Vanguard superintendent, 53, will retire effective this month
By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal
After 32 years spent as an educator, school administrator, Dr. Narciso Garcia, EdD, will officially retire June 30 at the relatively young age of 53, just when the charter school district he represents, Vanguard, has claimed its fifth “A” in Academics in as many years.
“We’re only one of approximately three school districts in the Region One Education Service Center to garner the 'A' rating,” he said.
That means a lot to those who call Vanguard home, said Garcia, considering that Region One services 38 school districts and 10 charter school systems in the eight South Texas counties that comprise its scope.
So why retire now?
One word, said Garcia — family.
“For some months now, I’ve been thinking of my old friend Luis Santillan who was a dear friend of mine, extremely close. We used to talk on a weekly basis before he passed away. Many of your readers will recognize the name.”
Indeed, Santillan was a lifelong PSJA ISD educator/administrator, community leader, who also served as San Juan city commissioner for three terms before passing away in 2022.
“When I started my job in administration, Mr. Santillan was on his way out. He was retiring, and I was barely starting. This was 20-odd years ago, and he sat down with me, and he said, ‘Hey, look, I’m retiring as an assistant superintendent, and you’re just coming in as a principal.’ He told me, ‘So I want to leave you with some words of wisdom. Whatever you do, don’t be the type of administrator who never goes home. Because when all this is said and done, when you’re done with your career, when it’s the end of the day, if you have no one to go home to, you’ve done it wrong.”
Put in context, said Garcia, this is when you obviously have two people who truly love one another, are faithful to their marriage vows, but one of the partners is simply a workaholic — 12- to 14-hour days, based on either design or by demand. There will be a price to pay, said Garcia, if you don’t pay attention to family time.
“Luis Santillan said to me so long ago now, ‘You don’t want to lose your wife, you don’t want to lose your family. Your family and God should come first. But at the end of the day when you retire from this business, and if you have no one to go to, you’ve done it wrong.’”
Narciso Garcia said he can recall that conversation like it was yesterday.
“I can still hear him saying that as if we were still sitting across from one another. Then he finished up with this bit of advice as well, which I still remember:”
‘You always need your family by your side, to have your back, to support you because when you retire, that’s who you’re going to have to go to at the end of the day.’ Thirty years later, I still have my wife, my only wife, whom I love, man. Plus, we still have both of my parents, who are, thank God, still doing well in their 80s.”
The couple also share a son, who has now graduated with a master’s degree and is going back to school for more post-secondary education.
“Throughout my career, I’ve thought of what Luis Santillan said to me so many years ago, and I’ve made a point of putting family first. It’s just that now, my wife, who is also a lifelong educator, and I have the time to travel. We’ve both reached full retirement age. So why not take advantage of all that we’ve worked for now instead of later?”
This summer, they’ll enjoy the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, traveling across three, maybe four states. Next spring, he says, the husband and wife will visit Italy for their 30th wedding anniversary.
“That trip is really going to be something,” Garcia said.
There can be a downside, however, to early retirement. Last week, gossip was floating around some coffee shops that the Vanguard board was forcing Garcia out, wanting to bring in someone new, for undisclosed reasons. Given the charter school’s success, though, no hint of major discord from within, the gossip never made much sense to those familiar with the charter.
“I know that we’ve done some great things here at Vanguard, and sometimes people are envious. They’re jealous of the success that we’ve had, and by ‘we,’ I obviously mean Vanguard’s entire staff, along with our students and the parents who support them,” said Garcia. “Some people, though, and it’s sad in a sense, have nothing better to do than float rumors. For the record, though, I am retiring of my own free will, with the blessing of the board and staff, whom I deeply thank for the seven wonderful years I have had the pleasure of serving as Vanguard’s superintendent. This also wasn’t an overnight decision. The board has known about my retirement plans for quite some time.”
