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Pasadena Unified Announces New Principals, Administrative Assignments
Education Jun 03, 2015
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The Pasadena Unified School District on Monday announced several new administrative assignments, including two elementary school principals.
Juan Ruelas has been appointed principal of Madison Elementary School, and Merle Bugarin was named principal of Roosevelt Elementary School.
Carmen Serrano is the new elementary English learner coordinator in the district’s Language Assessment and Development Department, or LADD, and Hassan Dornayi was appointed secondary EL coordinator, pending board approval.
Ruelas is currently Principal at Roosevelt Elementary School, a position he has held since 2009.
Under his leadership, Roosevelt was named a California Distinguished School by the state Department of Education in 2014.
Since 1997 Ruelas held a number of other positions with the school district, including a curriculum resource teacher, language development resource teacher and elementary school teacher. In addition to his new role as principal of Madison Elementary, he will mentor and guide Merle Bugarin, PhD, the new principal at Roosevelt.
Bugarin has most recently served as a teacher on special assignment and elementary EL program coordinator in the district’s LADD office. She has been a point person for the district in working with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and has been involved in the drafting of PUSD’s Master Plan for English Learners.
Bugarin has served students across the district as a language development resource teacher and a curriculum resource teacher since 2002. She began her career as an elementary school teacher in PUSD schools in 1997.
Carmen Serrano has served as principal of Madison Elementary School since 2010.
As elementary EL coordinator, Serrano will be partnering with district elementary schools to implement high-quality instruction for EL students.
Prior to her time at Madison, Serrano served as an assistant principal in Visalia and Atwater in Northern California and taught in Oxnard.
Serrano said her goal is to expose young minds to the countless possibilities that are available to them.
Hassan Dornayi comes to PUSD from the Los Angeles Unified School District where he worked as an EL coordinator in the superintendent’s Intensive Support and Innovation Center. In his role as an EL coordinator at LAUSD, he helped implement their recently adopted EL Master Plan.
Dornayi worked for LAUSD since 2002 as a master teacher, middle school teacher, teacher coach and secondary expert before serving as a secondary EL coordinator.
Ruelas, Bugarin, Serrano and Dornayi are all fluent in Spanish and will transition into their new roles over the summer.
