LBUSD Employee Spotlight

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Stephanie Heilig, School Choice and Parent Engagement Administrator

For Stephanie Heilig, belonging isn’t just a value. It’s something she works to make real for thousands of students.

As Long Beach Unified’s School Choice and Parent Engagement Administrator, Stephanie helps students and families navigate one of the most important decisions of their educational journey: finding a high school where they can learn, grow, and feel that they belong.

And the results speak volumes. This year, more than 95% of participating students received their first- or second-choice high school, continuing a strong pattern of placement outcomes across the District.

But behind those numbers is Stephanie’s unwavering focus on students.

She believes students thrive in environments that reflect their interests, aspirations, and needs, especially when they have a voice in choosing them. That belief drives how she approaches the School of Choice process, from examining placement data to identifying barriers that could prevent students from accessing opportunities across LBUSD.

Stephanie is also known for being direct and determined. When she sees an inequity, she doesn’t work around it. She calls attention to it, asks hard questions, and, when necessary, rethinks the process entirely. For Stephanie, a system is only successful if it works fairly for the students and families it was designed to serve.

That commitment has helped make School of Choice about much more than where a student attends high school. It’s about helping young people find their place, whether their passion is engineering, medicine, law, business, technology, the arts, or another pathway entirely.

At its heart, Stephanie’s work is about a simple idea: students achieve more when they feel they belong.

Through her advocacy, attention to equity, and relentless focus on students, Stephanie is helping turn that idea into action, one student, one family, and one choice at a time.

Thank you, Stephanie, for serving students and taking over values and moving them into action!

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Rustum Bacho, Assistant Director, Office of School Safety

A crisis rarely waits for a convenient hour. It can unfold during the school day or arrive in a 1 a.m. phone call. When it does, Rustum Bacho is ready.

Known across LBUSD simply as “Bacho,” he is often among the first to learn that an urgent situation is developing. He moves immediately: deploying School Safety officers, coordinating the response, and gathering verified information as events unfold. When facts can change quickly and speculation can move even faster, Bacho brings discipline, urgency, and calm.

His priority: protecting the safety and well-being of our students and staff.

Bacho also understands that during a crisis, communication is part of safety. Working in tandem with the Office of Communications, he provides confirmed facts to keep families, employees, and the broader school community informed. He is a stickler for messaging that is tight, consistent, and accurate, not for the sake of the words alone, but because clarity reduces confusion, supports sound decisions, and builds trust.

That partnership requires speed without sacrificing precision. As officers respond in the field, Bacho remains connected to the evolving situation, confirming what is known, identifying what remains to be determined, and ensuring that updates reflect the facts at that moment. His steady flow of reliable information helps the District communicate responsibly while the Office of School Safety remains focused on the immediate response.

The work begins long before an emergency. Bacho stays current on evolving safety practices, response protocols, and crisis communication. He participates in professional seminars and symposiums that strengthen preparedness and bring new learning back to LBUSD.

In 2025, Bacho was a featured speaker at Daly Strategic Group’s Second Annual Campus Safety Symposium. There, he shared LBUSD’s proactive approach to crisis communication, keeping families, staff, and the community informed while operational teams work to secure campuses and protect those within them. His message reflected a principle that guides his work every day: transparency and safety are not competing priorities; when handled thoughtfully, they reinforce one another.

Much of Bacho’s work happens behind the scenes, often at the very moment others are looking for answers. Its impact is felt in coordinated responses, carefully verified information, and a school community that can trust LBUSD to communicate with both urgency and care.

When the call comes, LBUSD knows Bacho will answer.

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Dr. Nader Twal, Special Assistant to the Superintendent

In the Board Building, Dr. Nader Twal wears so many hats that “Special Assistant to the Superintendent” may be the shortest way to describe him. Strategist. Convener. Facilitator. Student advocate. Host. And, depending on whom you ask, the resident comedian and life of the fourth floor. Beneath the humor is a leader whose work helps people connect, priorities move forward, and LBUSD’s commitment to excellence and equity take shape.

Consider the 2026-27 Opening Management Team Gathering. With “Creating a Better Future Together: From Values to Action” as its theme and “Mate Masie: Listening to Learn, Learning to Lead” as its charge, the event called for far more than an agenda. It required careful coordination across teams, facilities, programming, audiovisual needs, speakers, music, visuals, food, materials, staffing, transitions, and a detailed run-of-show. Nader helped lead the planning effort, bringing colleagues together around one purpose: opening the school year connected, inspired, and ready to turn shared values into action. That ability to organize people and details without losing sight of why the work matters is quintessentially Nader.

