When Los Angeles school board members named Ramon C. Cortines to head the nation's second-largest school system Tuesday, they selected an experienced, respected educator who contrasts sharply with both his predecessor and a recent wave of acclaimed superintendents.
But Cortines, like others who have taken on struggling urban districts, has exhibited no fear of tangling with entrenched bureaucracies during a career in which he headed public schools in New York City, San Francisco, San Jose and Pasadena (twice). This is Cortines' second turn in Los Angeles, where he was interim superintendent in 2000.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, December 19, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 52 words Type of Material: Correction
Ramon Cortines: A California section article on Wednesday reported that incoming Los Angeles Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines would receive up to $10,000 per year in expense reimbursements. School district officials have since corrected information they previously provided. The contract specifies that the new superintendent will be reimbursed for "appropriate professional expenses."
Cortines replaces retired Navy Vice Adm. David L. Brewer, who was bought out last week midway through a four-year contract. Cortines represents, in some ways, the antithesis of Brewer, a district outsider with no formal experience in public education. Cortines is already known and admired by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
In hiring Brewer, board members had opted for a non-educator -- largely because they sought a fresh thinker, unwedded to the bureaucracy, unafraid to make bold, even unorthodox moves. Now, dissatisfied with the results, the board, led by a new majority, has turned to a career educator for precisely the same reasons.
"We will not do things the same way," said Cortines, who became Brewer's top deputy in April. "We are the urban sprawl, but it is time that we lock arms on behalf of our children."
"We must put the students first, not special interests," Cortines said. "And so there will be change and change will be good for all of us."
The new schools chief will earn $250,000 a year for three years -- unchanged from his current salary and $50,000 less than his predecessor. He will forgo Brewer's automatic $45,000 annual expense account, taking instead up to $10,000 for which he will submit reimbursement claims.
At 76, he differs from the new-wave superintendents causing a stir, including the youthful Cornell- and Harvard-educated Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., and such non-career educators as Chicago's Arne Duncan, the nominee for U.S. secretary of education, and Joel Klein, schools chief in New York City, the nation's largest school system.
Cortines earned his degrees at Pasadena College, now Point Loma Nazarene University, and worked his way up. He was fired as superintendent in Pasadena and later rehired, generally acclaimed in San Francisco, and popular with the public but harassed in New York City by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani until he quit.
