A personal mission applied.

Shortly after assuming the superintendency of California's Hacienda La Puente schools in 2000, Edward Lee Vargas declared at his first administrative staff meeting that the days of operating a dual-track system were now history--one in which some students did extremely well and the other where most did not.

"We were going to become one unified school system where all students, regardless of the personal characteristics, were successful and achieved at high standards," he says he told the assembled.

This has been Vargas's mantra wherever he's occupied a leadership role in a well-traveled, 32-year career that includes superintendencies in Texas and New Mexico and other central-office postings in California and Washington. In most stops, including the current one, he's brought about measurable success in closing gaps in student achievement years before most educators were required to wrestle with subgroup performance.

Yet the belief system that forms the essence of his leadership stems from a much earlier point in time, when Vargas was a youngster in Riverside, Calif., and Taos, N.M., with a sister, two years older, with Down Syndrome.

"Growing up with Cissy in the '50s and '60s when services for children with disabilities were almost non-existent, I watched my parents fight school systems for access and services for her and saw firsthand the power of parents to force school systems to adapt to the beautiful diversity of America's children," Vargas says. "They molded in me a determination, a relentless focus on equity and excellence for every child and a deep desire to help each and every parent as though they were my own parents."

Together with a handful of other activists, Vargas's parents, first-generation Americans who never completed high school themselves, pushed their local district to begin a new school for children with developmental disabilities.

As superintendent of the 27,000-student Hacienda La Puente district, the largest in the San Gabriel Valley about 20 miles east of Los Angeles, Vargas has become a champion of special education, acting as an adviser to the U.S. Department of Education on the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. One of his district's high schools, Los Altos, is held as a model for full inclusion on the secondary level.

Vargas exhibits a special talent for blocking out the distractions that often sidetrack a superintendent's initiatives. "He is always focused on children. I've never heard him deviate from that," says Thelma Melendez, who has been working with Vargas for nearly two years as her mentor while she prepares for a superintendency.

"He'll always say, 'Thelma, take the high road and it will always pay off,'" she adds.

Vargas shrugs off any unique skill for holding firm on his instructional goals. "It's easy," he says. "My office is full of (student) artwork. I spend a lot of time in the schools. That's where my energy comes from."

He's investing considerable capital, personal and financial, in raising expectations of students, parents and staff in a predominately Hispanic district where 60 percent of the students qualify for the federal lunch program and a quarter are English language learners.

Vargas eagerly participates each year in a program he started that sends every kindergarten pupil in Hacienda La Puente on a half-day field trip to a nearby community college. The youngsters hear from the college president, draw pictures about what they hope to do as adults, accept a T-shirt bearing the year they would likely graduate from college and receive buttons that say, "My First Day of College."

"To visualize mentally is a real powerful mechanism to motivate students," Vargas says. "I invite the central-office staff to join me too so they can see it's all about kids."

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

BIO STATS: LEE VARGAS

Currently: superintendent, Hacienda La Puente Unified Schools, City of Industry, Calif.

Previously: superintendent, Ysleta Independent School District, El Paso, Texas

Age: 54

Greatest influence on career: My oldest sister Cissy, who has Down Syndrome. I watched my parents fight school systems in the 1950s and '60s for access and services for her.

Best professional day: There could be two. First was when serving as superintendent in Santa Fe, N.M., and rolling out the "Healthy Tomorrows" van, a converted Winnebago complete with health exam rooms and family support services for all needy children. The second, when serving as superintendent of the Ysleta district in Texas, we surpassed the 90 percent pass rate on the state test for all subgroups of the 48,000 students across the predominately poor and minority district.

Books at bedside: The Promise of Death, the Passion of Life: A Reflective Exploration of Death, Loss and Living Fully by Jana Baldrige Vargas; and Tao of Leadership by John Heider

Biggest blooper: I had just started as assistant superintendent in Santa Ana, Calif., after five years as a director in Seattle, Wash. During my first board meeting, I publicly thanked the committee I was working with on behalf of the Seattle Public Schools. The board laughed while the board president told me t had two weeks to redeem myself or clear out.

Why I'm an AASA member: AASA acts as a glue that binds school superintendents and other educational leaders from across the country in a common purpose, a philosophy together, while grounding us all in a common call to action on behalf of children and the future of our great democracy. AASA is to educational leadership what NASA is to space exploration. Both are constantly seeking the outer limits of our potential as a society.