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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A second local educator has joined the race for Lake County superintendent of schools.
Patrick Iaccino of Lakeport, who retired in June from the Upper Lake Unified School District superintendent post, officially joined the race last week.
He’ll challenge first-term incumbent Brock Falkenberg, who also formally announced his candidacy last week, as Lake County News has reported.
The filing period for the county superintendent race closed on Friday at 5 p.m.
Iaccino, who turns 62 this Friday, said people began to approach him in recent months to ask him to consider running for the job.
Before joining the race, Iaccino said he started meeting with local superintendents to find out their concerns.
“Communication is a big issue for all of them,” he said, as well as being able to get support from the county office.
He said his perception of the county office is that it is meant to support the districts in their programs. “The districts know what they need.”
He’s now exploring what kind of support the local districts would want from him if he were elected county superintendent of schools.
Some areas Iaccino wants to see expanded in Lake County include programs for adult education and an increased emphasis on school safety.
He said he’d like to see the sheriff’s office, district attorney, other first responders and schools sit down together to discuss preparedness for local districts in case of emergencies. A conversation about school safety also needs to include community members at large, he added.
In his 11 years as superintendent in Upper Lake, that was never done, he said. Rather, the districts did their own separate preparation.
By the time he retired on June 30, Iaccino had amassed 38 years of experience in education, working his way up from a teacher to superintendent.
He graduated from the University of San Diego with degrees in psychology and sociology, and began his career in 1979 at age 23, making $9,000 a year as a teacher.
The first six years of his career were spent as a teacher and coach at St. Genevieve’s High School in Van Nuys, a Catholic high school where he also had been a student.
He would then move on to the Antelope Valley Union High School District, where he spent the next 21 years on large campuses of up to 4,000 students.
Iaccino started as a teacher and coached several sports before moving into administration as dean of students at Palmdale High School. He then worked at Antelope Valley High School for seven years in roles including vice principal, athletic director and assistant principal.
He then became principal of Desert Winds Continuation School, the largest continuation school in the state serving 1,800 students over three campuses. Iaccino spent four years there, and also opened the district’s first community schools for students that had been expelled.
Iaccino’s last year in the Antelope Valley Union High School District was as principal of Desert Pathways, a school for emotionally disturbed students. He oversaw their special education needs from 2005 to 2006.
In 2006, Iaccino arrived in Upper Lake, taking over as superintendent of the high school district.
Before his retirement last year, Iaccino helped lead the unification of the Upper Lake High School and Upper Lake Elementary School districts.
He believes the effort has worked out well, adding that in a few years people won’t remember that it hasn’t always been a unified district.
In the long run, he said, he believes unification will benefit the educational process for students.
Education, he said, has been his love. “I’ve enjoyed it immensely.”
Iaccino said education is important to his entire family, including his wife and three adult children. “We’re all in education one way or another.”
His wife, Kristy, works in food services for Upper Lake Unified. His son is a chiropractor in Boise who also teaches at the university level, one of his daughters teaches at Upper Lake Elementary and his other daughter lives and teaches in Montana.
Iaccino said he plans to hold a series of upcoming meet and greet events around the county. Dates and times will be announced.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
