By Jennifer Sawhney

As Davina Goldwasser gets situated as the newest superintendent of Petaluma City Schools, she leads the district at a critical point. Over the last year, it has experienced millions of dollars in budget cuts, with more likely to come. The district is also facing significant turnover among its administrative ranks and board members.

Since starting on July 1, she's been strategizing with the district’s new leadership team while prioritizing labor negotiations, relationship building, and improved district communications.

“Every day I'm meeting with more people, and just getting to know the community and then getting to know family stories. What's working for them? Where are some areas that they'd like to see improved?” she said. “So it's just a lot of listening and learning right now.”

Leading in a time of flux

Last year the Petaluma City Schools Board of Education approved a $6.1 million budget cut that resulted in the loss of 44 positions. Five have since been reinstated, although more cuts are likely to follow. More than half of the district’s five board members have terms expiring this year. Goldwasser is also in the midst of finalizing two labor negotiations that may set the tone for what’s to come financially. And the district is in court over two lawsuits.

At Penngrove Elementary in late July, the playful chatter of its youngest students permeated the air during Goldwasser’s second visit to the year-round school since joining the district. Goldwasser will oversee the education of over 7,100 students in the district, from transitional kindergarten through 12th grade plus adult education. She’ll lead over 900 employees at 18 schools.

As she approached the school garden, she noted that before coming to Petaluma, she had only worked in urban settings. She’s been a teacher and school resource director, and served on the Kentfield School District school board, among other roles.

Goldwasser most recently worked at the San Francisco Unified School District as an assistant superintendent charged with preparing high school students for colleges and careers. Her move to Petaluma’s largest district allows her to have a wider impact on students, shaping them from their earliest years until they leave high school, she said.

Goldwasser, who grew up speaking Spanish at home with immigrant parents, appreciates the board’s focus on supporting multilingual learners and students with disabilities. “It’s an expertise of mine,” she said.

Reviewing school safety plans

Having worked in urban schools, she’s familiar with implementing extensive protocols around school safety, she said.

By law, schools are required to submit safety plans to the state.

Less than four weeks into her job, she is still in the process of visiting the schools in the district to verify if they have clear postings about safety protocols. She plans to meet with site leaders next week to review those plans.

Goldwasser is “hoping to ensure that it is uniform across school sites and will reinforce the expectation that principals need to be going over the safety protocols with their staff in the first month of school,” she said.

Retaining and supporting staff

The new superintendent intends to bring on a new coaching and supervision structure to provide better support to principals.

“We really want to make sure we retain our excellent leaders,” she said, pointing to staff retention and recruitment as “a growth area.” These plans are in the works and her office will share the information during leadership meetings in August.

Labor negotiations are a “top priority.” Goldwasser said she has already met with union leaders and is excited about the partnership.

The outcomes of these negotiations will impact the district budget going forward, she noted: “With that still pending, we actually don't have all of the clarity for what the year is going to look like.”

Improving communication

The district office is working to streamline its website and board communications under the purview of Heather Ramme, the new director of technology, innovation, and enrollment, Goldwasser said.

“As an outsider, it was very hard for me to find any accurate information about the district” online, Goldwasser said, so she wants to make the site more user-friendly. “It sounds simple, but it's actually a huge lever for communication” to direct people to the proper place for a complaint or a concern.

When that’s done in October or September, Ramme will work on school websites to highlight each school’s character and help prospective parents distinguish among them.

Goldwasser also wants to make sure the Petaluma City Schools district community is up to speed on the board of education meetings, and said she plans to send out summaries and meeting links within 24 hours after a meeting.

Addressing lawsuits

The district is also in the midst of facing two lawsuits involving allegations of unlawful termination and student discrimination, filed in Sonoma County Superior Court in late 2025 and early 2026, respectively. Board of Education President Mady Cloud said she didn’t have authority to speak on legal issues.

Goldwasser said she wasn’t aware of the details of these cases and couldn’t speak to specifics.

Generally speaking, she said that when she’s seen lawsuits come up, she has thought about steps that could have been taken proactively to resolve the issue along the way, characterizing lawsuits as a last resort.

“A lot of it, I have found in any district, comes to follow-through and communication. Once that breaks down, then people have no choice but to go different routes.” she said.

Making do with less

After the board approved her position in May, Goldwasser was “brought into the fold fairly quickly,” meeting early on with outgoing Superintendent Matthew Harris, participating in exit interviews, and serving on hiring committees before her official start date, she said.

Like her predecessor, she has a slim administrative team and is trying to strategize the work her team can leverage in the wake of budget cuts.

This year, that work will involve adapting to the budget reductions, she said. “We are very short-staffed at the district office level. That's where the majority of cuts remain so that we can focus our support to the school sites.”

Since 2025, most of the district’s top administrators have left, representing a loss of institutional knowledge. The district’s three newest assistant superintendents are “energized” and “eager,” Goldwasser said, and are getting acquainted with their peers and the district.

Goldwasser said she emphasizes “continuous improvement,” and is ready to learn more about the community alongside her new team.

“This is an amazing place and honestly I just have so much gratitude for having landed here,” she said.