He brings that same mix of precision, presence and personality to LBUSD’s Quarterly Meetings. As host and facilitator, Nader helps leaders move beyond updates into meaningful collective learning. The meetings center Vision 2035 and guide teams through curiosity, collective sense-making, inquiry-centered listening, cross-strategy reflection, and alignment between strategic priorities and the Board’s Goals and Guardrails. The work asks leaders to practice self-awareness, sit with discomfort, embrace complexity, collaborate, and take action to learn. Nader keeps the sessions purposeful, engaging, and moving forward, often with a well-timed joke along the way. He brings that same thoughtful coordination to facilitating Board of Education meetings, helping the District’s public business proceed smoothly and with purpose.

Yet his most consequential work may be with students. Through Raising Student Voice and Participation (RSVP), the superintendent’s student advisory committee, Nader creates direct opportunities for students from across LBUSD to meet with him and the Superintendent, name what needs to change, and help shape systems, policies and practices at their schools. His message to them is direct: “The biggest lie society has ever told you is that you are the future. No! You matter now. Your voice matters now.

For Nader, student voice is not ceremonial; it is a source of leadership, insight and action. He helps students see themselves not simply as recipients of decisions, but as partners in making them.

Whether he is convening hundreds of leaders, facilitating a strategy session, amplifying student voice, or helping the superintendent advance district priorities, Dr. Nader Twal brings people together and turns purpose into progress. He may wear many hats, but each serves the same mission: building an LBUSD where every voice matters and excellence and equity guide every action.

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Chandler Taylor, Youth Diversion Social Worker, LBUSD Restorative Justice

Every young person is more than the hardest moment they have faced. Chandler Taylor, a school social worker with LBUSD’s Restorative Justice Team, has built her work around that conviction and around a promise to keep showing up.

Chandler’s impact is both systemic and deeply personal. She was a principal writer on the grant that enabled LBUSD to significantly expand its school-based diversion work, creating opportunities for earlier intervention and support for students who may be at risk of involvement with the justice system. She also works closely with District and community partners to advocate for justice-impacted students and other young people navigating significant barriers. Her goal is clear: build systems centered on care, accountability, and opportunity while keeping students connected to school.

But Chandler’s influence is perhaps most powerfully measured in trust.

She walks alongside students and families through major challenges and transitions, becoming a trusted, steady presence when support matters most. Chandler helps them navigate school and community systems, connect with resources, overcome barriers, and remain surrounded by a community of care. Families know they can turn to her when circumstances feel overwhelming, and that she will meet them with compassion, honesty, and action.

That commitment also extends beyond the walls of school. Although it is not required of her role, Chandler has stood alongside students in court, ensuring they do not have to face an intimidating and unfamiliar system without a trusted adult in their corner. She understands that supporting students means meeting them where they are, even when “where they are” extends beyond the walls of a school.

Through it all, Chandler centers students’ strengths, resilience, and agency. She refuses to define any young person by a single moment in their life and helps create the conditions for them to remain connected, move forward, and thrive.

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Bridget Jones, Kindergarten Teacher at Longfellow

Thirty-one years into her remarkable career, of which thirty she’s spent at Longfellow, kindergarten teacher Bridget Jones still brings the enthusiasm, warmth, and wonder of her very first year in the classroom.

Her energy is infectious. Her classroom is bright, welcoming, and filled with the unmistakable feeling that every child belongs. From the moment families arrived for kindergarten orientation this new school year, Jones began building the trust that turns a classroom into a community.

“When you step into her classroom, you know your child is in the right place and in the right hands,” shared one parent, who is also an LBUSD employee.

Jones is known not only for the way she nurtures her students, whom she affectionately calls her “chickadees,” but also for how intentionally she connects with their families. She understands that kindergarten is a milestone for parents and children alike, and she makes sure each family feels informed, reassured, and valued.

That care was unmistakable on the first day of school. With nearly 30 families waiting, Jones went down the line, speaking personally with every parent and child. She did not allow the morning's excitement and activity to overshadow the people in front of her. She made time for each of them, transforming what could have been an overwhelming first-day moment into a warm and memorable welcome.

That is the Bridget Jones difference: Every child is seen. Every family matters. Every interaction is an opportunity to build connection.

Thirty-one years in the game, her energy is still infectious, the vibes are still right, and Longfellow’s newest “chickadees” are in exceptionally caring hands.

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Brian Evans, Recreation Aide at Birney

At Birney, “Mr. Brian” knows every student’s name. And that is only the beginning.

