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Make STEAM part of PUSD's superintendent search: listening sessions October 7–9

October 5, 2026 · Piedmont Makers

Piedmont Unified is asking families what they want in the next superintendent. Four listening sessions this week and an anonymous survey are your chance to tell the district that hands-on STEAM education matters.

The entrance gate at Havens Elementary, a black iron archway topped with a crest bearing the letter H, opening onto a white stucco school building with red tile roofs, planters, and wide outdoor steps.
Havens Elementary, home to one of this week's listening sessions. Photo courtesy of AC Martin.

Piedmont Unified School District has started its search for a new superintendent. The district’s search firm, Leadership Associates, is running community listening sessions this week, and they are the main way parents and community members can shape what the district looks for.

Leadership Associates will compile what it hears and share it with the Board of Education, and the Board will use that feedback when it interviews candidates. That makes this the moment to tell the district that STEAM education matters to Piedmont families. If robotics, engineering, coding, art, and hands-on making are part of your kids’ lives, the people choosing the next superintendent should hear it from you.

The next superintendent will make decisions that shape STEAM in every PUSD school: which courses are offered, how math is sequenced, how teachers are supported, and how the district works with community partners like us. We hope you’ll go, or take the survey, and speak up for it.

The sessions

No RSVP needed. Each session is aimed at one school community, but you’re welcome at any of them.

  • Havens, Wildwood, and Beach families: Wednesday, October 7, 6:30 to 7:15 pm, Havens library
  • Piedmont Middle School families: Wednesday, October 7, 7:30 to 8:15 pm, PMS library
  • All community, virtual: Thursday, October 8, 7:30 to 8:15 pm, join on Zoom
  • Piedmont High School and Millennium High School families: Friday, October 9, 9:30 to 10:15 am, Alan Harvey Theater lobby

What they’ll ask

Leadership Associates consultants will open with an overview of the search process, then ask two questions:

  1. What qualities, characteristics, background, and professional and personal experiences do you want in the next superintendent?
  2. What do you see as the district’s strengths, and the major challenges facing it in the years ahead?

Bring STEAM into your answers

Neither question mentions STEAM, so it’s up to us to raise it. A few things you might say, in your own words:

  • Qualities you want: a leader who values hands-on, project-based learning and sees science, engineering, art, and math as core to a PUSD education.
  • Strengths to protect: the Engineering Lab at Piedmont High, built through a community capital campaign, and AP Physics C, approved by the school board after years of advocacy from parents, students, and Piedmont Makers.
  • Partnerships: Piedmont Makers is putting $30,000 into PUSD classrooms this year through Teacher Grants and runs robotics and engineering programs in district spaces. The next superintendent should see community partners as an asset.
  • Challenges ahead: keeping strong pathways to calculus and advanced science for every student. The district is proposing changes to its math pathways at a community meeting on October 13.

Your own story will carry the most weight: what your kid built, what a class or program opened up for them, or what you wish the schools offered.

Can’t make it?

The same two questions are in an anonymous online survey, so you can respond on your own time. It takes a few minutes, and a sentence or two about STEAM in each answer helps make sure STEAM shows up in what the Board hears.