John Mendiburu to be Inducted into CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame

John Mendiburu was driven from an early age by a desire to help people and make a difference, but it wasn’t immediately clear to him what his career path should be. Both of Mendiburu’s parents emphasized the importance of service and giving back to the community. He thought becoming an educator could be a good way to achieve that, but it wasn’t until he was in high school that he decided it was the right choice.

“That’s when it really hit me,” he said. “Not that I struggled in high school, but I saw others that were needing help, and that really made me decide that the next path in my life was to get my teaching credentials so I could come back and help others.”

Mendiburu accomplished just that. He earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from California State University, Bakersfield in 1995 and continued at the university to pursue his master’s in education, as well as his teaching and administrative credentials. He also earned a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of LaVerne in 2010.

Mendiburu has gone on to have a 30-year career in education, most of which was spent at the Rosedale Union School District (RUSD), where Mendiburu himself is an alumnus. He served as a teacher and principal before moving up to work in the district office. Mendiburu was selected in 2009 to serve as the district’s superintendent, a role he held for about ten years.

In 2019, Mendiburu joined the Kern County Superintendent of Schools (KCSOS) as an associate superintendent and in 2023 was appointed by the county Board of Education to serve in his current role as superintendent.

In recognition of his accomplished career, Mendiburu is being inducted into CSUB’s Alumni Hall of Fame this year. The other inductees are retired California Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Jennifer Barrera, Migrant Education Director Janie Flores, retired Kern Medical Center Chief Financial Officer Fred Plane, and Kern County Superior Court Judge David Zulfa.

The inductees will be honored at a ceremony at the Bakersfield Marriott on Feb. 26. Tickets for the ceremony are available here.

“The fact that I’m part of this Hall of Fame is still unreal and surreal all at the same time,” Mendiburu said. “I’m just nothing but honored and humbled to be part of a group of people who have truly had a commitment to not only Kern County but beyond because of what they learned and what they were taught at CSUB.”

Merril Clanton has known Mendiburu for over 14 years, having first served as his secretary while he was the RUSD superintendent and then joining him at KCSOS after he was hired there. Having seen how he has successfully led both institutions, Clanton believes Mendiburu is very worthy of the recognition.

“I can’t imagine anyone better suited to be in the CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame,” she said. “I am extremely proud of the impact that John has made on Kern County education. I think he’s so deserving of this induction, given his true commitment to all students in Kern County. He is an advocate for local education.”

A students-first approach

When Mendiburu first arrived on campus at CSUB, he was immediately struck by its sense of community.

“All the students interacted with each other, the professors, the faculty — everybody was engaged,” he said. “Every time you went on campus, you felt like you were welcome. It was like a family. What I really liked about Cal State Bakersfield was the sense of that community, which it still has to this day.”

Mendiburu said the teacher education program at CSUB helped him strengthen his connections not only with the campus but with the wider community, especially when he had the opportunity to teach in schools.

“The faculty really encouraged us to be part of the community,” he said. “When we went into our student teaching phase, they really encouraged us to be part of the classroom, to not feel like you’re just there to fill time, but to be part of it and embrace the students. That really allowed me to flourish and become a teacher.”

Mendiburu took those experiences to heart when he joined the Rosedale Union School District. Both as a teacher and as an administrator, it was important to him that students’ learning experience and wellbeing was the first priority.  

“It does not matter what position you hold in the school system; we’re all there for students, and if you are in the field of education and you don’t think about student success and what we can do to help our students, then you’re in the wrong business,” he said. “It’s really easy to forget why you’re in the business sometimes. We have to always remember that students are our future, and if we don’t invest the time now in them, then we won’t see tomorrow’s leaders.”

RUSD’s previous superintendent, Jamie Henderson, supervised Mendiburu while he was working at the district office as the assistant superintendent of business services. He said he was impressed by Mendiburu’s calm, professional demeanor and his willingness to tackle any challenge that came his way.

When Henderson decided to retire and the time came for the school board to interview applicants for the job, Henderson said it was clear after Mendiburu’s interview that he was the right person to lead the district.

“John showed himself at every level. I knew he was so well prepared,” he said. “After John’s interview, I went in and I told the board, ‘I respect all five of you. You’re my bosses, but quite frankly, if you don’t hire that man, you’re nuts.’ You could just tell John got it. He embraced taking on the challenge of the job of superintendent. You could tell that John was going to learn and that he would exercise good judgment.”

Mendiburu led significant projects during his tenure as superintendent, including campus modernizations and the construction of new gyms at the district’s middle schools.

“Schools are very important as a safe place for students to come and feel like they’re welcome, and it was important to us as a district,” he said. “We did what we needed to do to not only provide for our students but to give them the opportunities for different educational pathways as well.”

To help determine what the needs were and what improvements were most critical, Mendiburu worked with staff to collect and examine student data.

“Data tells us everything that we need to know about a student, and not just one piece of data — multiple data points to really start making the improvements that we needed for our students,” he said. “I was very excited to see the student success in Rosedale. I was very prideful of the fact that any member of the faculty who joined our district were there for students where we put children first in whatever we did.”

While Mendiburu held the top position in the district, he believes all faculty and staff are vital to its success.

“Everybody’s important in the school system, whether you’re the superintendent, a teacher, the bus driver or an instructional aide,” he said. “Everybody is on the same playing field. We’re all there to help the students and the families who came through our district.”

As his secretary, Clanton was able to witness Mendiburu’s leadership firsthand. She said she was impressed by his ability to juggle a variety of challenges facing the district and how he would thoughtfully consider any concern that was brought to him, regardless of how small it seemed.

“Challenges would come and we would experience different issues throughout the years working together, but John’s approach was always the same,” she said. “He would never shy away from an issue. He would never dismiss anyone as if their concern wasn’t important. Regardless of the challenge, he welcomed it, faced it head-on and tried everything he could do to make the situation better.”

