Southern California

How a Teacher’s Encouragement—and His Late Wife’s Request—Inspired School Superintendent Stefan Bean

Bean, Orange County’s superintendent of schools, has an ambitious goal for students. He said it started with one teacher’s confidence in him.
How a Teacher’s Encouragement—and His Late Wife’s Request—Inspired School Superintendent Stefan Bean
Stefan Bean in June 2024 after being unanimously elected as Orange County's 12th superintendent of schools. Orange County Department of Education
Kimberly Hayek
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As Orange County superintendent of schools in charge of overseeing 450,000 California students, Stefan Bean carries the weight of a request from his late wife, Janet Soares, to “take care of the kids.”

Born in 1971 in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Bean was abandoned on the streets of Saigon, Vietnam, after polio left him paralyzed from the waist down when he was just 2 years old.

Kimberly Hayek
Kimberly Hayek
Author
Kimberly Hayek is a reporter for The Epoch Times. She covers California news and has worked as an editor and on scene at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2018 migrant caravan crisis.