At Home on the Range With Romer

Roy Romer is perched on the seat of a 100cc Honda dirt bike, snaking down a mountain trail high in the front range of the Rockies. He is 77, the superintendent of Los Angeles schools, a former three-term governor of Colorado, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a man who has rubbed shoulders with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and knocked elbows with Antonio Villaraigosa, and at the moment he is revving downhill helmet-free, looking a bit like a circus bear on a bicycle.

It has been a good morning, mostly. Romer has tracked down a herd of wayward cattle and has managed to slash his hand on jagged metal while cleaning out a culvert. (“I’m fine,” he insists impatiently as blood streams down his hand and trickles onto the ground.)

Now, chores done, he is heading across his 900-acre ranch to the main house -- not to bandage his cut, not to admire the floor-to-ceiling views of the Rockies, but to pore restlessly through books and old papers until lunch.

“The thing is,” he says during a break in a stand of pine and aspen, “when I retire from L.A., I can’t just come and sit here. It doesn’t cultivate the mind enough. I need to have ideas and action to keep my life interesting, and I run out of ideas and action up here.”

A little more than six years ago, Romer came to this ranch and convened a family meeting around the big dining room table. His last term as governor was over and he had just returned home from Los Angeles, where he had run, more or less successfully, the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

During his L.A. sojourn, philanthropist and power broker Eli Broad had made a suggestion. Rather than retire to his mountain or take some cushy university post -- Romer had been talking to Harvard, among other institutions -- he could take a job that was practically synonymous with futility: He could run the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the most dysfunctional public institutions in America.

Here was a district that had proven itself incapable of so basic a task as building a high school. Academic achievement was dismal, and superintendents tended to get chewed up and spit out.

So, Romer wanted to know, what did his family think?

The family had been through this before, voting on whether he should take the Democratic National Committee job. That vote was 8-1 against, but since Romer himself cast the one “yes” vote, there was never really any question about the outcome. By now, the family knew better. With Romer, his wife, Bea, and their seven children taking part, the vote was 6-3 in favor, although, said son-in-law Tim Ammons, “we all did kind of think he was nuts to take it.”

The time for another Romer family council is drawing near. Sometime in the next few weeks, Romer will leave his job in Los Angeles, after which he will move on to the next, and perhaps last, major phase of his working life.

He will leave a few enemies, as well as critics who believe that he failed to cultivate ties with the community and its leaders, moved too slowly to improve student achievement in high schools and was too much of a “top down” manager. But Romer has also won over some of his sharpest detractors and earned widespread praise for building dozens of new schools and dramatically raising student achievement in elementary schools.

“I would say the only superintendent who could claim as measurable accomplishments as Roy has would be Harry Handler, and that’s more than 20 years ago,” said former school board member Caprice Young, who said she was “extremely” skeptical of Romer when he was hired.

Romer says he’s not sure yet what he will do next. He recently tested the education speaking circuit and found it wasn’t for him. “I said, ‘Romer, there’s got to be more to life than this.’ ”

*

It is a Friday afternoon, and as he has done many times in the last six years at his own expense, he is heading home to Colorado for the weekend. With him is his wife, who normally divides her time equally between Venice, where they have a beachside apartment, and their home in Denver.

The departure gate at Los Angeles International Airport is crowded, but nobody appears to recognize the broad-shouldered man with the squared-off face who may be the most powerful unelected political leader in California.

It is a different story after the plane lands at Denver International Airport. As Romer walks through the sleek terminal, which he helped build, several people recognize him. One startled man drops the cellphone from his ear. “Hi, governor!” he says. Romer, clearly delighted, smiles and waves.

“This,” he says, “is the difference for me between L.A. and here.”

There’s a Rodney Dangerfield aspect to the way Romer talks about his time in Los Angeles. Being superintendent, he says, taught him that rarest of qualities in a politician, humility. On his way to breakfast the day after landing in Denver, he ruminated on the strange career path of a governor becoming a school superintendent.

As governor, “You’d run every four years and you’d get elected, and then you really would have the authority to do what you needed to do,” he said. “In L.A. ... “ He paused. “Have you seen the school board?”

Romer’s relationship with the board has clearly been among his greatest frustrations. Driving out of town after breakfast, he continues. “The board members are quite active and strong-minded people, which is good,” he says, “but we have some large differences.”

That may be the best possible spin he could put on it. Romer has clashed with the board over some of his biggest initiatives, including his widely praised school construction program (he pushed a skittish board into floating a fourth construction bond last November) and over the pace of the district’s efforts to create small academies within large high schools (board members accused him of going too slowly and micromanaging the process). Board members have accused him of acting without their consent on occasion, or simply ignoring directives with which he disagreed.

