Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Searching for a winner

Sunday, Jan. 9, 2000 | 9:51 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

The failed search for a new superintendent of the Clark County School District shouldn't come as a shock. It was only 14 months ago that the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper carried a story about that city's search for a new school chief executive officer.

"The St. Paul, Minn., school district's long search for a superintendent ended in August with a thud.

"The search, which cost $80,000, involved two consulting firms and took months of research and scores of interviews, yielded two finalists.

"But by a 5-2 vote, the school board rejected both candidates and instructed district officials to keep looking.

" 'It is a very, very shallow pool,' said Susan N. Jernigan, a partner in Sockwell and Associates, a Charlotte, N.C.-based search firm. 'There are not many to pick from, and there is not a pipeline supplying a large number of new candidates.'

"The incredible shrinking superintendents' market presents a challenge for districts such as Cleveland.

"It suffers from problems common to big-city districts: low student achievement, high poverty, tight resources and political battles."

A couple of weeks ago, at the urging of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, New York City Education Chancellor Rudolph F. Crew was notified that a 4-3 vote of the Board of Education refused to renew his contract after almost four years on the job. Crew came to New York from the Tacoma, Wash., school district and had an almost immediate impact on the big-city school system. Maybe his move to improve the huge system so quickly set the table for his own demise. There can be no doubt he improved the district but was unable to dig deep enough into the system with more than a million students, 1,100 schools and 75,000 teachers.

New York City politics combined with City Hall's direct involvement with the Board of Education was enough to cause trouble for any administrator. The vocal New York Post had a field day attacking Crew. An example of a Post editorial from Dec. 9, 1999 read, "There should be little question that Crew should be sent packing. ..."

The easy answer could be that the mayor became too involved and helped Crew fail. This evaluation of Giuliani may be true but Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley took over that city's school district in 1995 and appointed Paul S. Vallas as the district's CEO. Test scores have moved up and the district is being run like a corporation, giving it stability. Vallas is the CEO but has a chief educational officer to handle instructional matters and isn't bothered with budget and operational issues.

The CCSD has until next July to search out and hire a person to run our schools. Successful businessman Jim Rogers has generously offered his skills to be the district CEO until a qualified individual is found if the search takes longer. To attract a high-caliber, long-term executive will require a salary of $200,000 to $250,000 a year. The condition of our district is so much better than what is offered in other urban areas a qualified person can be brought in to do the job. Retiring superintendent Brian Cram is leaving behind a district that is orderly, made up of mostly new construction, and unafraid of challenges.

Crew, when addressing his board last May, gives some insight to real big-city problems. "This winter, I was stopped by a young boy in the hall of his school, who asked me where his gym was. Thinking he was lost, I misunderstood the heart of his question. He wanted to know why his school had no gym. I have called on the mayor to help us restore health and physical education to our schools in much the same way we restored the arts. ... The lack of adequate facilities takes its greatest toll on instruction. We cannot end social promotion without early intervention strategies such as reducing class size in critical grades. We must be able to provide adequate, air-conditioned space for our most at-risk students who will be attending mandatory summer school."

Crew went on to point out, "A roof has a life expectancy of up to 20 years, regardless of the number of times it has been patched. More than 400 of our schools were built before 1930. Our high schools operate at 124 percent of capacity on average. We have seen enough crises and tragedies caused by the dilapidated state of our buildings to know that the financial needs are dire."

Compared to what superintendents in large Eastern cities must confront, the job in Clark County would have to be attractive to a person wanting to run a first-class operation.

CCSD deserves a person with the credentials of Paul G. Vallas or Rudy Crew. Crew may be available. Or what about checking out Crew's predecessor in New York, Ramon Cortines? Cortines has been acting as interim superintendent for the Los Angeles school district.