The end of an era: Cleveland looks back at tenure with RRPS

RIO RANCHO — Just days after announcing her retirement in the fall, Rio Rancho Public Schools Superintendent Sue Cleveland summed up her decision in one phrase: “It’s just the time to do it.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. For a lot of people, it’s an event, but for me, it wasn’t an event. It was a combination of events,” she said.

That combination includes the birth of her grandson.

Friday was the last day for the woman who led the district through its founding in 1994 and was the only superintendent RRPS has had.

“It’s honestly a disbelief. After doing something for 32 years, it’s hard to fully wrap your head around the fact that it’s here,” she said. “I find myself asking, ‘Is this really happening?’”

After Cleveland’s retirement was announced in September, RRPS began a nationwide search for its second superintendent in just under 32 years. In December, Robert “Robby” Dodd was chosen as Cleveland’s successor. He officially began on March 1 and shadowed Cleveland for the month.

“Dr. Dodd has some big footsteps to fill, that is for sure,” Rio Rancho District 4 City Councilor Paul Wymer said. “I met him the other night at the City Council meeting. He’s very ambitious, very outgoing. I think he’ll fit right in, but there will never be another Sue Cleveland.”

The RRPS Board of Education honored Cleveland last week with a resolution, which cited her “stable, student-centered leadership to Rio Rancho schools for more than three decades,” noting that she is the longest-serving superintendent in the state.

It also noted state and national recognition for academic achievement as well as athletic, fine-arts, career-technical, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.

“Rio Rancho Public Schools under Dr. Cleveland’s leadership has been credited as a major force in encouraging industry, businesses and families to chose Rio Rancho and Sandoval County as a place to live, work and raise children,” the resolution states.

Sandoval County Manager Wayne Johnson said Cleveland’s legacy “will be in the students that she’s helped to succeed in life.”

“How do you measure that legacy?” he said. “How do you really quantify the impact that a teacher or an administrator like that has in making people’s lives better as they grow and they work their way into society? I don’t know how you can measure that legacy.”

Reflecting on accomplishments 

Reflecting on her longevity, Cleveland said, “It’s not something that would be easily replicated somewhere else.”

“I think part of the uniqueness was the ability to start the district. … I had a chance to pick my entire team, and staying this long, you’ve developed a lot of relationships in the community,” she said. “When you have those relationships, when hard times come, those folks step up and help, and so I think it’s somewhat unique in that respect, and probably part of it is just due to the fact that I was here from the very beginning.”

Cleveland added, “It was an incredible opportunity to start a school district from scratch.” But she was quick to share the credit of building RRPS from the ground up.

“Especially in those early years, we all worked together really closely. The city and county were just absolutely instrumental,” Cleveland said. “I think partnerships are just the key to everything.”

The fruits of those partnerships included the construction of Rio Rancho High School by Intel and the donation of land from the AMREP corporation for Colinas del Norte Elementary.

Retired Rio Rancho elementary school teacher Terri Wymer said Cleveland was someone who brought the community together.

“Her leaving is going to be a big change for the community,” Wymer said. “(Dodd) will need to understand that Rio Rancho is … a very close community and we have high expectations of our educators, those people that lead in the district.” 

In the 30-plus years that Cleveland has been at the helm, the district has built a high reputation in the state. She credits the success to never being satisfied and a commitment to excellence and always improving.

“We talked among that first leadership team, ‘How do we immediately start showing progress?’ Because the community needs it. They need to see that their investment is going to pay off,” she said. “We have not reached where we need to be or want to be, but have made huge progress from where we were.”

She also credited RRPS’s success with establishing a guaranteed viable curriculum across all buildings in the district, even if teaching methods differ. Cleveland noted the increased diversity in the district over her tenure, saying there are 2,000 students with Native heritage, including 600 from the Navajo Nation and that “every pueblo in New Mexico is represented in this school district.”

Nonetheless, she credited her team for that success. “The thing I take the most credit for is having put together a good team. … Nobody does the job alone. If you’ve got good people, you can do anything,” she said. “It think that having that sense of teamwork and commitment has paid off for the district over time.”

