Clovis Unified mourns Terry P. Bradley. ‘He accomplished Doc Buchanan’s vision’
Terry P. Bradley, the beloved Clovis Unified superintendent whose career in the district spanned five decades, died on Thursday. He was 81 years old and had been battling illness, according to district officials.
.
Bradley is the namesake of Clovis Unified’s newest comprehensive high-school campus, the Terry P. Bradley Education Center, which opens its doors to Clovis South High students next month.
Bradley started his career in education as a teacher and school business administrator in Wisconsin for 10 years. He served as Clovis Unified’s chief business official for 26 years and was appointed to lead the district in July 2002. After retiring in 2009, Bradley continued to work with several school districts in the Central Valley as an educational consultant.
During Bradley’s tenure as superintendent, Clovis Unified received multiple state Distinguished Schools and national Blue Ribbon awards and became one of the school districts in California with the highest scores on the Academic Performance Index.
Bradley will be remembered for mentoring young educators and improving school programs and facilities, district officials who worked closely with Bradley told The Bee.
Denver Stairs, Clovis Unified’s assistant superintendent of facility services, said Bradley was involved in the development of the new educational center and was always willing to share his institutional knowledge. Even in his final days, when he was unable to attend meetings in person, he still tried to communicate through text messages.
“Anytime I was with him, at some point during the conversation, it ended up being like story time with my grandpa. He would just sit down and he would tell stories from the ‘70s and ‘80s. He could remember everything that ever happened on every project in the district, and he just had such a great business mind that he could recall information,” Stairs said.
Michael Johnston, another of Bradley’s mentees and Clovis Unified’s associate superintendent in administrative services, recalls how Bradley addressed the toughest financial times the district had ever experienced by drastically cutting spending when he first joined the district’s business unit in the early 2000s.
“I can always remember conversations with Dr. Bradley at the time where he said, ‘We’re not going to lay off anybody, we’re going to get through this without any layoffs,’” Johnston said. “When you’re laying people off, you lose a lot of the culture that you have had. He knew the importance of that. He protected our school district from that.”
Clovis Unified has never had a formal layoff since its inception, according to Johnston, who said Bradley’s leadership built the district’s culture of protecting employees from formal layoffs.
Clovis Unified leaders also praised Bradley’s leadership in maintaining the district’s financial stability.
“While everyone knows that Doc Buchanan crafted a vision for education that we benefit from today, fewer know just how much of Doc’s vision was able to be accomplished because of Dr. Bradley’s expertise in navigating California’s school funding model and creating brilliant strategies to achieve our facilities goals,” Clovis Unified superintendent Corrine Folmer said in a statement.
School board members said Bradley set a cornerstone for academic excellence.
“His legacy of wise financial stewardship and high standards for both staff and students will go on,” said Trustee Clinton Olivier. “Terry’s loss is a big one, not just for the CUSD family, but also for the community he continued to serve well into his retirement.”
Trustee Steven Fogg said Bradley’s contributions have been significant and the district is honored to have the next education center named after him.
“Terry Bradley was one of the most gifted and brilliant leaders in public school finances and business administration,” Fogg said. “We were blessed to have such a great man serve our district for many critical years of tremendous growth and prosperity.”
Beyond his talent in balancing budgets, Bradley’s mentees and colleagues also admired his efforts to connect with staff.
“He was a very humble man. He would do things like put a jar of his favorite candy in a department on the other side of the building,” said Susan Rutledge, assistant superintendent in business services. “He would go over there and get a snack for the day, and then he would have an opportunity to talk to people.”
Rutledge said she thinks anybody can learn the finance pieces, but the most important lesson she took away from her interaction with Bradley was to make sure to connect with people and take care of people.
Both Rutledge and Stairs recalled that Bradley was a quiet leader and he did not enjoy being put in the spotlight.
“If you ever gave him a mic, he would say, ‘I don’t like talking in front of people, I don’t want to do that,’” Rutledge said. “But then getting the mic away from him was a challenge, because he would just tell stories and talk and talk and talk.”
Stairs shared Bradley’s reaction when he learned that the new campus would be named after him.
“I remember when we first started the project, we gave him something, it said ‘Terry P. Bradley Education Center.’ He was so modest, and he said, ‘Oh, I’m not sure about how I feel about that.’ And I said, ‘Well, we’re going to make the letters big,’” Stairs recalled.
Stairs said the facilities team is sad to hear about Bradley’s passing and now it’s time to honor Bradley’s legacy and that his name “is going to be on that building forever,” he said.
“We’re excited that he got to be part of the groundbreaking, and he got to speak at the groundbreaking, and obviously very sad that he won’t be able to be there to see students walk on campus,” Stair said.
