FAIRFIELD — Two weeks as a high school volunteer at camps for special education students shaped a career that spanned four decades, and saw the evolution from segregation to inclusion for the children who inspired him.

“I volunteered in the spring at a camp (in the Santa Cruz mountains) when I was in high school in both my junior and senior years for a week,” said Jay Speck, 64, who has spent his entire career with the Solano County Office of Education. “I just really liked the kids, and they all had significant disabilities, and it was something about their spirit.”

The experience convinced him he should be a teacher.

Speck started as an elementary teacher at T.C. McDaniel and is finishing as the elected county superintendent of schools.

“It’s been perfect for me. I don’t have a single regret about my career,” Speck said in a phone interview on Wednesday. His last day is Dec. 31.

He will be replaced by Lisette Estrella-Henderson, who Speck lauded as a great choice. She has been the associate superintendent of programs and education services.

“I am going to learn what it’s like to read for pleasure; to move a little slower; and to learn to do nothing,” Speck said. He and his wife, Suzanne, have a mobile home and plan to travel as well. They have a 31-year-old daughter.

“But I am fairly certain I will come back and get engaged in the county at some point,” Speck said.

For now, however, he is telling folks no to joining anything – the same answer he gave his boss and others at the Office of Education when they encouraged him to run for superintendent.

“(It was) not on my bucket list,” said Speck, who said he was not interested in the politics that came with the position. So he told his predecessor, Dee Alarcón, and several colleagues he was not interested.

Then he attended an academy on being a superintendent.

“Then at some point I asked, ‘if not me, then who?’” Speck recalled. “And I liked the answer of me best, and I decided to go for it,” Speck said.

That was six years ago, and most recently, the answers to those career questions were coming back that it was time to retire.

“It just felt like the right time. I noticed I didn’t have the same energy I used to have,” Speck said.

Driving down North Texas Street

Speck – who was born in Monterey Park, attended elementary school in San Francisco and went to high school in Marin – said he still has vivid memories of driving down North Texas Street for the first time. He was headed to a job interview.

“Since I went to (University of California) Davis, I had driven by Fairfield many times, but that was the first time I had driven downtown,” said Speck, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1974. He would later get his master’s in education administration and his administrative credential from California State University, Sacramento.

The county Office of Education was located in downtown Fairfield. He got the job, and launched a career in which he never left the organization and helped shape the direction of special education in the county.

T.C. McDaniel was a special education center for students 5 to 22. After two years as an elementary teacher, he took special education students to Armijo High – the start of integrating special needs children into mainstream campuses.

“There were a lot of people who were talking about it . . . and there was a lot of enthusiasm for it. But there was also a lot of resistance,” Speck recalled.

“I just thought it was the right thing to do. I always thought people should be involved in their community. I didn’t think people should be segregated for any reason,” he said.

That lead to work in a grant-supported position with two colleagues to begin integration throughout the county.

“There were some of the same issues: Parents resisting it and parents pushing it. But the biggest issue was facilities,” said Speck, adding that facilities remains a problem, and in many cases, the same facilities.

When the grant ran out, Speck shifted his career goals from teaching to administration. Eventually he became principal at Irene Larson in Vacaville, a job he very much enjoyed because the got to work with teachers on a daily basis.

Not long after that, Speck became director of special education in the county office, and then assistant superintendent of human resources.

Tenure as top administrator

Speck looks back at his time as the elected superintendent with pride.

He helped guide the various school districts through the Great Recession, developed relationships with Probation and Health and Social Services to make sure education was a priority for children in their care as well.

Speck is often credited for being a champion of vocational education, but emphasizes that he strongly supports academic pursuits and just as strongly believe those students who do not pursue four-year degrees understand additional education and training is still needed to enter the workforce.

“And we’ve done a lot of work developing career pathways in our schools so kids are more prepared for something other than a four-year degree,” he said.

“People have to come out of high school with more skills and abilities (than past generations). That’s just the reality of it. And we are still losing way too many kids,” Speck said.

He also thinks much more work is needed for his first love – special education.

“We are not there yet. I think we have done a great job of raising expectations for what people can do, but there is still some resistance to accepting people with disabilities,” Speck said.

The outgoing superintendent returned to T.C. McDaniel this week, and admits he was caught up in a kind of time warp.

“It seems like a blink,” Speck said.

Reach Todd R. Hansen at 427-6932 or [email protected].

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