Former school board member Jose Huizar, now a Los Angeles city councilman, recalled an incident in which Romer shifted $20 million in district funds to repair and clean school bathrooms. “The board members were caught by surprise,” Huizar said. They weren’t happy about it.

Another former board member, Genethia Hayes, who was instrumental in hiring Romer, said: “I think his relationship with the board was not good, and has gotten worse over time.”

She blamed the tension primarily on Romer’s increasingly adversarial relationship with the teachers union, which has close ties to several board members. But Romer also angered some board members early in his tenure when he negotiated a 15% pay and benefit package with the union; there were charges that it was irresponsible given the district’s fiscal state.

Others say the problem was simply that Romer wanted to be in charge, not to defer to a board.

“It was very frustrating,” said Young, the former board member, “because we really wanted to be his supporters and partners, and a lot of times it felt like his attitude was, ‘Just get out of my way.’ Since he had never reported to a board in his life before, it was a new thing for him, having seven bosses. And it’s hard for anybody to do that. In his defense, we weren’t so easy ourselves.”

The 45-mile drive from Denver to his ranch is a nostalgia trip for Romer. First, he slowly passes the Colorado governor’s mansion, fondly noting that he “raised a family there.” As the road begins to climb, he points out Bandimere Speedway, a drag strip for which, he says, he helped obtain financing. Farther up the highway, he points toward a group of housing developments he built after losing a campaign for U.S. Senate in 1965.

Not long before reaching the ranch, Romer spots yet another throwback to his entrepreneurial days: a gas station he had once run.

“I keep having these serial lives,” he had said earlier. In addition to the jobs mentioned above, Romer has owned and operated a large John Deere dealership (which he still co-owns with a son), owned and operated a flight school, practiced law, run a ski resort and managed a family farm.

“I like to work where you can see what you’ve done at the end of the day,” he says.

*

Now he’s turning onto his ranch road, passing over Deer Creek. “I put in that culvert,” he says, proudly pointing. He passes a small lake he built. It has been weeks since he has been here, and he seems almost giddy to see the place. The sky is a crisp blue, and tall grass is rippling in the breeze. He pulls up behind the main house and spots his daughter and two of his grandchildren.

“We’ve got lots of work for you to do, Grandpa!” daughter Mary Ammons yells.

The ranch, which Romer has owned since 1961, is a retreat for Romer’s entire family, and what they mostly do here is work. The family gathers every August for two weeks, and typically picks one major project -- digging a drainage ditch, fixing up an old building -- to accomplish during the “vacation.”

Within a few minutes of arriving, Romer is busy tracking down cattle and moving salt licks, giving him a chance to survey the ranch. Then, bleeding hand and all, he heads inside.

Romer, who once famously met Martha Stewart without having the faintest idea who she was, sounds a bit like her when he describes his house -- it blends “New England-style simplicity with mountain ranch authenticity.” He is especially proud of the library, which features hand-crafted English walnut shelves, a big leather couch and a book collection that reflects his wide-ranging interests. Plopping on the floor, he scans a lower shelf in a section devoted to theology.

Romer grew up on a farm in eastern Colorado, studied agricultural economics at Colorado State University and received a law degree from the University of Colorado. But he wrestled with questions of belief, and decided to enroll at Yale Divinity School. There, he said, he stretched his mind beyond the rigors of law school.

He pulls a slim volume down from a shelf. It is “I and Thou,” the seminal work by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Romer, who was raised Presbyterian, says: “It is the book that has had more impact on my life and thinking than anything else.”

Dense, at times opaque, “I and Thou” concerns the way people relate to each other and to God -- either as “it,” an object, or as “thou.” It is only in the latter relationship that people are open to truly understanding others. God is the “Eternal Thou.”

This may explain Romer’s intensity in dealing with other people (even when, as is frequently the case, he forgets their names). God is another matter -- Romer concedes that he is, reluctantly, an agnostic. “Unfortunately, I didn’t end up as an easy believer,” he says. “I’m a restless soul, and I’m not happy about that -- that’s just who I am.”

He shuffles down the rows of books, pointing to favorites. “Anna Karenina,” Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.” A biography of Lincoln, his favorite historical figure. Novels by some of his favorite authors -- Larry McMurtry, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ernest Hemingway.

Hayes, the former school board president, says of Romer, “He is what one would call an anomaly, because he really is a public intellectual. This is a guy who really did want to have some moral and ethical compasses in his life.”

