Principal's Message
Welcome to the 2025-2026 school year at Garey High School, “Home of the Vikings.” The staff and I are excited about our return and look forward to serving the students and families of Garey High School. As a proud Pomona Unified School District alumnus, it is a great honor to return to Garey in my 30th year working for PUSD.
As a former PUSD student, a proud parent of PUSD alumni, and a grandfather of PUSD students, my family is three generations of PUSD. My wife Edna (PUSD alumnus and 26-year employee of PUSD) and I truly enjoy saying, “Proud to be PUSD.” In my years in PUSD, I taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. I have had many roles to prepare for Garey High School. Before happily returning to Garey High School, I served as a Teacher, Resource Teacher, Intervention Teacher, Head Coach, Athletic Director, Dean, Assistant Principal, and Middle School Principal. This is my fifth year as the principal of Garey High School.
As the principal, I aim to have an open-door policy for students, parents, and staff. Working as a team, we will continue to celebrate our greatness while finding ways to improve. Collectively, we will “Build Our Future Together.” This year’s approach will focus on Academics as well as the social-emotional well-being of our students, staff, and families. We will continue our work and focus on literacy. We will use Achieve 3000 to engage students in reading more expository text at their independent reading levels. During our “Viking Connect,” students will learn about the importance of their Lexile and the relationship to College and Career Readiness. Our community is very proud of our award-winning music program and athletic teams, and we encourage our students to join a program, club, team, and/or band.
Our theme for the 2025-2 school year is “Be the best version of yourself.” Simply stated, we want our performance to match our potential. We will continue to improve and remain one of the top schools in the district and state. Garey High School continues to transform into one of the top academic institutions in the state of California. Garey High School recently received a fresh paint job, new restrooms, and solar panels. Garey High School will be an active construction site for much of the year as we update the Gymnasium renovation and upgrades to the physical structure. We, staff, students, and families, will remain focused and flexible. Despite the challenges we will face with physical changes, our focus to provide a safe and quality education will not waver. Our goal will remain to have each student College and Career-Ready. We will adapt to the changes and thrive.
Garey is in a constant quest to be better today than we were yesterday. Simply, we want to improve each day. We want to get better every day. This mindset will help us achieve our goals to increase our CAASPP scores, increase the Graduation Rate, and increase our A-G College Acceptance Rate. Despite the great gains we have accomplished in the last four years, we want to continue to improve. We will continue to focus on the state standards and utilize our resources to keep the trajectory of success of our students. We will continue to offer rigorous courses that will qualify and prepare our students for College and Career Readiness.
To be a true collaborative community, we will need your support. We ask that you join our committees, come to the “Coffee With a School Leader” meetings, volunteer on campus, and learn about 21st-century skills to help us support your students’ learning. We will continue with our parent workshops, and we will work to increase school-home communication. You can access the school website and/or our Instagram page (@Gareyhighschoolvikings) for information. The school district has moved to Parent Square for communication. Please feel free to call for support.
Attendance counts! Attendance is the greatest predictor of grade point average and graduation. Please make sure that your student is in school every day on time. We want to make every moment of their high school years memorable. The Bell Schedule is available on our Website.
As always, teachers, parents, community members, students, and administration will collaborate to promote a positive and safe environment, focus on continuous learning, and support and ensure that all students are obtaining the skills needed for college and careers in the future.
We are looking forward to a positive year of learning!
Roddy Layton
Principal
Garey High School
(909)397-4451
