After more than 38 years in education, Riverbank Unified School District (RUSD) Superintendent Christine Facella is retiring at the end of this school year. She has been with RUSD for 18 years and will be turning the page, ready to start a new chapter.
“It is time to move on and do something else,” stated Facella. “I still want to help people. I have always been the kind of person that wants to help others. I will miss the people and the families the most. Riverbank is a great place.”
Although some may think of retirement as a time of leisure, Facella has several things planned already including working with teacher pensions, traveling a bit, and establishing a Soroptimist Club in Riverbank.
After serving as a teacher in Hawaii for 17 years, Facella made her way to Modesto where she got a job teaching at Sylvan in 2002.
“It was a transition but in a lot of ways it was a good transition,” said Facella. “A couple of reasons why; one, the cost of living is extremely high in Hawaii. Financially it was a relief. Socially you are starting to build friends all over again. I had met a lot of great people while I was teaching at Sylvan. Made a lot of wonderful connections.”
In 2005 she completed her Master’s Degree along with an Administrative Services credential and was introduced to Riverbank when she was hired at Rio Altura as the Vice Principal. Rio Altura closed and Mesa Verde Elementary was built. At that time the superintendent appointed Facella as the principal of Riverbank High School (RHS) during the 2008-09 school year.
“I had 20 years of elementary experience at that point, general ed and special ed,” added Facella with a smile. “I took it as a challenge. It was interesting because one of the teachers said to me why did they put you there. I was like well, I am going to show you.”
She spent five years at Riverbank High before moving into the assistant superintendent role for the district.
“I have told people over and over and over, they are probably sick of hearing it; it was my favorite job in education hands down,” expressed Facella. “I made the right choice. I became the principal at Riverbank High School. I loved the kids. I loved the staff. I thought that it was a great place to land. We did a lot of great things in the five years that I was there.”
One of the legacies she noted that she will leave behind is that the district has hired over 20 alumni that were RHS students during her time as principal.
She said, “I ran into four former students that were at RHS when I was principal there and they all have kids in the system now. It was so great to see them. I got to see kids that were eight years old now working in our business department. There is a lot of moral purpose behind the work here. They want to serve this community. It is great to see all the success that the former students have and get to see them grow into their adult selves and be successful.”
Although it was never her goal to be a superintendent, the opportunity presented itself and Facella took it in 2019. She laughed sharing that she was the ‘COVID Superintendent’ as the schools closed in the spring of 2020 shortly after she was in the role and then slowly began reopening. She is proud of how the district handled the pandemic dealing with the daily challenges head on, maximizing the funds, and doing what was best for the students.
“We first heard it was going to be learning loss when we were coming back and opening,” remarked Facella. “We decided that we were not going to go with the name learning loss, we are going to call it learning recovery. We set up an elaborate system throughout the school sites to address learning recovery. The learning recovery was something that I think we did really well.”
Facella never dreamed of becoming a teacher or being in education but after her mom got her a job at a special needs summer camp when she was 14, her path began to take shape. Now after nearly four decades of service to public education, Facella is on a new journey.