From the library, Romer migrates to a basement closet filled with 30 file cabinets. They contain papers from most of his careers; there is even one devoted to his college papers. Reaching into one drawer, he pulls out a brown, spiral-bound notebook. “I have not read this thing in 50 years,” he says. In fact, it has been 58 years -- the notebook turns out to be a journal of a trip he and a friend took to Europe in 1948, after his sophomore year in college.

He opens it and reads aloud: “For the last two days I’ve been groping for a way to take advantage of time spent with people. A mood in which I can enjoy every person as a person.”

He looks up and crows: “This is Buber, absolutely Buber, and I hadn’t even read Buber yet!”

Handing the notebook to a reporter, he urges him to take it home and read it. “I think you’ll see consistency here,” he says. He adds, sotto voce: “I’ll trust you not to mention any embarrassing stuff. I mean, this is before I was married.”

There is nothing remotely scandalous in the journal. If anything, Romer comes across as a bit of a prude, discoursing on his opposition to premarital sex. (He does not address extra-marital sex, an issue he would confront later in life, when, as governor, he confessed to a long relationship with a female aide.) The notebook does reveal the same restless spirit, an abiding interest in agriculture and an age-appropriate earnestness. “Today we bought a copy of Will Durant’s ‘The Story of Philosophy,’ ” he writes in Holland. “It ought to prove interesting and educational.”

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the notebook is that he would hand it over to a reporter without vetting the contents. (Aides were horrified when he told them later.) Romer may have the ego of a politician -- he rarely seems happy when he isn’t the center of attention -- but he lacks the shrink-wrapped shield that surrounds many people in public life.

He muses about whether he should move to his ranch and write a book. He likes the idea, in theory, but isn’t sure he could stand the monastic aspect of it. He wants to travel, studying what other countries are doing about education. The precise contours are vague. Mainly, he wants to be busy and to be heard.

Climbing the stairs, he enters the large room that serves as kitchen, dining room and living room, and daughter Mary enters the conversation. “I would like him back in Denver, so I can see him and talk to him,” she says. “But I don’t know if Denver is going to offer enough challenges, enough that’s interesting.” Still, she takes a stab at trying to persuade him to come back to the ranch and write. “The journey always comes back home,” she tells him. “Isn’t that Ulysses? Didn’t he come back home?”

At lunch, he introduces the elephant in the room: his relationship with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “He’s just been relentless in attacking the district,” he tells his daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law. “I’m the general, and I can’t allow the troops to get attacked like that. The district is just aching about this attack, and I had to defend it, and defend it vigorously.”

Just before this trip, he had delivered his annual state of the district speech, during which he compared Villaraigosa’s constant criticism to U.S. propaganda that was used to defend the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. Within hours, Japanese American supporters of Villaraigosa attacked Romer for what they characterized as an inappropriate and insensitive comparison.

Although Romer argues that he was misunderstood, perhaps intentionally, he clearly admires the political skill behind it.

“He is a very appealing personality,” he said of Villaraigosa in an interview last spring. “I have to give it to him. He has got determination and verve.”

On the drive to the ranch, Romer had brought up the issue again, saying that he had an “open mind” about mayoral control initially but felt that he had to follow the lead of the Board of Education, which opposed it. “Then the mayor began to criticize the district so harshly and consistently that it forced me to be the defender.”

Given his mixed feelings about the school board, would Romer have been happier reporting to a mayor? Romer won’t say. The closest he’ll come is calling Chicago’s system of mayoral control “a beautiful deal.” Others believe the answer is yes.

“While he was there, having to work for a board, he couldn’t come out and say, ‘I wish you people were gone, I’d rather work for the mayor,’ ” said Broad, the civic leader and philanthropist. “But I would guess he’d rather work for a strong mayor than for the school board.”

*

Back in Denver the next day, Romer is up early to hold a campaign breakfast for volunteers in the state Senate campaign of his son, Chris (who won the race in August). Sitting beside a gurgling fountain in his backyard, Romer talks about the most persistent criticism of his tenure -- that he doesn’t understand Los Angeles, and especially not brown and black Los Angeles.

It is a complaint most forcefully expressed by Huizar, the former school board president.

In an interview, Huizar stressed that he admires Romer as a strong leader who deeply cares about educating children, and thinks he should get credit for the school construction program. That’s about as far as his praise goes. “I don’t think he understood the city,” Huizar said, “and I don’t think he understood the needs of the children.”

In particular, he said, Romer “felt uncomfortable around low-income parents,” especially those who don’t speak English.

