School Superintendents

As children peered at them through an elementary school fence in Cerritos on Friday, about a dozen school superintendents explained the consequences they will face if California voters fail to approve Proposition 30. In Whittier Union High School District, class sizes - some already exceeding 40 students - will continue to grow. In Inglewood Unified School District, a $30-million deficit will double and the current school year will immediately be shortened by four weeks. In ABC Unified School District, which serves mostly Artesia and Cerritos, sports, arts and after-school programs - currently unscathed by $30 million in cuts in recent years - will be pared.

A South Bay schools superintendent who attracted scrutiny for his $674,559 pay was placed on administrative leave this week, pending an internal investigation. The Centinela Valley Union High School District board voted 5-0 to suspend Supt. Jose Fernandez during an abruptly called, closed-door meeting at the Centinela Valley Center for the Arts in Lawndale on Wednesday evening. Fernandez's earnings last year surpassed the compensation of those leading the nation's largest school systems.

One of the best school superintendents in the nation will retire on June 30 (Times, May 13). John Pulice has been an absolute blessing to the Santa Fe Springs and Norwalk communities during his 36 years with the Little Lake School District. I have had the privilege of working with John closely during the past 13 years. Even during these difficult times for schools and and government agencies in general, he has never lost his sense of humor or his contagious optimism. Every problem is an opportunity to John and he always has time to listen to a new idea.

The Steubenville School Superintendent was among four adults charged by a grand jury that investigated the case of a 16-year-old West Virginia girl who was raped last year by football players at a party in Ohio. The indictments, a mixture of felony and misdemeanor charges, were made by the grand jury last week and announced on Monday by Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine at a news conference televised from Steubenville. With the announcement, the grand jury has completed its investigation, he said.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed a bill that will penalize school superintendents who fail to report to the state when teachers are disciplined or fired for misconduct. The measure was a response to a sex abuse scandal in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Other measures Brown approved - 55 in all - are aimed at providing the public with more information on local government actions and at protecting animals. The bills take effect Jan. 1. The school bill requires superintendents to report actions against instructors to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing within 30 days.

Two Orange County school superintendents are among 100 "outstanding school executives" in the United States and Canada profiled in the February issue of The Executive Editor, a magazine for school professionals. The magazine included Maurice A. Ross, superintendent of Tustin Unified School District, and John Nicoll, superintendent of Newport-Mesa Unified School District, in the publication's annual listing of "100 of North America's best and brightest school executives."

It wasn't a huge flap on the political Richter scale. But it was enough to bring half a dozen of Ventura County's school superintendents out to the Marie Callender's restaurant in Camarillo on Friday for a breakfast face-off with Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard). At issue was a letter printed on Takasugi's 37th District letterhead that was sent last month to about 200 county households.

Four thousand educators convened last week on a mission to bridge the achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their white peers. They were called to Sacramento by state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell not only to learn the strategies used by schools that are successfully narrowing the gap but to determine exactly how -- not whether -- California schools under-serve students of color.

In Room 120-South of Campbell County High School, Andy Bray launched a campaign two years ago against his Spanish teacher, Fran Cook. He yelled. Red-faced and clench-jawed, he furiously snapped pencils in two. Asked to use a vocabulary word in a sentence, he chose matar --to murder--and said he'd "kill the cook." There was never a lull in his behavior. But on the second floor of the Campbell County Courthouse last month, Senora Cocina-- as her classes call her--got the last word.

The Orange County Department of Education is again under fire. One of the county's biggest but least-known bureaucracies, the department for years has been assailed by grand juries that recently have gone so far as to call for its abolition. School superintendents in Orange County characterize the department as irrelevant, its operations "archaic" and its leadership outdated. One, who wouldn't let his name be used, said the department "isn't worth a damn, and our district doesn't need it.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed a bill that will penalize school superintendents who fail to report to the state when teachers are disciplined or fired for misconduct. The measure was a response to a sex abuse scandal in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Other measures Brown approved - 55 in all - are aimed at providing the public with more information on local government actions and at protecting animals. The bills take effect Jan. 1. The school bill requires superintendents to report actions against instructors to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing within 30 days.

Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy isn't on the ballot Tuesday, but you'd hardly know it, based on the undercurrent of the school board election. A coalition of local organizations, wealthy donors and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have decided that the election is all about keeping Deasy on the job and accelerating the aggressive policies he's putting into place. This group has come together for the campaign through a political action committee called the Coalition for School Reform.

In the wake of this week's passage of a state tax measure, Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy said Friday he will ask the Board of Education to restore a full 180-day academic calendar and rescind all planned employee furlough days for the current school year. The success of Proposition 30 on Tuesday means that school district budgets across the state are protected from $5.4 billion in cuts that had been scheduled to take effect. Teachers union officials had called on the L.A. Unified School District to restore full pay for employees and to bring back a full school year.

As children peered at them through an elementary school fence in Cerritos on Friday, about a dozen school superintendents explained the consequences they will face if California voters fail to approve Proposition 30. In Whittier Union High School District, class sizes - some already exceeding 40 students - will continue to grow. In Inglewood Unified School District, a $30-million deficit will double and the current school year will immediately be shortened by four weeks. In ABC Unified School District, which serves mostly Artesia and Cerritos, sports, arts and after-school programs - currently unscathed by $30 million in cuts in recent years - will be pared.

Tucson's Mexican American studies program violates state law, an Arizona administrative law judge ruled Tuesday, paving the way for the program's possible demise. Judge Lewis D. Kowal affirmed a prior decision by the state's schools chief that the Tucson Unified School District's program violates a new law prohibiting divisive ethnic-studies classes. John Huppenthal, the state superintendent of public instruction, had deemed the program in violation in June. Among other things, the law bans classes primarily designed for a particular ethnic group or that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

Arizona's public schools chief had heard unsettling reports about what was being taught in the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American studies program and decided to see for himself. As he sat in on a Chicano literature class, Supt. John Huppenthal noticed an image of Che Guevera hanging on a wall and listened to a lecturer cast Benjamin Franklin as a racist. And though teacher Curtis Acosta did not directly portray Mexican Americans as an oppressed minority, he discussed educational theorist Paulo Freire and his "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," which the Tucson High Magnet School students used as a textbook.

The Antelope Valley's troubled high school district is starting the new year with a lot of new faces confronting familiar old problems that are fallout from last year's $12-million budget shortfall, an ousted superintendent and about 170 eliminated jobs. Supt.

Times reporters are developing an irritating habit of accepting at face value assertions made by the people they interview. How else to explain in the story "Many in Valley Back No. 2 for No. 1 Job" (May 12) the statement made by Diana Dixon-Davis, "We've never had a woman superintendent, and if you're looking for who's been left out the longest, it's the women." Obviously Dixon-Davis has never heard of Supt. Susan Miller Dorsey, after whom Dorsey High School was named. Just the facts ma'am.

Los Angeles schools will remove high-sugar chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk from their lunch and breakfast menus after food activists campaigned for the change, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced this week. Deasy revealed his intent, which will require approval by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, during an appearance with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Tuesday night. The policy change is part of a carefully negotiated happy ending between the Los Angeles Unified School District and Oliver.

The selection of John Deasy to lead the nation's second-largest school system, expected Tuesday, would give the Board of Education a leader who is eager to make sweeping changes and who has earned the respect of disparate and often warring forces in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Taking on some of the thorniest issues in the system as top deputy to Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, Deasy has worked productively with union leaders, key community activists, the mayor's office and charter school operators.