School District's No. 2 Administrator to Resign

The associate superintendent for the San Bruno Park School District is resigning from her post later this month, San Bruno Patch has learned.

Lynn Orong recently submitted her letter of resignation after accepting a position at Metropolitan Education, which provides career-oriented educational programs to high school students and adults in Santa Clara County. Her last day will be Jan. 18.

Orong’s departure has set off a search for a replacement, although school officials at the last school board meeting discussed hiring someone temporarily and giving the person fewer responsibilities than Orong had.

Orong’s position changed about a year ago from chief business officer to associate superintendent after she took on more responsibilities in the district. In the interim, certain duties such as managing the district’s human resources for classified staff and maintenance would shift to Superintendent David Hutt.

As the district’s No. 2 administrator, Orong has led several key efforts since she first started in 2007.

In 2010, she set up the district’s proposal to the state Allocation Board to use $12.2 million from the $30 million Carl Sandburg site fund over several years to take care of non-capital improvement expenses, including paying for retirement benefits and a special education study, in order to reduce San Bruno Park’s ongoing deficit spending.

She co-authored a multimedia presentation, titled “Public School Finance 101,” which provided a comprehensive explanation on how public schools in California are financed.

Under Orong’s leadership, the district’s financial books received a clean bill of health every year, Hutt said.

“She was instrumental in insuring that the district was able to certify a positive fiscal condition in each and every financial ‘milestone’ document presented during her tenure of service,” Hutt wrote in an email.

At school board meetings, Orong was usually stern but always direct and thorough with her comments to school board members and the public.

Longtime schools trustee Skip Henderson described her as one of the top two business managers the district ever had.

“She did a pretty darn good job for us and kept us on track in terms of trying to meet our goals and build reserves,” Henderson said. “Had we not followed her lead, we’d be in a lot worse shape than we’re in now.”