deer Valley hierarchy on a white board. She then added a box with my name as principal, and then a second box showing Clarence as co-principal. I was immediately delighted with her brilliant idea. I relished the possibility of working with my best friend, and immediately wanted to shout, “Sold!” I restrained my enthusiasm, however, and simply responded with what seemed like appropriate professional reserve by asking, “Can I think about it?”
“Call me Monday,” Dr. Sims said.