A hankering for the big picture.

If you search the archives of the major daily newspaper in Orange County, Calif., in pursuit of news about longtime superintendent Dick Bray, all you'll turn up are a few nominal references.

That's rather surprising since Bray has built a substantial reputation as one of the most knowledgeable public school leaders in his state--the go-to guy when his superintendent colleagues in California need a cogent voice to shape the direction of state legislation and regulations in Sacramento.

He's been the superintendent of three school systems over the last 17 years, the chair of his state association's highly active superintendents council for the past three years and now serves as a member of the AASA Governing Board. He's the state's acknowledged expert on response to intervention, a burgeoning reform process. A neighboring superintendent, Gwen Gross, calls him "courageous, determined ... and a strong leader in a quiet, cerebral way."

Bray relished hearing the latter depiction by his colleague. He has managed to evade the public radar screen by choice.

"Some superintendents are in the paper every month," Bray says. "I've never been that kind of guy. I don't care who gets the credit."

From the moment he started as a superintendent in 1992 leading the 2,000-student Soledad, Calif., district, Bray has not allowed himself to be a passive observer of the legislative process. He's a big-picture person who wants to be one of those applying a paintbrush to the canvas.

While in Soledad, he helped to draft a bill that resulted in $1 million in new state funds to the school district because of the major expansion of the state prison in the community. During his 12 years as superintendent of the Hesperia Unified Schools, Bray built a consortium of five school districts that successfully lobbied for $50 million statewide to equalize student transportation.

In representing the Association of California School Administrators, Bray uses quiet, one-on-one moments in the offices of elected officials, as well as formal hearings in front of the state board of education and the state legislature, to convey with candor the problems with state or federal education policy. "You can talk with him about any issue, and the breadth of his knowledge will astound you," says Susan Davis, who is editor of ACSA's magazine.

"I've realized at this level that you really can inject your thoughts into the process, and, gosh, you really should if you really care about education," says Bray, who has served since 2006 as superintendent of the 21,500-student Tustin Unified Schools, which includes the city of Santa Ana and part of Irvine.

His current district is socioeconomically and ethnically diverse. About 25 percent of the students are considered English language learners, and 35 percent qualify for the federal lunch program. Even so, Tustin has 18 California Distinguished Schools among its 28 buildings, and more than 90 percent of each graduating class continues in some form of postsecondary education.

Bray, who grew up in Alhambra in southern California, admits the district has a history of accomplishment in academics. Yet he's pushed the frontier in his short time in Tustin, implementing response to intervention in every elementary school.

Because of the huge demand by schools across the state to tap into his expertise on the subject, he and two neighboring superintendents formed the West Coast Center for Educational Excellence, whose RTI trainer has now spawned Bray's ideas in more than 250 schools.

He believes his highest priority as a superintendent amounts to managing the change process. "You can't just be focused, and you can't hammer your teachers with every new thing that comes along," Bray says. "So what's important is focused change over time. You need to give it time to work."

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BIO STATS: DICK BRAY

CURRENTLY: superintendent, Tustin, Calif., Unified Schools

PREVIOUSLY: superintendent, Hesperia, Calif., Unified Schools

AGE: 62

GREATEST INFLUENCE ON CAREER: Dave Long, now California secretary of education. I was in his cabinet when he was superintendent of Banning Unified Schools and learned from him how to be an effective, well-rounded superintendent while having fun.

BEST PROFESSIONAL DAY: The day we first got our state test scores back after implementing response to intervention in all 12 of our elementary schools and seeing a huge increase across the grade levels in every school. Now we had proof of RTI.

BOOKS AT BEDSIDE: From Systems Thinking to Systemic Action: 48 Key Questions to Guide the Journey by Lee Jenkins; and Pyramid Response to Intervention: Rtl, Professional Learning Communities, and How to Respond When Kids Don't Learn by Mike Mattos

BIGGEST BLOOPER: Early in my career as a principal, several board of education members showed up at a parent meeting I was conducting. Caught by surprise by their unannounced appearance, I stopped the meeting and began to recognize them. As I got to the last board member, my mind went completely blank and for the life of me I could not remember his name. After a short but uncomfortable pause, my PTA president whispered his name to me.

KEY REASON I'M AN AASA MEMBER: Congress and the president need to hear where we stand on national education policy and funding. AASA has taken the premier leadership role in that advocacy.

Jay Goldman is editor of The School Administrator. E-mail: [e-mail]