School Administrators

Trustees with the Castaic Union School District on Friday chose an assistant superintendent from an Antelope Valley school district as their top administrator. Alan K. Nishino, 48, was picked from a field of 25 candidates and is scheduled to begin a three-year contract with the Castaic district April 1. "I'm really looking forward to working with the district and community," said Nishino, currently with Lancaster's Eastside Union School District.

The latest setback for the parent-trigger reform -- when the Adelanto School District last week rejected a petition to ... well, it's not exactly clear what the parents sought, but more on that later -- will surely be appealed in court. Parent Revolution, the group behind the trigger movement, might well have a valid challenge, since it looks like school administrators were far more careful about checking the validity of the parent signatures in favor of the trigger than they were about those rescinding their previous signatures.

Davis is right on target regarding the glut of school administrators at the expense of overcrowded classrooms. We recently organized a parents community group in La Puente because the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District cut teaching positions and other instructional services, leaving intact a district office top-heavy with non-teaching administrative personnel. We have also learned that district administrators receive, in addition to high salaries, fringe benefits such as cars, car insurance, gasoline, car maintenance and repairs, a tax-shelter stipend, travel and conference expenses, as well as a $25,000 life insurance policy, all paid by our hard-earned tax dollars.

Mark Berndt, the teacher accused of committing lewd acts against nearly two dozen elementary school children, was the target of a police investigation 18 years ago when a female student reported that he had tried to fondle her, authorities said. The alleged incident occurred in September 1993, though officials said the girl did not tell her mother about it until four months later, after seeing an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that explained the difference between "good touches" and "bad touches.

Jane Russo, a top city schools administrator, is now interim superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, trustees announced Thursday. Russo, currently a deputy superintendent, takes over Aug. 1 from Supt. Al Mijares, who is ending a 12-year tenure to become vice president of the College Board's western region.

Lincoln Education Center supervisor Gayle Forgey has been elected president of the 131-member Garden Grove School Administrators Assn. for the year. The Irvine resident began her district career as an elementary schoolteacher in 1965 and was named supervisor of the adult education Lincoln Center 17 years ago. The association serves the administrative and management personnel in the school district.

Six Valley principals, assistant principals and administrators in the Los Angeles Unified School District have been chosen to receive Administrator of the Year Awards, it was announced Monday. The awards, presented by the Assn. of California School Administrators, recognize outstanding contributions to the public education system, said Allan J. Weiner, association president and assistant principal at Cleveland High School. Those honored "have improved their schools or . . .

A group of Covina high school students who publish an underground newspaper critical of school policies say teachers and administrators are harassing them and destroying their copies. Debate over the the newspaper, The Norseman's Hammer, has polarized students and teachers at the suburban San Gabriel Valley school.

A May 21 preliminary hearing has been set for three people accused of murdering a Downey high school vice principal at his Long Beach home, Deputy Dist. Atty. Shawn Randolph said Monday. Alex Freddy Vega, 42, Monica Mary Chavez, 40, and Gilbert Raul Rubio, 36, all of Los Angeles, will be arraigned in Long Beach Municipal Court on murder charges in the death of George Blackwell. The school administrator died Jan. 12 during a robbery and burglary, Randolph said.

A high-level administrator with the Los Angeles Unified School District was shot and wounded by a masked gunman who confronted him in the garage of the district's downtown headquarters Monday morning and shouted his name before firing, authorities said. Jim Samples, the district's 47-year-old maintenance director, was pierced through the midsection by a bullet as he returned to his truck about 11:30 a.m., district officials reported.

Laura Custodio, dean of Porter Middle School in the San Fernando Valley, sprang into action after hearing that an eighth-grader was selling pot to other students. Without consulting police or parents, she asked a 12-year-old boy with a history of discipline problems to act as a decoy buyer and gave him a marked $5 bill. "I was pretty scared," the decoy, a seventh-grader, later testified in court. "She told me it was the right thing to do and I had to do it … and I didn't want to disappoint her. " The sting roiled a suburban campus better known for its academic achievement and led to a more than $1-million jury award to the seventh-grader and his family in a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Last school year, Carson High School students skipped 1,926 days of class. This year, the school reduced that figure by 20%, thanks to an aggressive intervention program that included tracking down students and meeting with parents. Much of the credit goes to Sally Stevens, one of two school attendance counselors who are responsible for finding chronic truants. "They're the ones who deal with the hard-core students, and they find a way to get them to school," said Ken Keener, Carson's principal.

The Web never stops and it never forgets. On a recent Friday night, a UCLA student posted a video on YouTube. The young woman made the video, in which she complained about and mocked Asian students at UCLA, the day after the Japan earthquake. She took down the clip within hours of posting it. She was too late. By then it was being reposted and remixed, taking on a life of its own. By that Sunday, it had come full circle. UCLA officials watching the situation unfold noticed considerable surges in traffic on the university's Facebook and YouTube profiles, said Phil Hampton, a UCLA spokesman.

Administrators of the flagship downtown Los Angeles arts high school neglected to mention one crucial fact in their application materials: that enrollment is first-come, first-served for students outside the neighborhood. It was the latest snafu in the short, troubled history of the $232-million campus. That admissions information isn't explained on the school's website or on its application form. Instead, instructions note that families from other areas can apply between Feb. 7 and March 4. Principal Luis Lopez characterized the incomplete information as an oversight.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger threw his weight behind state legislation on Tuesday that proposes to give school administrators the ability to assign or fire teachers based on their effectiveness and to streamline the dismissal process. Schwarzenegger made similar suggestions during a speech in January, and state Sen. Bob Huff, (R-Diamond Bar) wrote the bill, which is to be heard in the Legislature on Wednesday. At a press conference Tuesday at Markham Middle School in Watts, Schwarzenegger cited Times stories about the difficulties in evaluating teachers and said California's schools need to operate more like private companies that can make personnel decisions based on merit rather than seniority.

Green Dot Public Schools, a leading charter school operator, is shutting down a campus because of low enrollment, financial pressures and subpar performance, officials confirmed Monday. The action prompted a daylong student protest Monday at Animo Justice Charter High School, south of downtown Los Angeles. The closure marks a first for locally based and nationally recognized Green Dot, which has 19 area campuses and one in New York City. The nonprofit Green Dot opened five independently run, publicly funded charters, including Animo Justice, four years ago, near long-struggling Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles.

C. L. "Max" Nikias, USC's provost and second-in-command, will become its next president, succeeding Steven B. Sample on Aug. 3 at the helm of the 34,000-student university, school officials announced Thursday. Nikias, a Cypriot-born electrical engineer with expertise in radar and sonar, was long mentioned as the leading candidate to become USC's 11th president, so much so that some trustees reportedly argued against conducting a national search. But the board went ahead, considering 75 other educators before returning to a man well-known and well-liked on campus.

Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who took on President Clinton over the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals, will be leaving his post as dean of Pepperdine University School of Law this spring to become president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the schools announced Monday. Starr has headed the Malibu law school since 2004. During his West Coast tenure, he also represented the supporters of Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, during a challenge before the California Supreme Court last year.