Valley View superintendent to retire

Valley View Independent School District Superintendent Silvia Ibarra will retire at the end of the summer.

According to Ibarra, the Valley View school board accepted her resignation Monday and appointed an interim superintendent, though Ibarra says she’ll officially continue to serve as superintendent through the end of August.

After August 31, Ibarra says she’ll be replaced by Monica Luna, the board’s pick for interim superintendent.

“The legal advised [the board] and told them they could have a superintendent and interim at the same time, and so again I’ll still be in charge until August 31. But again, Dr. Luna and I will work together in the transition,” she said.

Ibarra said that collaboration will ideally ensure the district undergoes a leadership change in which the “transition is seamless.”

A career educator, Ibarra’s worked in school systems for 35 years. She started her career in La Villa ISD and worked in a total of five districts, leaving an upper administrator post at McAllen ISD to helm Valley View in 2021.

“I leave the district very happy,” she said Wednesday. “Very pleased with the work that the board and I did together. I’m sure and I’m confident that Dr. Luna is going to continue the great work that’s happened and just take the district to new heights.”

Ibarra says she broached the topic of her departure with Valley View’s school board in March but didn’t make an official announcement because she had to square away her retirement.

“Of course, they asked me to stay. They’re happy with my work. We have a good relationship, and I really do think we have done great things together for the district, for the betterment of the district,” she said of the district’s trustees. “But again, so maybe they asked me to stay a little bit longer, but I told them 35 years is a good time for me to just transition into something else, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Now’s not the first time Ibarra considered doing something else while leading Valley View ISD. In 2023 she interviewed for a superintendent position at Harlingen CISD, a gig that ultimately went to her old boss, former McAllen ISD Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez.

Ibarra says she plans on beginning her retirement completely unemployed with some time for vacation, though she doesn’t mean to stay vacationing.

“Once I do that, I do plan to do some education consulting, part time for a while. And then we’ll see what happens after a year or so,” she said.

Valley View’s school board appointed Ibarra to the top job in 2021.

In late 2020 the district’s board had named Luna interim superintendent.

Luna had served in that capacity for only a couple of weeks when the school board suspended her with pay pending an investigation into the process by which she was granted a contract after the November board election of that year.

At the time, legal counsel for the district said the board feared Luna’s
appointment to the top job had been rushed and shoddily done.

Ultimately the district settled with Luna, agreeing to keep her on as an
administrator while paying her a $185,000 superintendent’s salary for most of 2021 and a $150,000 salary through January of this year.

The Valley View school board briefly appointed Leonel Galaviz as interim after suspending Luna in 2020 before hiring Ibarra as interim a couple of months later and giving her the permanent position in 2021.

Neither Luna, Board President Claudia Coronado nor the school district’s
attorney returned requests for comment for this article.