BY EXAMPLE
Southern California school district’s Pete Meslin wins 2011 STN Leadership Award by encouraging employees to ‘own’ their careers BY RYAN GRAY
The first day of fall was balmy, with ominous rain clouds forming over Orange County, home of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, located mere miles from the Pacific Ocean. As Transportation Director Pete Meslin took to the bus yard to show off the district’s 29 Blue Bird and Thomas Built CNG school buses, the clouds began to part and the sun be- gan to shine. Just another day in Southern California.
Unbeknownst to Meslin, the photogra-
pher he was meeting was onsite not only to take pictures of the total fleet of 80 school buses and his transportation staff but also of him — because he is the 2011 STN Leadership Award winner. It’s a fitting honor for the past trea-
surer of the California Association of School Transportation Officials (CASTO) and past president of the association’s Southern California chapter. Not only was Meslin the co-chair of the 2010 STN EXPO Conference, he also is currently a senior faculty member for NAPT’s “Lead- ing Every Day” Initiative, which continued its expansion last month during the NAPT Summit, and is the CASTO special needs committee chair and career path chair. Still, despite the many state and nation-
al shows where he has been a frequent speaker, Meslin flies below the radar on purpose. His breadth of work over his
nearly 30-year career in the industry cer- tainly speaks for itself and his expertise level. But Meslin admits that he is not the star. Tat honor goes to his employees — the ones he says truly make him shine. “Tis is a great place to work,” he told
STN. “It’s a supportive environment where nobody is out there on his own.” Especially in the transportation depart-
ment, which he has led for seven years after spending 21 years at San Diego Unified School District. A New York native, Meslin’s family moved to El Paso, Texas, when he was 13. After finishing high school, he at- tended the University of Houston, where he graduated with a political science de- gree and met wife Jan. He spent one year at Houston Independent School District eval- uating educational programs and moved back to New York to obtain his master’s degree from Cornell University. When Jan accepted a professorship at San Diego
PAST NAPT LEADERSHIP AWARD WINNERS
2006 | Denny Coughlin, Minneapolis Public Schools 2007 | Peter Lawrence, Fairport (N.Y.) Central School District 2008 | Kanoe Cockett, Cherry Creek (Colo.) School District
2009 | Brian Weisinger, Spring (Texas) Independent School District 2010 | Don Carnahan, Zonar Systems
www.stnonline.com 45
State University, they headed for California. Meslin found himself “pounding the pavement” when he learned that
the
San Diego Unified School District was searching for a planner in the wake of Proposition 13, passed in 1978 to cap property tax at 1 percent of the pur- chase price and to limit yearly increases to 2 percent. He was hired with the spe- cific mandate of saving $1 million, mostly through bus route optimization. He en- couterered an antiquated system of giant magnetic boards used to manage 600 routes that he immediately improved with a Lotus 1,2,3 spreadsheet. Tat led him to being named interim transporta- tion director while the district sought a permament hire, who turned out to be fellow New Yorker Alexandra Robinson, recently installed as NAPT president. In fact, Meslin hired her. “He was the first person I met when I
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