At its May 15, 2014, meeting, the Board of Education approved the appointment of Dr. Susan Yakich as the new Principal of McKinley Elementary School.
Dr. Yakich comes to SMMUSD from the Rescue Union School District, where she has been serving as the Principal at Rescue Elementary School for the past four years.
Thanks to her leadership as principal, the API scores at Rescue E.S. for the socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroup increased by 84 points, 72 points for the students with disabilities subgroup, and the English learners subgroup scored 70 points above the state average.
Dr. Yakich has also served served as Principal and Assistant Principal with the Temecula Valley Unified School District;Summer School Principal with the Temecula Valley and Baldwin Park Unified School Districts; Title I Resource Teacher / Reading Recovery Teacher, Summer School Lead Teacher, first grade teacher and Reading Recovery Teacher with the Baldwin Park Unified School District; and third grade teacher in Cleveland, Ohio.
Her peers describe her as a “hard-working professional educator,” who “consistently places the needs of students as her highest priority.”
Dr. Yakich is well-versed in analyzing student achievement data and best practices to drive decisions regarding instruction, goal development, resource allocation, intervention strategies, and professional development. She facilitates weekly Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), plans professional development for all staff to close the achievement gap, collaborates with colleagues to improve practices and share ideas, organizes intervention and enrichment activities for students, creates data walls to focus on students’ strengths and areas of focus, and develops/communicates the school’s vision and goals for all students.
Under her leadership, her former school earned the California Title I Academic Achievement Award in 2008, and her current school was just named a California Distinguished School for 2014.
