Asked what drew Andrew Duffek to Sundale, the new superintendent started with character.

"I love the whole-child approach to learning; placing as much value on student character as is placed on student academics," Duffek wrote in response to questions from The CAEdTribune. "It works to create a strong sense of culture and school pride."

Duffek became superintendent of Sundale Union Elementary^↗ET this summer. "I began as Superintendent officially on July 1st, 2026," Duffek wrote. The district's board had advertised a full-time superintendent position this spring, according to the district's superintendent search page, and Duffek now appears as superintendent on the district's staff directory.

Sundale is a small place to lead and an unusual one. The district is a single school, TK through eighth grade, just outside Tulare in the southern San Joaquin Valley, according to the district's own description. It was formed from Bliss, Nickerson and Oakdale schools, and it serves what the district calls "a farming and dairy community."

Two priorities for the first year

Duffek named two priorities, and the first is to keep something that already exists. "My priorities are maintaining that history of school pride while working to build up career technical education (CTE) opportunities for students," Duffek wrote.

Sundale ends at eighth grade and already runs hands-on programs that connect to Duffek's priority. Its Ag Science program gives every student a garden to plant and keep up, alongside chickens, reptiles and other small animals, and the campus has a gift and coffee shop called the Trading Post. When the board advertised the superintendent's job, it listed agriculture, performing and fine arts, "college and career awareness" and sports as the programs it wanted the next leader to value.

The state's enrollment files do not track career or technical coursework for a TK-8 district, so this article does not measure where that work starts from. The plan is Duffek's own account of where the work is headed.

A school that grew while the state shrank

The third question put to Duffek was about enrollment, because Sundale has been moving against the rest of California.

Sundale enrolled 849 students last school year, 2025-26, the most recent year in the state's published data. That is the highest count in any of the 16 years the state's records show for the district, going back to 2010-11. It is up 93 students, or 12.3%, from a low of 756 in 2020-21, the first full school year of the pandemic. California's public school enrollment fell 4.5% over the same years.

The 2020-21 drop was real and sharp. Sundale lost 61 students that year, or 7.5% of the 817 it enrolled in 2019-20, the largest one-year change in either direction in the district's records. But the recovery did not stop at the old level. Sundale counted 844 students in 2023-24, 840 in 2024-25 and 849 in 2025-26, and each of those years was above every year before the pandemic.

Measured from 2014-15, before the pandemic entered the picture, Sundale is up 29 students, or 3.5%, from 820. California's enrollment fell 8.1% across the same span.

Asked what was behind it, Duffek answered in one word first. "Simple. A robust and substantial set of academic programs," Duffek wrote. "When families feel like they are supported and that there are a variety of opportunities for their students to excel in, they will stay in your district and want to be involved in growing it. It's all about pushing a culture of excellence."

That is Duffek's explanation, and the state's files cannot confirm or test it. They count students, not the reasons families chose a school. They also do not separate students who live inside Sundale's boundaries from students who transfer in. The district keeps a waiting list for interdistrict transfers and, according to its transfer page, contacts families on the list "Once we have room in a particular grade level." How much of the growth comes through that list is not something the enrollment data can show.

The grade counts are strikingly even. In 2025-26, every grade from kindergarten through eighth enrolled between 88 and 95 students, with another 36 in transitional kindergarten.

The students in those rooms come from a mix of backgrounds. In 2025-26, 47.8% of Sundale's students were Hispanic and 47.3% were white, 41.6% were counted as socioeconomically disadvantaged and 9.3% were English learners.

Close to the families

A single-school district leaves little distance between the superintendent's office and the pickup line, and Duffek described that as an advantage. "I love having close access to parents who are eager to contribute to our school community," Duffek wrote.

Duffek tied it to learning the district, too. "I believe a strong relationship with parents is crucial in understanding things about our district that I may not have otherwise known because we made an effort to connect with them," Duffek wrote.

The district's search posting pointed the same way, listing "the value of parent involvement" and partnerships with families among the job's responsibilities. Its mission statement, printed on the district's site, commits Sundale to "Moral Integrity, Academic Excellence, and The Development of Self Worth For Students, Staff and Community."

Duffek takes over a school that is, by the state's count, larger than it has been at any point in its records back to 2010-11. Keeping that school pride while adding career-focused programs for TK-8 students is the work Duffek has set for the first year. Current-year counts will differ once California publishes its 2026-27 enrollment data.

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Enrollment counts come from the California Department of Education public enrollment files. Superintendent Duffek answered questions in writing; quotations and descriptions of the superintendent's priorities come from that response. Descriptions of the district and its programs come from the Sundale Union Elementary School District website.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.