Candidate for superintendent employs down-to-earth policy

Terry Webster

Wednesday, March 22, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

Superintendent candidate Carlos Arturo Garcia presents himself as a down-to-earth administrator who likes to play schoolyard games with children and chum around with school staff and parents.

A newspaper photograph attached to Garcia's resume shows him skipping rope with a group of children at an elementary school he oversees as superintendent of the Fresno Unified School District in California.

While interviewing Tuesday with the Clark County School Board and the Superintendent Selection Process Committee, Garcia said everyone in his district is just as important as the superintendent.

He said he likes shooting the breeze with everyone from the janitor to the principal in his visits to schools. He has an open-door policy for talking with parents and says he visits with hundreds a year.

"I like to have fun while I work," the 48-year-old Garcia said. "I like to laugh a lot."

But his approach to accountability, particularly for administrators, is anything but fun and games.

He headed up an administrative reorganization in Fresno that he describes as "painful."

"I had to bring in people who had been in our district a long time and sit them down and say, 'Hey, look, here's the plan I laid out and this is what got accomplished and I'm sorry, but you're not service oriented. You're existing for your own domain.' "

Principals have been allowed to cut through bureaucratic red tape, but they, too, are held accountable.

"If you do something that's unethical, then you're fired," he said. "You think somebody didn't believe me? They don't work for me anymore."

How does Garcia define accountability?

"If it can't be measured, it never happened," he said.

A model for improving student achievement in Fresno -- which heavily involved the community -- resulted in a 3 to 7 percent performance gain for every school in the district, Garcia said.

He said a key to success in any school district is setting priorities. That would be especially true in the Clark County School District, the nation's eighth largest with 217,000 students and a monthly influx of about 1,000 new students. Fresno has a 78,000 student population.

"When you start talking about all of these issues, from growth to opening schools to reorganizing the district office to class size to special education, they can be overwhelming if you don't prioritize what it is you want to do," Garcia said.

Critics of Garcia say he is overly optimistic, according to reports in the Los Angeles Times, and they claim he has placed too many demands on teachers and students.

Fresno's answer to one priority -- improving math performance -- led to the introduction of algebra in middle school instead of high school, Garcia said.

But critics have pointed out that that solution is unrealistic in Fresno, where students do not have the solid math background to handle the algebra at that age, according to the Times.

At least one person involved in Clark County's selection process noticed a sharp style contrast between Garcia and the first candidate interviewed Monday, Timothy R. Jenney, Virginia Beach, Va., schools superintendent.

"Garcia is a little more warm and personable, but I think Jenney is maybe a little more aggressive in his attack of problems," Terry Wright, committee vice chairman and chief executive officer of Nevada Title Co., said. "I like that style better. We have tough problems here. And you've got to be pretty tough to deal with them."

Garcia suggested, as did Jenney on Monday, that the school district will need to collect information first to know exactly what is being improved. He added Clark County needs to analyze more test score data relating to race and gender.

Developing strong communication with state legislators is another concern in Clark County, Garcia said. He tackles that issue in his district by inviting legislators into schools.

"I like to call it reality therapy," he said. "Because people think they know what is going on in schools."

That prompted Clark County School Board members to entertain the thought of legislators walking to school with students, perhaps on a sweltering August day.

Board members want more state funding for bus transportation, so the walking limit for elementary school students can be reduced from 2 miles to 1 1/2 miles.

Garcia has served as Fresno superintendent since 1997. Prior to that, he was a superintendent in the Sanger (Calif.) Unified School District from 1994 to 1997. Garcia was an area superintendent in Fresno from 1991 to 1994.

A 25-year education veteran, Garcia has also served at other California schools as either a teacher or administrator from the preschool to high school levels.

Like Jenney, Garcia criticized Clark County's strategic plan.

"It looks kind of dusty," he said, adding that the document is too lengthy. "If you're creating the plan for the district office, that's one thing. But aren't you creating the plan for far beyond that?"

Terry Webster covers education for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4091 or by e-mail at terry@lasvegassun.com