By Patric Hedlund, TME

Chuck Mullen says, above all, he is a coach. He coached El Tejon students to a state chess championship in the 1990s. They went on to national conquests. He served as a basketball coach at Frazier Mountain High School and at El Tejon School. For 26 years his ‘day job’ was as a history teacher at the El Tejon middle school.

Mullen launched the ‘Work Together’ movement during a struggle to rally community defenders for the El Tejon Unified School District’s interscholastic sports programs. That was during the recession, when former ETUSD Superintendent Katie Kleier proposed axing sports as a cost-cutting measure. Mullen rallied a slate of candidates for the school board, including his wife, Vickie Mullen, who became school board president. As president of the El Tejon Teachers Association (ETTA) he successfully fought last year to avoid teacher layoffs.

Now Mullen has gone back to school to obtain an administrator’s credential. Union leadership passed to ETTA Vice President Sandy Spencer and this week he began serving as “not exactly ‘interim’, more like ‘intern’ principal” at Frazier Park School. His credential will be granted this year. ETUSD Superintendent Rod Wallace, who served as interim, has gone back to focus on district duties. Mullen said his primary goal is to advance reading proficiency among students and to tell the public about “the great things this school is doing.”

This is part of the January 8, 2016 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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