Loether will be honored at an awards dinner in May, but she first learned she’d been nominated when Deann Ragsdale, LMSV’s Deputy Superintendent, announced she had won during a principals’ meeting in February.
Loether had been nominated by Ragsdale and other administrators in secret and says the prestigious win was a ‘huge surprise.’
“I’m still digesting all of it,” she admits. “It’s a tremendous honor and recognition that our cabinet members and my colleagues would recommend me for such an amazing award. And in such a huge area from what I’m sure is a large pool of amazing candidates.” This is Loether’s second year with LMSV, but she has been in administration for over 10 years.
Leadership Honored
She was recognized for the impressive work and programs she continues to implement at SVA, as well as in response to the leadership she displayed during the floods in La Mesa in early 2024. This included leading her team to adapt SVA overnight to welcome Bancroft Elementary students when their campus was shut down for over a month due to the flooding.
Loether recalls, “The floods hit our entire community of Spring Valley pretty hard. We had a flood of water like a river going through the back of our campus. It was so bad that the whole district closed down for the day.”
Knowing that Bancroft Elementary was affected more drastically, Loether offered SVA’s more than 20 empty classrooms to keep the Bancroft students together so they would not need to split students among different campuses.
Time was of the essence to merge the two schools, absorbing an elementary school onto a middle school campus, all while SVA was busy cleaning up its own campus.
She describes the team’s effort to make it work, including bringing in smaller desks for the younger children as SVA only had larger desks for middle school students; the team also had to adapt the playground for smaller children.
Loether brainstormed with Bancroft’s principal to make the logistics of bell schedules, lunchtime, buses, and ESS programs work. “We just said, ‘Let’s make this happen’,” she remembers. “It was everybody working together, and it was literally overnight!”
Loether credits incredible teamwork and resilience from both schools with making the transition work. “Our office staff kind of blended together. We set Bancroft up with an office in one of our classrooms and just married all of the systems that a school would have so that everything could be seamless for the kids and for the adults.”
Community School Model
Fast forward to today, and SVA is celebrating its expansion as a Community School, thanks to a recent Community School grant.
This month’s launch of a Community School Center at the school will provide support for students and families at all of the elementary schools in the SVA community. School leaders held a resource fair to collaborate with local community groups to understand the greatest needs to meet for parents and families.
The Community Schools facilitator at SVA will now work with families to coordinate home visits and education for parents, including monthly classes and workshop socials, as well as connecting children to various cultural and community-oriented activities.
“We’re excited to see all the connections and build the bridge between SVA and our community,” says Loether. “We want to ensure that parents, students, and community members feel like they can come in, talk to us, and accomplish major things at SVA.”
Additional Opportunities: CTE, Music, AVID, and More
Loether is keen to share other exciting developments: “SVA has a lot of wonderful things happening. We have a great wellness team who are attending to every possible need for kids, including mindfulness classes, counseling, and support groups.
“We have entered into a CTE grant with the San Diego County Office of Education to introduce sports medicine and journalism through our yearbook and media classes. And we started Esports as an elective class this year, so students are learning about careers related to gaming.
“We’ve also brought back our wonderful music program. Our music teacher Mr. Langton has elective classes in 12-week cycles with Foundations of Music and Beginning Band, and we are looking at doing Advanced Band next year.”
SVA is also in its second year of AVID Implementation, which focuses on teaching students organization and time management skills and empowers students in college-bound preparation that continues at the high school level.
“We have so much work here to do,” concludes Loether. “There are big things ahead for SVA!”
