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Keith Moody, the director of Mountain View-Los Adult High School District’s adult education program, is retiring this week after serving more than 15 years as an administrator for local schools. Moody led the adult school during a period of big changes aimed at turning local adult schools and community colleges into a strong network of career training programs.
Moody joined the district in 2002, quickly jumping from assistant principal at Mountain View High to principal in 2005. He shifted gears in 2013, taking over as the director of the district’s Adult Education program, which he said was uncharted waters for him.
“I had little experience with adult education, so it was a big learning curve for me,” he recalled.
It may not look like it from the outside, but the adult school on Moffett Boulevard has been a major engine for jobs training in northern Santa Clara County, with nearly 8,000 people coming in each year to pick up valuable job skills, finish up high school diplomas or GEDs, and acclimatize to the country through its English as a Second Language (ESL) program. The school has students ranging from ages 18 to 80.
The clinical nursing assistant and medical assistant programs offered at the school are popular and packed to the brim each year with a six-month waiting list, Moody said, and students enrolled in the program successfully fan out to 30 clinical sites throughout the region for internship opportunities.
Although it took some time learning the ropes, Moody said he was lucky to oversee an adult school that didn’t get slammed by the 2008 recession — the effects of which could still be felt when he joined as director in 2013. Although other school districts chose to siphon money from adult education programs, he said the school board chose to maintain the funding and even supplemented the budget through 2012. The same year he became director, Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers agreed to provide dedicated funding to adult education, which was a boon for adult schools.
At the Dec. 4 board meeting, Associate Superintendent Mike Mathiesen commended Moody for his leadership at Mountain View High School, where Mathiesen worked alongside him as a teacher and later as an assistant principal. He said Moody had an effective leadership style that always had school administrators collaborating and working as a team, and that student performance soared under his watch.
“He led the ship at Mountain View High School wonderfully,” Mathiesen said. “He guided us to new academic heights (with) Academic Performance Index increases year over year over year that we hadn’t seen in the past.”
More recently, Moody helped guide the adult school into a new regional partnership with neighboring adult schools as well as Foothill and De Anza colleges to coordinate jobs training and career technical education (CTE) for adult students in the area. The group of agencies, dubbed the North Santa Clara County Student Transition Consortium, has been “challenging” to get off the ground, Moody said, but he believes it’s now headed in the right direction and should help students seamlessly transition from the adult school to community colleges.
More recently, the adult school has adopted a bigger emphasis on computer science skills, pulling together a training program that includes Java, Python, SQL and database design as well as 3D printing and computer aided design (CAD).
Replacing Moody will be the adult school’s current second-in-command, Assistant Director Brenda Harris, who has held the position for the last 13 years and is uniquely qualified to jump right into the role, Moody said.
“I think it’s a great move by the superintendent to choose Brenda Harris,” Moody said. “I think she will be outstanding. She really knows the CTE program.”
For Moody, retirement means taking a break from an epic commute to Mountain View from Tracy every day — a train ride that usually took an hour and 15 minutes each way. He said it was particularly challenging during his years as principal at Mountain View High, which had evening commitments each night, though he admitted he could get a whole lot done before reaching his stop.
“The train was very open and not very crowded, and I could lay out all my forms and build the master schedule for the high school,” he said.
Moody said he wasn’t sure what his plans for the future are, but he plans to spend his first year of retirement hanging out with his grandchildren, going fishing and taking a cruise to Alaska. After that, he said, he’ll figure out what to do with the next chapter of his life. He said he also wants to keep a comfortable distance from the long commute he’s had to take for more than a decade.
“I don’t even want to see a train for at least a year,” he said.
Mr. Moody has an interesting life arc -starting in pro football – and I am glad it segued into his subsequent stellar service to public education here in Mountain View -Los Altos High Schoo District. His service as a math teacher and later also as an administrator to bolster our youth who found themselves at times at the margins… is admirable.
Keith Moody will be missed. His integrity and sense of serving students above all are characteristics that were highlights of his work at Mountain view Los Altos Union High School District. Thank you, Mr. Moody.