As Superintendent Mike Kuhlman’s time with the William S. Hart Union High School District is coming to a close after 27 years, Erin Wilson had an idea.
Appointed to the district’s governing board last year, Wilson felt that the best way to send Kuhlman off would be to present him with the award that he created: the One Hart Award.
It’s just one of many honors and recognitions that Kuhlman has received since he announced in March that he would be leaving the district at the end of the month to take over as superintendent of the El Dorado Union High School District.
After receiving the award, Kuhlman said in front of numerous student-athletes who were being honored for their successes during the spring season that he would keep his comments short to give them the spotlight.
“I’d rather reserve this time for the students here who need to be recognized,” Kuhlman said. “I’ll just say it’s the highest honor to have served in this district for 27 years. I’ve served as a teacher, as an administrator, and what a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to serve as superintendent.”
Those who know Kuhlman best say that humility and wanting to put the spotlight on others is not just a front — it’s who Kuhlman is.
According to Kathy Hunter, who is set to retire at the end of the month from her position as assistant superintendent of student services, safety and wellness after 20 years with the district, Kuhlman has always been a natural leader. But that doesn’t mean it’s his way or the highway.
And yet there Kuhlman found himself just two weeks into the job in March 2020, being thrust into a position of having to make a decision that would affect students, teachers and other employees for years to come.
With a lack of knowing just how bad things could get, the district made the decision to shut down all schools at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and move to remote learning.
Governing board President Linda Storli said nobody was prepared for COVID and nobody really knew what the next steps should have been.
“We’ve been through earthquakes and floods and no electricity and things like that,” Storli said. “But COVID, you know, one day we were fine and the next day schools were shut down … We were able to work through it. It wasn’t a fun time. It wasn’t a fun time to be probably any place, but certainly nothing to do with schools was fun during that two-year term. But he handled it like he always does in situations that are different. He’s very good at handling ‘different’ and certainly COVID was different.”
Kuhlman said if it weren’t for the stable relationships he had with people throughout the district, he isn’t sure how effective the district would have been.
“It would have been difficult if I had been in a different role in a place that I didn’t know people when you suddenly had to make such momentous decisions,” Kuhlman said.
Building relationships is one of the hallmarks of what makes a school district tick, Kuhlman said. With 23 years of service before becoming the head of the district, it’s no surprise that many of the people working under him were also the ones who knew him best.
Collyn Nielsen, currently the assistant superintendent of human resources and a former Hart High principal, said he and Kuhlman worked closely together when Kuhlman was the principal at nearby Placerita Junior High School.
And as someone who also moved through the ranks of the district, Nielsen said it is impressive that Kuhlman has been able to stay the same despite climbing the district ladder all the way to the top.
Deputy Superintendent Michael Vierra, recently appointed interim superintendent effective July 1, said Kuhlman being a team player and wanting build camaraderie among district staff are two things that have stood out to him the most since moving to the district in 2012.
The other is the district’s five-year strategic plan that was adopted by the governing board in June 2022. That plan has the district chasing a goal of having each student be opportunity-ready and pursuing excellence through four key values: community, courage, creativity and caring.
Bob Jensen, who has served as a board member for 15 years including multiple stints as president, said Kuhlman was instrumental in bringing that plan together.
“We all worked very hard, but he was the mainstay,” Jensen said.
Storli, the current board president, said she begged Kuhlman, who was her principal at Canyon High School during her final years as a teacher, to reconsider leaving.
She said he was able to get the ball rolling on the strategic plan before handing off the details to staff and board members.
“He sets it in motion, gets us the pieces, the tools that we need, and then he’s stood back and watched us form the plan,” Storli said. “It’s just like everything else he does from the top. I’m sure it was like he was as a teacher.”
When Kuhlman was a teacher, he had no plans to move into administration at that time, he said.
After getting his teaching credential from the University of California, Irvine, he moved to Northern California for his first teaching gig at Rocklin High School near Sacramento after a friend from college told him about it.
He eventually made his way to Saugus High School as a history teacher, where he remained for four years.
“I absolutely loved my time as a teacher,” Kuhlman said. “My mother was a teacher. I could have easily been a teacher happily for the rest of my career.”
After that, Kuhlman made stops as the assistant principal at Canyon before moving to Placerita for his first tenure as a principal. He then returned to Canyon as the school’s principal before moving to the district office to become one of the district’s assistant superintendents.
As someone who has moved around the district before eventually overseeing it, Kuhlman said he has seen the district grow in numbers without losing its family feel.
“The Hart district has grown over the years, but it still sort of feels like a small-town district in a way,” Kuhlman said. “And I think that’s in a good sort of way. I think that people know each other, they care about each other and they want to work hard to support one another. We’ve seen it in 1,000 different ways, but it was especially on display when we endured the unthinkable, the Saugus tragedy, and I hate to put any kind of positive spin on what is just fundamentally a horrible event, but one of the things that came from that was just to see, when things were at their worst, that people were absolutely at their best and supporting one another and caring for one another.”
It hasn’t been the calmest of tenures for Kuhlman as the head of the district. The Saugus High School shooting occurred just months before he took over, and while dealing with the aftermath, the pandemic and all the troubles that came with it became the focus.
Kuhlman said that as he’s grown as an administrator, he’s learned to enjoy the time he’s able to spend with friends and family. When things get rough, he said, he can always find a “happy place” at home with his wife, Cindi, and his two sons, Kevin and Ryan, as well as his two Boston terriers, Maggie, named after Margaret Thatcher, and Rosie, named after Rosie the Riveter.
That doesn’t mean he’s shying away from anything. Many of the people who work closely with him said he is willing to tackle the tough situations head-on — perhaps a consequence of him being a former high school quarterback at Don Antonio Lugo High School in the Chino Valley — and tries to think of every possible solution before allowing others to help determine the best course of action.
After 27 years working in the Santa Clarita Valley and even longer in the education world as a whole, Kuhlman said he doesn’t know how else to do the job.
“I don’t know any other way of leading other than building relationships with people,” Kuhlman said. “You just spend time with people, you go through challenges together, you develop trust and then you’ve worked through problems together. And as I’m thinking about leaving, you’re reminded of the countless relationships I have with people in the district. And I’m just so proud of that I’ve been able to spend 27 years of my life working with these people.”