Meaning, in the mind of Narciso Garcia, he’s going out on top, so to speak, as is the charter school district he represents, which should be the goal of anyone among school administrators, he said, who climb up the work hierarchy in hopes of one day being named school superintendent.
Not everyone, after all, has the motivation and perseverance to earn a doctorate. In the old days, a master’s degree might suffice for new supe applicants, but not today.
In the 1990s, in fact, PSJA ISD hired Bill Morgan who lacked a doctorate, but had a master’s degree and assistant superintendent experience with Houston ISD; but since his tenure ended, courtesy of a heart attack, a doctorate, PhD or EdD, has been the common standard across almost all school districts.
In other words, Garcia said, diplomas aside, if a person is fortunate to get a superintendent’s job one day, make the most of it. Don’t just sit on your laurels — Dr. This, and Dr. That — watching the crowd pass by, content with the status quo.
Looking back, Narciso Garcia was hired as Vanguard’s top administrator in 2017 when the charter had approximately 2,700 students vs. the approximate 7,500 it expects to seat during the upcoming 2024/2025 school year.
“To say that Vanguard has grown in the past seven years would be an understatement,” he said, sounding happy with the legacy he’s helped to create.
Work at Age 7
In the case of Narciso Garcia, when anyone mentions “work,” they have to go back in time when many South Texas kids from his generation lived in a two-parent household, and each year, they would join other migrant families, traveling north, northwest, where they’d spend a good chunk of the year picking vegetables, backs bent, hoes at the ready.
Like many children from his era, boys and girls, who grew up in South Texas in the 1980s, Garcia came from a home with little in the way of material possessions, creature comforts. The family abode, where his parents still live today on the south side of Edcouch-Elsa, had no indoor plumbing, no AC, no frills, just the basics — a roof and four walls, a few rooms — but it did have what families need most, Garcia said — parents who loved their kids.
Fresh out of high school, when Garcia joined the U.S. Army, the first thing he did with his sign-up bonus was give it to his dad so the family home could finally be outfitted with indoor plumbing. From there, the kid who started working the ag fields while still in second grade never looked back.
“For my brother and me, summers didn’t mean vacation,” Garcia said. “Instead, summers meant working out in the hot sun from daybreak to sunset, but you know what? I don’t regret any of that because we learned the meaning of hard work, which has paid dividends throughout my life.”
Plus, he said, he and his brother had parents who taught them that to get ahead and escape a life of back-breaking farm labor meant getting an education; if you do a job, do it right.
“When I was 7, I started working up there in Idaho. Back then we didn’t know about child labor laws and all that stuff. We were poor, man. We just needed to work. So we were in Idaho, hoeing sugar beets. We used to travel to Idaho, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, but we were migrants back then, working the fields since the age of 7 until I was 18.”
After high school and the Army, Garcia studied his way through the ranks of academia while working his way through the professional ranks — teacher, assistant principal, principal, and then the top spot at Vanguard in 2017.
“I thank my parents for the work ethic because I don’t think Vanguard would be where it’s at if I hadn’t had that work ethic imparted to me by my parents,” he said.
Life can indeed be odd at times, though, said Garcia.
“I actually looked forward to going up north as a migrant. I saw that as my vacation. Even though it was hard work, I looked forward to that work.”
All told, Narciso Garcia has been in the field of education for almost 33 years, all spent in South Texas. Before coming to Vanguard, Garcia rose through the ranks at Valley View ISD, PSJA ISD and La Villa ISD, where he served as superintendent for three years.
Now, with retirement set for June 30 (next Sunday), he has time to reflect on both his life and his career, the many friends and colleagues he’s met along the way, the students and parents he’s met throughout his long journey. The transition to full retirement, he says, will be nothing more than a new adventure.
“I’ve been working since the age of 7, so the change of pace is certainly going to be different with regard to retirement,” he said, “but at this stage in my life, as I’ve already mentioned, my immediate family is what I value most.”