■ Leslie Beatson ‘can’t wait to get started’

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Matthew Turner Elementary School will see a new face in the principal’s office beginning in the fall, as Leslie Beatson replaces 10-year district veteran Barbara Sanders.

Beatson’s hiring was announced before the Benicia Unified School District Board of Trustees June 7. On Wednesday she said she is currently finishing up her commitments at Neil Cummins Elementary School in Corte Madera, where she has been the principal for three years.

Prior to that, she said, she was principal of a middle school in Vermont for seven years after served as a reading specialist there. Beatson’s experience includes elementary school work in Connecticut, as well, giving her 22 years as a teacher, reading specialist and administrator.

She is also a Benicia resident.

“I love teaching and being part of my local community,” she said. “When I was in Vermont, I lived half a mile from my school. I love being part of the community, and seeing people out and about, and really sort of sinking in and giving back to the kids and the families here.

“It’s hard to do when you’re forty miles away,” she added.

Beatson studied for her undergraduate in elementary education at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, then received her master’s in remedial reading and language arts at CCSU. She went to the University of Vermont and received her doctorate in educational leadership and curriculum.

With her husband, Stacy Starkweather, Beatson moved to California three years ago. At first “we rented a place in Green Valley,” she said, but about two years ago they moved to Benicia. “We absolutely fell in love with it!”

Starkweather, who grew up in Berkeley, is a social studies resource teacher in Benicia High School’s Special Education Department. Their daughter, Ella, is entering the third grade at Joe Henderson Elementary School, and their son, Jack, will begin kindergarten in the fall.

Education runs in Beatson’s family. “Three of my siblings were teachers,” she said. “My brother didn’t stay in it forever, and my mother was a school nurse. I think it’s one of those things you have a calling to.

“You have to love it, it’s got to be a passion.”

She said she sometimes misses the teaching side of education, but she occasionally gets to feed that passion, too. “I’ll cover teachers’ classes if they need to meet or do something. I have run student council for many years. I love that because I get to work with a group of kids on a regular basis. It’s really student-driven,” she said.

“I see my job my job as supporting teachers to be able to do what they need to do with kids, and then ensuring that kids are getting what they need.”

A day in the life of a principal is a busy one, she said, involving oversight of building facilities and constant work with students and curriculum. “It is sort of broken down into two prongs — one is the educational leadership piece, which is being in classrooms, working with teachers on curriculum development, monitoring assessments and how kids are progressing and helping to create structures if they’re struggling,” Beatson said.

“The other side is management. It’s facilities, it’s paperwork, being the nurse if the nurse isn’t there, emergency planning, fire drills, class placement, registration, all of that.

“And lots of meetings,” she added.

Beatson said she really believes in “capacity building.”

“One person can’t do it, so it’s finding people’s strengths and helping them become leaders and doing shared decision making when it’s appropriate,” she said.

Benicia Unified School District’s selection of Beatson for the Matthew Turner Elementary principal’s position “was not a difficult choice at all,” Assistant Superintendent Michael Gardner said this week, “even though it was highly competitive. We interviewed eight people, all current principals already. She was overwhelmingly the number one candidate coming out of the first round, and the number one candidate coming out of the second round.”

Beatson said she is excited about working closer to home and having the opportunity to be more involved in the community where she lives. “The commute has gone significantly down,” she said.

“I can’t wait to get started.”