A simple mechanical failure has changed the lives of so many students in the district. 

When Dr. Hugo Saucedo, principal of Davis Middle School, was growing up, he and his family were migrant workers. Through his sophomore year of high school, he had attended 20 different schools. 

Then, when he was 15, the family’s truck broke down in San Antonio on the way back to Brownsville, and they stayed with an aunt who lived near Jefferson High School. He enrolled in his 21st and final public school.

“My algebra teacher, Ms. Mary Ryan, made a huge difference in my life,” Saucedo said. “She really advocated for me and turned the trajectory of my life around. At that point, I had a lot of anger, a lot of behavioral issues, and she found a way to really tap into me and had me refocus, and really ask some really critical questions about what I wanted to do with my life.”

His senior year, he was elected to student council, and with the support of his peers and his teachers, especially Ms. Ryan, he really began to think about his future. 

“I got to be with a lot of great people, and really change the conversation in my head,” Saucedo said. “It put me more on a path of service to others and what that meant. It was a critical time in my life.”

He went to UTSA and majored in history. He worked three jobs throughout his time in college, but he had a goal in sight. He knew he wanted to teach. 

“Education has really made a difference in my life, and I thought maybe I can do the same for other kids,” he said. “That was the spark that made it happen for me.”

He had asked to student teach in San Antonio ISD and was given an assignment at Lanier High School. After graduation, he taught at Sam Houston, Brackenridge and Burbank high schools before going back to school. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in Educational Leadership from UTSA. In his years of service in the district, he served as an assistant principal at Page and Rhodes middle schools before becoming a principal at Franklin Elementary in 2016. He also worked at Carvajal Elementary before his current position at Davis. 

In his job at Davis, he is as deliberate as possible about how he structures his time. He arrives at 7 a.m. and checks email and his calendar, setting his intentions for the day. When students begin to arrive at 8 a.m., he is at the door, greeting, but he is also observing. 

“You can feel when there’s something going on,” he said. “You can feel tension if there’s tension, and sadness if there’s sadness.”

He lets those observations inform his morning’s walkthroughs. He tries to do three each day before lunch duty, focusing on specific grades or even specific students’ learning environments if he is concerned about them. 

“I get to see not only what’s going on instructionally, but also get to see the day of a student who might be dealing with some sort of tragedy, and I’m able to then tell the counselors,” he said. 

He does lunch duty for two hours each day, and it’s another opportunity to gauge the students. After lunch, he’s doing more walkthroughs, jumping in to help with Professional Learning Communities, or meeting with administration or parents. Priding himself in transparency, he says he’ll give his number to anyone who asks. 

“Parents are very good about texting me,” Saucedo said. “I want them to have an avenue where they aren’t frustrated trying to reach me. I’m able to mitigate bigger issues. It's hard everywhere right now, and I do my best to meet people where they are and put myself in their shoes.” 

That extends to his teachers as well. So aware of the challenges of the pandemic, he strives to lead with empathy, vulnerability, and collaboration. In his weekly messages to the community, he includes personal anecdotes and inspirational quotes to keep going through the challenges. Last week’s message began with an important idea — If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.

He practices this in his own life, often taking a break to eat and walk at Copernicus Park, before returning to the school and working until 8 or 9 p.m. He means it for his teachers, too. He’s popped into rooms for walkthroughs, read the teachers’ faces, and volunteered to watch the class for them. 

“I do my best to support teachers, give them the tools that they need, push them when I need to, and prop them up when I have to,” he said. “That for me is what it is about, in terms of what keeps me motivated. How can we do that for each other? How can we prop each other up, now more so than ever?”

With only two of his five years as a principal happening outside of a pandemic, he is keenly aware of the challenges and opportunities the pandemic has created for education and educational leaders. 

“We’ve gained so much knowledge that I think will really serve us well,” Saucedo said.  “We really need to work at leveraging that knowledge and using it to plan ahead, because in some ways this COVID situation has pushed us to reset education in a way that it hasn’t been reset ever.”

He is worried. He’s worried that if educators, leaders, don’t take that time to rest, all that knowledge could be lost.

“I do my best to remember that I need to figure out how I can balance these things,” he said, “so that at the end of the year, I can think about how I am going to do this again next year.”

He works, resting when he needs to, to help teachers and students like he was once helped, leading through a lens of equity.

“I think that what keeps me motivated is wanting to give our kids a fighting chance, just like Ms. Ryan gave me,” Saucedo said. "I was very fortunate that for whatever reason, that was the right time and the right place and the right person that I ended up engaging with, and I always tell our teachers and our staff that we can be that for somebody.”