SBCSS News and Press Releases

Vick Receives Distinguished Service Award

2005-04-22

SAN BERNARDINO— His 54-year career spans service as a teacher, principal, superintendent, university instructor, and a school board member. Dr. Theodore E. Vick, 75, is the 2005 recipient of the San Bernardino County Distinguished Service Award.

Vick will be honored at a countywide gala dinner meeting of school board members and district superintendents on Monday, April 25 at Etiwanda Gardens, 7576 Etiwanda Avenue, in Rancho Cucamonga.

Established in 1998, the San Bernardino County Distinguished Service Award celebrates exceptional and distinguished service sustained over many years. The purpose of the award is to recognize dedication and leadership on behalf of public education in San Bernardino County. Recipients are those who have been willing to take risks to improve educational opportunities for students; have had broad community involvement; have been willing to speak out on issues that have an impact on children; and have the respect of their peers. Up to two recipients may be selected annually.

“My father has always had two driving forces in his life, one being his religious beliefs and the other education. One enables the other to become a success,” wrote Cheri Sampias in her nomination. She added, “His belief system goes with him everyday and every minute of his life. This is what makes him such a good teacher. He gives much more than he takes. He has always believed in his students and would accept nothing but the best from them, and he had a way of making them want to achieve the best for him.”

Born in San Bernardino, Vick’s family moved often following the crops and canning seasons in Southern California. This meant he changed schools often and he did attend several public schools in San Bernardino County from Ontario to Twentynine Palms.

After graduating from San Bernardino High School and San Bernardino Valley College, Vick went on to receive his bachelor’s in elementary education from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He later added his master’s from the University of Redlands and his doctorate from the University of California at Riverside.

In 1952, Vick already was an experienced teacher when he took his first San Bernardino County teaching assignment in Morongo School District in Twentynine Palms. He taught in the same school he had attended as an eighth-grader a decade earlier and later taught in the same classroom where he had once attended as a student.

After four years in Morongo, with the last two as a teaching vice principal, he moved to the Bloomington School District, now part of Colton Joint Unified, where he taught an eighth-grade self-contained classroom, coached school sports, and served as community recreation director. His next assignment took him to Terrace Hills Junior High School when it first opened. One year later, he was a teaching vice principal at Grand Terrace School.

According to Sampias, Vick was granted a leave of absence from Terrace Union to take a position as principal of the George Air Force Base School in the Adelanto School District. The superintendent’s death in that district and a shift of administrative personnel left a vacancy in that position that needed to be filled.

At the end of the school year, he returned to Terrace Hills Junior High as its principal.

After success as a principal, Vick took on new challenges and served Adelanto School District as assistant superintendent for seven years and then nearly 12 years as superintendent before retiring with 34 years in public education. Sampias noted that during his years as principal, Vick attempted to make at least brief visits to every classroom every day. As superintendent he continued to visit classrooms frequently, asking teachers to invite him in with his guitar to sing and play the guitar with the students.

Shortly after retirement, Sampias explained the Vick took on interim school principal assignments in neighboring school districts. The following year he served as interim superintendent/principal in the Mt. Baldy School District. He took another unplanned opportunity to serve in a part-time teaching position at California State University, San Bernardino, in the school of education graduate program. This soon became a full-time position until another “retirement” occurred in 1996.

Another unanticipated event after retirement has been his service as a member of the San Bernardino County Board of Education. Since having been appointed to the Board, he has successfully stood for election four times and is currently serving his 19th year on the County Board.

While continuing service on the County Board, an unusual sidelight was his appointment to and service on the Needles Unified School District Board of Education, a rarely used provision in the Education Code that allows a County Board member to sit on a local district board that has too many vacancies to make a quorum. Vick also attended board meetings in each of the many districts in his trustee area.

His community service also has been extensive including work with United Way, a number of community services organizations, his church, and with administrative and school boards associations regionally and statewide.

The Distinguished Service Award competition is co-sponsored by the San Bernardino County School Boards Association (SBCSBA), the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, the San Bernardino County Committee on School District Organization, and the Fifth District PTA.

Past recipients are Dr. Sonja Yates (2004), superintendent (retired), Central School District; Irene M. Newton (2003), superintendent (retired), Rialto Unified; Joan R. Weiss (2003), board member, Central School District; Dr. John Preston Miller (2002), board member, County Board of Education; Dr. Russell R. Reynolds (2002), superintendent (retired), Bear Valley Unified; Dorothy Gibson (2001), board member (retired), County Board of Education; Ann Davis-Schultz (2001), learning support/grants coordinator, Redlands Unified; Ray Abril, Jr., (2000), board member, Colton Joint Unified; Barbara Phelps (1999), board member, Redlands Unified; Dr. E. Neal Roberts (1999), superintendent (retired), San Bernardino City Unified; Brenda Boss (1998), board member (retired), Bear Valley Unified; and Dr. Loren Sanchez (1998), superintendent (retired), Upland Unified.

A photo is available for download at: http://www.sbcss.k12.ca.us/distinguished_service/2005/vick.jpg