He often knows their brothers and sisters. He even remembers their pets. It would be easy to credit that to a good memory, but it means much more to Birney’s families. It means Brian Evans has taken the time to know them.

Each morning, Brian welcomes students with a warm smile and encouraging words. His familiar presence helps children begin the school day feeling comfortable, safe, and cared for. It also gives families something every parent values: the reassurance of leaving their child with someone who truly sees them and will look out for them.

Brian brings that same care to the rest of his work. He is the colleague who notices when something needs to be done and steps in, whether it falls within his regular responsibilities or not. If someone needs help or a task will make the day run more smoothly, Brian handles it, often during his own free time. “That’s not my job” simply is not his way.

What makes Brian exceptional is that none of this is reserved for a special occasion. It is how he shows up every day.

A student greeted by name. A parent put at ease. A colleague supported without being asked. These moments may seem small, but together they help shape the kind of school Birney strives to be: a place where people know they matter and can count on one another.

Brian’s title is Recreation Aide, but his impact reaches across the entire school community. Students feel known because he makes an effort to get to know them. Families feel welcome because he treats them like part of the Birney family. His colleagues trust him because he has shown, time and again, that he will be there when help is needed.

Birney is a warmer and more welcoming place because Mr. Brian is there each morning, ready with a smile, an encouraging word, and the name of the next student arriving on campus.

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Erin Fekjar, Activities Director at Wilson

For more than 20 years, Erin Fekjar has helped Wilson High School honor its history, welcome new generations of Bruins, and create the moments students remember long after graduation.

At Wilson, she is both the memory maker and the memory keeper.

Her years on campus include more than 20 graduations and two decades of proms, winter formals, and homecomings. Erin has done far more than organize events. She has helped generations of students make lasting memories. Wilson alumni who have returned to the school as teachers can now look around campus and remember the high school experiences Erin helped create.

Her legacy also lives on in Wilson’s Link Crew. Erin launched the program with 40 students. Today, it includes more than 300 students who help welcome, guide, and support their fellow Bruins.

That growth speaks to one of Erin’s greatest strengths: She does not simply make leadership opportunities available and wait for students to find them. She invites students in.

Erin intentionally reaches out to students from across Wilson’s diverse community, including groups that have not historically participated in ASB, Link Crew, or other leadership activities. She then provides the encouragement, guidance, and support they need to see themselves as leaders and succeed. Her work has opened doors for more students to participate, contribute, and feel that these important campus experiences belong to them, too.

Students are not the only ones who rely on Erin. Wilson’s leaders do, too.

“We love Ms. Fekjar at Wilson,” said Wilson Principal Suzanne Caverly. “As principal, I don’t think I could do my job without her. She makes what I do possible by supporting me with Wilson High School's history, traditions, and practices. She provides every new Wilson leader with the information they need to succeed in this community.”

Erin has spent more than 20 years ensuring students don't simply attend Wilson; they experience it, help shape it, and know they belong there. She remembers where Wilson has been, understands what makes the school special, and helps each new class of Bruins create its own memories.

Because of Erin Fekjar, It’s A Great Day to be a Bruin!

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Kelly V. Meade, Medical Chemistry, Epidemiology, and Public Health Teacher at Jordan

For Ms. Meade, science is something her students explore, question, and experience for themselves.

At Jordan High School, she is redefining what it means to bring science to life.

As a National Geographic Certified Educator, Ms. Meade has traveled, conducted research, and learned directly from experts in the field. She brings those experiences back to Jordan, drawing on her own fieldwork and global perspective to show students how scientific inquiry unfolds in the real world.

In her classroom, science is a living process of observation, discovery, and curiosity. By sharing her firsthand experiences, Ms. Meade helps students understand the work of scientists and begin to see themselves as scientists and explorers, too.

Her teaching stretches far beyond the classroom walls.

Ms. Meade has organized and led student trips to Catalina Island, where textbooks give way to tide pools and the traditional classroom is replaced by the open water and island trails.

Students kayak. They snorkel. They hike. Most importantly, they experience science with their own eyes and hands.

Ideas they once encountered only on paper suddenly become real. The natural world becomes their laboratory, and learning becomes something they can see, touch, and carry with them. For many students, these trips become defining moments: experiences that deepen their appreciation for the environment and expand their understanding of where learning can happen.

Through every lesson and every expedition, she invites students to look closer, ask questions, and remain curious about the world around them. She shows them that science is not reserved for distant laboratories or people with impressive titles. It is happening all around them, and they have a place in it.

We salute you, Ms. Meade, for helping Jordan students discover science and what is possible when learning leaves the page and the world becomes their classroom.