That also feeds into the district’s reputation in athletics, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.

“All ships rise together,” Cleveland said. “If you have that excellence in extra, co-curricular areas, that influences the academic tone of the school as well. … They are complimentary. They are not separate.”

She said that having students connected to their school through such activities has always been a top goal.

Cleveland discussed RioTech, the career technical education campus that opened in August, as an example of that, saying she would like to see a similar campus in the future geared toward the health care industry.

When it came to picking a favorite memory from her tenure, she said, “It’s just impossible because there were so many, a lot of peaks. There were valleys, too.”

Cleveland said every new school they opened “was a joyous occasion.”

She cited the opening of Cleveland High School, which was significant to address overcrowding at Rio Rancho High School, and the building of Eagle Ridge and Mountain View middle schools, the first the district built at that level, as well was Colinas del Norte Elementary.

The most pivotal moment in the district’s history was building Rio Rancho High School, she said.

“Up until that time … our high school kids were everywhere,” Cleveland said, including Del Norte, Cibola, Valley and Sandia high schools.

“I remember when the community saw the first cheerleaders and the first band and the first team, and just a sense of pride,” she said. “I think that said, ‘We are a district, and we’re going to be OK. We’re going to make it here and we’re going to do well.’”

One of the most emotional moments, Cleveland said, was the ceremony for the opening of the new district at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary on July 1, 1994.

“Seeing the first school bus full of RRPS children arrive. When the covering came off the bus and it revealed ‘Rio Rancho Public Schools’ on the side, it truly felt real,” she said.

Cleveland said she took pride in attending every graduation ceremony in the district and “seeing every senior graduate.”

Looking to the future

Cleveland also left some advice for her successor.

“Listen and gather as much information as you can from as many sources as you can, and build that into your decision-making process,” she said. “I find that the more people I talk to and listen to on an issue, the better informed I am and have a better opportunity to see the other side of what we’re trying to accomplish.

“You have to have a vision, but it has to be a vision where people come along with you, and it has to be their vision, too,” she added.

She said that’s even more true when it comes to things a leader might not want to hear.

“The greatest danger to a superintendent is when people tell you what you want to hear and not what you need to hear, and I am blessed with people who are willing to tell me the truth,” she said.

She also stressed developing relationships and partnerships and being part of the community, such as the district’s Thanksgiving donations to Storehouse West and its involvement in Leadership Sandoval.

“We’ve always wanted to be a district that was giving back to the community, and not a district that always just had its hand out,” Cleveland said. “We try to be part of the community, and I think that’s paid off over time.”

She also said she has spent time connecting Dodd with people in the community. 

“New Mexico is a very relationship-based state,” she added. “It has been essential that he be introduced to some of the key players who have helped support the district and who will be great partners as the district moves forward.

“More than anything else, I hope he will grow to love and enjoy this district and the Rio Rancho community as much as I have.”

As for retirement plans, Cleveland didn’t have anything concrete.

“I’ve got a stack of books that should take me probably to the end of my days,” she said. But there’s also travel on the horizon and time with the family — including the new grandchild.

In fact, she said, plans were made to visit Iceland and Norway over the summer when big family news changed the plans.

“Here came this baby, and then my younger son said, ‘I’m going to get married in December,’ so that kind of took care of that trip, but I’d rather have a baby and a wedding than I would a trip,” she said.

New Zealand, however, is one of the places she mentioned she would like to see.

“There’s just a lot of places I would like to go,” Cleveland said. “I do enjoy traveling. I don’t have just one place, but I would like to go places I haven’t been. … I’d really like to go on an African safari.”

Becoming emotional, Cleveland said there are mixed feelings about retirement, including wondering what will come next. 

“I will deeply miss the people, the students, the staff, my peers and all the experiences along the way,” she said. “It’s just really hard. It’s good, too. It’s not bad at all. I think, ‘Oh my goodness, so many things have happened’ — great things. I’m just so thankful.”