Ex-Officio Member
Orange County Superintendent of Schools
Mijares was appointed Orange County Superintendent of Schools in August 2012 and elected in 2014. Prior to that time, he served for six years as the Vice President of the College Board where he worked to expand the high school-to-university pipeline, in order to assure the College Readiness and Success for students, especially the underrepresented.
He joined the College Board after serving as Superintendent of the Santa Ana (Calif.) Unified School District for more than 11 years. Under his guidance, the district received national recognition for successfully meeting the needs of its diverse student body. Mijares was praised for his innovative curricular reform and for improving reading and math skills.
Before Santa Ana, Mijares served as Superintendent of the Bakersfield (Calif.) City School District and Coachella Valley (Calif.) Unified School District and as a principal in the Moreno Valley Unified School District in Riverside County, Calif.
He is Chairman of Comunidad Latina Federal Credit Union, serves as Treasurer of the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA), a member of the Board of Trustees for Biola University, serves as Chairman of Encuentros Leadership of Orange County, former member of the advisory council of the Tiger Woods Learning Center Foundation, on the advisory board of Public Schools for Tomorrow, and was the first chairman of the Santa Ana Empowerment Zone board of directors. Additionally, he is the recipient of several honors, including the American Association of School Administrators Leadership for Learning Award, the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s 2005 Educator of the Year Award, the League of United Latin American Citizens’ 2004 Excellence in Education Award, the Association of California School Administrators’ Diversity Award, and the California School Board Association’s Merit for Outstanding Leadership.
Mijares holds several credentials including a Pd.D. from USC.