Hate to Say I Told You So: The Slow-Motion Collapse of Saugus Union School District
"SUSD — a proud history of negligence and overall incompetence." ~My Son former SUSD student
The Saugus Union School District (SUSD) has had its share of controversies, but recent events turned the dumpster fire into a full-blown inferno. On November 4, 2025, a 5-year-old boy, Oliver Epstein, wandered off from North Park Elementary’s after-school program. He was dismissed at 12:20 p.m. and found three hours later, unsupervised, nearly a mile away near a McDonald’s. His nanny spotted him only by chance as he crossed the street and wandered through busy areas, exposed to every possible danger. When Oliver’s mother called the program supervisor to check on him, she was told he was still at school. In reality, he was already sitting safely in the nanny’s car on the way home. Brett and Natalie Epstein confronted the SUSD board afterward, calling it “gross negligence,” especially since something similar happened at the same school back in 2019.
The excuses came quickly: untrained substitutes, unlocked gates they claimed were “required” to remain open for fire safety, and general confusion. Board member Anna Griese, who’s spent years advocating for better safety protocols, immediately dismissed those explanations for what they were—deflections born of incompetence. When my son, a former Saugus Union student, saw the news article, he put it bluntly: “SUSD — a proud history of negligence and overall incompetence.”
Unfortunately, he’s not wrong. Instead of addressing the safety failures she’s been warned about for years, Superintendent Colleen Hawkins has repeatedly gone out of her way—both publicly and behind the scenes—to attack Board Member Anna Griese, one of the only people actually trying to hold her accountable. Meanwhile, Hawkins collected an eye-popping $$337,402 in total compensation last year, one of the highest salaries in the valley. Try making that paycheck square with her dismal results. It’s hard to imagine a more reckless or more dangerous way to run a school district than allowing decisions to be made by people who never pay the price for being dead wrong about literally everything.
My expectations are modest: educate children to read, do math, and understand the world—basic academic and life skills. Yet Hawkins cannot even keep students physically safe on campus, let alone provide a solid education, while simultaneously deciding the district should involve itself in shaping children’s gender identity. That mandate came from no parent; she took it upon herself while the fundamentals collapsed around her, and it became impossible to view this as anything other than arrogance layered with incompetence. Every parent should be outraged.
And this wandering-child incident wasn’t a fluke. It fits a much larger pattern under Hawkins, whose leadership philosophy seems to revolve around loyalty over competence. Parents across Santa Clarita know precisely what I’m talking about. Hawkins blocks parents on social media—at least eight accounts, despite claiming it was “just one.” She stonewalls public records requests. She implemented a reckless email deletion policy, wiping district communications after only two years, which conveniently erases long-term patterns of negligence or abuse. Yes, California law allows destruction after that period, but no rule requires districts to wipe everything that quickly. Most keep records far longer. Hawkins herself admitted the real reason was reducing the “manpower” needed to respond to public requests, mind you, the public records requests they are ignoring. When a superintendent tells you transparency is too time-consuming, believe her.
Her priorities have become painfully clear over the years. Instead of focusing on academics or safety, she promotes Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) programs that sound good in brochures but accomplish little for actual student achievement. In an August 2025 message, Hawkins blamed phones and tablets for kids’ loss of empathy, insisting that children today struggle with self-regulation. Let’s call a spade a spade: SEL is just critical theory packaged for kids, and critical theory—whatever flavor it comes in—depends on maintaining tribal resentments. How are kids supposed to thrive when they’re told they must share a classroom or playground with an “oppressor”? This Substack covered the bullying spike 18 months ago, and the district’s response was the same as always: nothing to see here, folks—move along.
I get it—this wasn’t Hawkins’ intention. She believes she knows better than you and constantly prioritizes ideals over practical consequences. But it says “social-emotional” right in the name?! Then why have kids become less empathetic?
Could it be what Ibram X. Kendi openly preaches: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination”? How exactly do you discriminate against people while simultaneously claiming to teach empathy? You can’t. It’s the core contradiction of the Leftist brainrot now pumped into schools by administrators like Hawkins—ideology over integrity, dogma over results. Maybe technology plays a role, but it’s hard to preach empathy in a culture that rewards political tribalism and perpetual outrage. Kids absorb what they hear at home and see online, and no amount of SEL jargon can paper over the real crisis—a district that somehow can’t ensure a five-year-old stays on campus.
The same disconnect shows up in their discipline policies. Restorative justice under Education Code § 48900.9 sounds noble until you realize it often allows violent students to face little to no consequences at all. I saw it firsthand. My child was attacked at school by a boy who shouted he “did not deserve to live,” then slashed his nose with a zipper hard enough to draw blood. Under Hawkins’s watch, the attacker was sent back to class. No discipline, no accountability, nothing. If you look at any post where this article was posted, it's just more of the same. Not long after, my son suffered a hairline fracture on the playground, went to the nurse, and was sent back to class without anyone contacting us. We found out when his grandma came to pick him up and noticed he was limping. That was the moment we moved him to the Newhall School District (NSD), and it was the best move we made in every way.
The leadership dysfunction goes deeper than Hawkins alone. Board President Katherine Cooper has been accused of violating the Brown Act for attacking critics outside official meetings. Parents have testified that Hawkins coached allies to undermine Griese, misrepresented safety incidents, and ignored bullying concerns after cutting counselor positions. The district even sued twelve parents over IEP disputes—a stunning choice for a district supposedly committed to “collaboration.” And let’s not forget the push for a $190 million bond sold to voters with fear-based messaging, or the fact that 33 letters from parents at Emblem Academy reportedly went unanswered over two years.
Despite these mounting failures, Hawkins recently announced she’ll retire on July 1, 2026, citing personal hardships and family milestones. Those hardships deserve sympathy. But the timing is hard to ignore. The district is falling apart, she finally lost the board, and she wants out before accountability arrives.
Ironically, I don’t even have a dog in this fight anymore. My kid isn’t in SUSD. But I warned friends—including one who lives right across from Bridgeport—that under no circumstances should they send their child to SUSD unless they want them to be illiterate and confused about their own biology. That might sound harsh, but it’s the ecosystem SUSD has cultivated.
So what should Saugus Union do now?
First, the board should place Hawkins on administrative leave. She has spent years crafting policies that protect her from consequences, but California law still allows a superintendent to be removed by a simple majority vote of no confidence. She is not untouchable, no matter how loudly she insists she is. With leadership like this, who needs saboteurs? The results speak for themselves. Don’t let her make things worse than they already are.
Second, the district cannot hire internally. After eight years of Hawkins promoting ideological allies and loyalists, the pipeline is too compromised to produce a competent successor that can try to unring the bell. Bringing in an outsider—someone with no ties to the existing dysfunction—is the only way forward.
Third, a real independent audit is long overdue. Not a friendly internal review or a sanitized board summary, but a comprehensive investigation into spending, safety failures, the email deletion policy, social media censorship, high staff turnover, and the quiet talks with developers about the Santa Clarita Elementary site, a campus Hawkins spent around $16 million refurbishing, only to close it. And now you have a closed-door meeting with a developer to discuss demoing the school and putting up what condos?
Finally, the district needs to rediscover the basics: keeping kids safe, teaching them to read, enforcing real consequences for real misconduct, and treating parents as partners rather than nuisances. SEL worksheets and buzzwords won’t fix what’s broken. Competence will.
Santa Clarita deserves better than wandering children, collapsing literacy rates, runaway staff turnover, and ideological experiments disguised as education policy. The slow-motion collapse of SUSD isn’t a mystery—it’s the predictable outcome of a district that stopped prioritizing its most important responsibility: the kids.
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