Having seen how Mendiburu successfully led RUSD after his retirement, Henderson feels that his intuition about him has been validated.

“His message was very clear to his principals and to the staff that having students succeed, having students be proficient in what they’re learning is the reason parents send their children to school, and John made good on that,” he said.

Mendiburu may no longer be the superintendent, but Clanton said he’s had a significant impact on the Rosedale Union School District, including faculty and staff. 

“When I run into a Rosedale employee, often the first thing out of their mouth is ‘how is John?’ and I think that that really says so much about the value that was placed on his superintendency,” she said. “There have been wonderful leaders before him, and a wonderful leader after him, but there’s a uniqueness to John. There’s a little something special that everyone picks up on. He’s a unicorn. I’ve been around a lot of school administrators and district administrators, and he’s one in a million.”

Driving positive change

While Mendiburu is proud of his achievements at RUSD, running the Kern County Superintendent of Schools has proven to be a unique challenge. Rather than being able to focus on the needs of just one district, Mendiburu is now responsible for providing support to 46 school districts across Kern County, as well as supporting KCSOS’ own programs and initiatives.

“I think of the county office as a liaison between the state of California and the local school districts,” he said. “We can’t go in and tell a school district what to do, but we’re there for support in times of need. We are here to help districts proactively engage with their students.”

Some of the smaller, rural school districts in the county are especially in need of extra support, according to Mendiburu.

“Those administrators wear a lot of hats,” he said. “My feeling is that a county office role should be to help those small districts, just as much as we would help any large district that may have additional resources to do certain things that maybe cannot happen in a small district, because at the end of the day, regardless of where a child lives, they’re all our children.”

Under Mendiburu’s leadership, KCSOS has focused on the individual needs of districts and the communities they serve rather than pursue a countywide, one-size-fits-all approach. Mendiburu believes this is has proven to be a more effective method of serving students.

One of the improvements Mendiburu is most proud of is how KCSOS reduced transportation wait times for students enrolled in its special education program. Prior to this initiative, which began in 2024, students would often have to spend more than two hours on a bus to reach a site that provided the specialized support they require.

KCSOS decided to pursue a regional model that divided the county into three service areas and worked with school districts to provide classroom space for specialized instruction. Now, it only takes 20 minutes or less for most students in the program to reach a school site that can support them.

“Now the students are being served within the area in which they live,” Mendiburu said. “We’ve had a huge uptick with parent involvement. We know without parents, the students wouldn’t get that extra support at home. Most of our parents are going to their child’s classroom now because of that simple change.”

Mendiburu has overseen other significant initiatives at KCSOS during his time as superintendent, including the opening of the Kern County STEAM Yard and the Future Readiness Center last year.

The STEAM Yard gives students an opportunity to get hands-on learning in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art and math through field trips, after-school camps, workshops and other activities.

“Students need to be able to have that opportunity to explore career paths, even before they get to the high school-level. A lot of times, students start to think what they want to do at a young age. I started thinking about being a teacher when I was in elementary school, and it solidified when I got to high school,” Mendiburu said. “The STEAM Yard allows students to come in and get hands-on with all those activities to really start making them think and explore what career pathways they might be interested in.”

The Future Readiness Center has a similar goal. It serves as a hub where students can get free individualized support to help prepare them for college. Center staff help students with applying for applications, exploring career options, preparing for job interviews and more.

“A lot of students could leave high school thinking they know what they want to do, but then they end up not doing what they really wanted, so the point of these pathways is to really give them an opportunity to explore, to see what it is that they really want to do once they leave the K-12 system,” Mendiburu said.

Clanton, who now serves as Mendiburu’s assistant at KCSOS, said he has been tireless in his efforts to improve education for students in the region. 

“I don’t know when he sleeps because he is completely invested in not only Kern County Superintendent of Schools, but in supporting all the school districts,” he said. “I think John makes it a priority to provide services to the entire county. He definitely recognizes where there are deficits and does everything that he can do to fill those gaps and provide any kind of support or service to assist with those needs.”

‘The core of Kern County’

Outside of his work at KCSOS, Mendiburu is also very active in the community. He has served on the boards of several local and statewide organizations, including the California Living Museum, the Kern Economic Development Corporation and the California County Superintendents Association. He is also a member of the Rotary Club of Bakersfield.

“I feel that any entity that I can be part of that contributes and adds on to the education of our students is meaningful,” he said. “There are multiple types of entities that I’ll be part of and contribute to just so that I can bring something back and enhance the education here in Kern County.”

Mendiburu has also stayed connected with CSUB over the years. He has served on the President’s Community Ambassador Council and in 2024 reinstated the KCSOS Office Welcome — a gathering of the district’s employees — at the Icardo Center.

He has also partnered with CSUB to host the Kern Healthcare Academy, which gives high-school students interested in a career in the medical field the chance to get hands-on learning experience and meet with health care professionals.

Mendiburu said it’s important to him as superintendent that KCSOS maintain a strong partnership with CSUB.

“They are the core of Kern County as far as higher ed goes,” he said. “It is a pathway for students, whether they come directly from high school or a community college. It definitely is the spot that shines here in Kern County and produces tomorrow’s leaders.”

On a personal level, these efforts are also a way for Mendiburu to support the institution that he believes set him up for success as an educator.

“I feel like CSUB gave me all the tools that I needed to be the person I am today,” he said. “From my bachelor’s degree and teaching credential to my administrative credential, it provided me what I needed to give back to the community, to give back to the students in which we serve here in Kern County.”

Dr. Mendiburu poses with his wife, Shelby, and their two college-aged children.

Dr. Mendiburu was sworn in as Kern County Superintendent of Schools in 2023.