School Administrators

Officials of the Tustin Unified School District have made a number of administrative changes for the coming school year, which begins this week. The changes come on the heels of the appointment of Dr. David Andrews, who took over as superintendent of the district last year. He succeeded Maury Ross, who left after a number of differences with the district's trustees.

Dennis Smith, the administrator who guided high-achieving Irvine Unified School District out of bankruptcy, has been approached by officials in Florida to head one of the nation's largest school districts. Smith and three other candidates chosen by a search firm have been invited to interview with Florida's Orange County School District, a 130,000-student system with a $1-billion annual budget.

A group of parents and students have filed a federal lawsuit against the Compton school district alleging a pattern of abuse and racial profiling of Latinos by school police. One family alleged that school police targeted a student's father for arrest and deliberately got him deported to Mexico after he filed a complaint against an officer. In another incident, school officers allegedly beat, pepper sprayed and used a chokehold on a bystander who was taking video of an arrest on his iPod, and erased cellphone videos taken by students.

The Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District board has unanimously approved a 3.25% cost-of-living increase for four top administrators. Deputy Supt. Howard Rainey and assistant superintendents Emma Hulett, Betty Coogan and Marie Plakos were all given raises. Before the increase, Rainey's monthly salary was $6,401 and Hulett, Coogan and Plakos received $6,040 per month. The increase will be added to their monthly salaries.

Faced with the painful task of fairly distributing $247.3 million in pay cuts, the Los Angeles Board of Education is considering plans that would take a bigger bite out of the salaries of top administrators to lessen the impact on the district's lowest-paid workers. One high-ranking school district official, who did not want to be identified, said various options being studied by the board include a plan to cut an extra 2.

A Superior Court judge has temporarily barred the state administrator who is running Compton's schools from filling vacancies on the district's board. The administrator, Randolph Ward, broke a 3-3 tie at the board's Jan. 6 meeting and appointed Leslie Irving to fill an open seat created by a resignation. "The question is whether as an appointed administrator Dr. Ward has the right to appoint someone to an elected seat," said Compton City Atty. Legrand H. Clegg II.

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.

The Huntington Beach City School District board has unanimously agreed to eliminate one of the district's top administrative positions. Trustees voted this week not to fill the post of assistant superintendent for educational services, which has been vacant since Rebecca Turrentine resigned from the job a year ago. The elimination of the position is part of new Supt. Duane Dishno's budget-tightening plan, which the board approved in its entirety Tuesday.

Unable to decide which school official they should pick for their most prestigious professional award, delegates from 20 state regions of the Assn. of California School Administrators this week did something they've never done in 29 years of voting: They gave it to two people. Peter A. Hartman, superintendent of the Saddleback Unified School District, and James A.

It was the first day of school, and 200 students waited at their desks. The lights dimmed. The teacher turned on his PowerPoint computer presentation. Soon he was slogging through the dry minutiae of the Stull teacher evaluation form. It wasn't exactly a candy-coated lesson. But these were not bright-faced youngsters who needed to be entertained. They were the principals, assistant principals, deans and counselors who are responsible for educating those children.