“Roy sort of never picked up race in L.A.,” board member David Tokofsky said. As an example, he noted that the superintendent persisted in using the term “Hispanic” instead of “Latino,” which is generally preferred in Southern California.

Romer says he worked hard to understand Los Angeles, reading widely about its history and meeting with all sorts of people to learn their stories.

“When people say, ‘You don’t know L.A.’, it’s a puzzlement to me,” he says. “I think all of us have difficulty understanding the totality of the culture in L.A.” Anyway, he says, does it always matter? “When you’re trying to get kids competent in core subjects, there’s some of that history that’s not relevant.”

The idea of Romer being racially insensitive reached a head last January, when board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte introduced a resolution criticizing him for failing to promote African American administrators.

The resolution, which passed, infuriated Romer. Now, sitting in his backyard, he says, “In L.A., they don’t know who I am! You know, I marched from Selma to Montgomery,” referring to the civil rights marches of the early 1960s. And yet, he says, “they accused me of being a racist.”

LaMotte, who represents the most heavily African American areas of the city, said she never meant to suggest that Romer was a racist. She added that while she had “many confrontations” with Romer early on, “I do respect the fact that he did listen, and began effecting change long before the mayoral takeover started. I have grown to respect him as an educator and a leader.”

*

So what will be Romer’s legacy?

Even some of his harshest critics say his signature accomplishment was pushing through and overseeing a $19-billion school construction program that has been called the largest public works project in the United States. Romer opened 65 schools in a district that hadn’t seen a school built in three decades. An additional 85 or so are in various stages of planning or construction.

But Romer sees his true legacy in improving the level of teaching through adoption of “standards-based” curriculums such as Open Court, the elementary school reading program, and raising the standards that schools aim to meet.

“What really improves instruction in the classroom is the very core of our business,” he says. “What we’ve done with the [standardized test] scores in L.A. is very significant.”

Romer believes that a common curriculum in all schools is critically important, especially in a district such as Los Angeles Unified, where students frequently change schools. “It’s just elementary for us if we’re going to raise everybody to a much higher level of performance,” he says. “We can have a lot of freedom in how you teach it. Nobody’s going to be in lock-step, nobody’s going to be scripted.”

But that is the criticism by the teachers union and some outside observers.

“Roy is a big believer in the scripted teaching methods, because they accomplish what he needs to accomplish from a superintendent’s perspective -- to raise test scores,” said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. “From our perspective, test scores are a phony gage of whether public education is successful or not.”

William Ouchi, a UCLA professor and author of “Making Schools Work,” said that despite having been governor of Colorado, Romer was not prepared to run an organization as large and complex as L.A. Unified. And he faulted him for a “top-down” approach to curriculum.

Still, he said: “The best thing about Roy is that he has a huge heart, and it’s clear that he really cares about kids, he really cares about their education. He was not in this for political advancement, for self aggrandizement. It became very clear that he’s a very genuine, sincere guy. And I forgive a whole lot for anyone who has that commitment.”

Romer, for his part, has begun to talk about how much he’ll miss a job he calls the most difficult he has ever undertaken.

“It is exhilarating to go to work every Monday knowing that you are going to make decisions hourly that are going to affect the lives of thousands of children. That’s exhilarating, joyful work.... That’s something I truly will miss.”

After the Denver campaign breakfast, Romer decides that he and his wife should join the high school and college-age volunteers and go door-to-door dropping off his son’s campaign leaflets. Bea argues that she’s done her part by serving breakfast, but Romer needs to do something. So for the next two hours, the former governor of Colorado hits the pavement and leaves pamphlets dangling from the doorknobs of 59 houses spread over several square miles.

Afterward, they repair to a favorite Thai restaurant not far from their home. There, Romer begins to talk about a dream he had the night before.

He is in charge of a crew assigned to assemble an airplane, in competition with other crews, all of whom had been given huge crates of airplane parts. When they finish, they are to fly the planes somewhere -- it isn’t clear where.

Romer’s crew nearly finishes building its plane, but two parts don’t connect properly. No matter what they do, they can’t get them to fit.

A supervisor in charge of the entire competition walks by. “Just jam them together,” he says.

Romer thinks: This is an airplane. This could be dangerous. Should he let his crew follow the advice and risk crashing? At what point, he wonders, does his sense of right and wrong trump his loyalty to a system?

The answer? He’ll never know. He awoke before having to make a decision.

Romer isn’t sure what to make of the dream, but it seems to weigh on him.

Soon enough, it’ll be someone else’s nightmare.

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com

Times staff writer Joel Rubin contributed this report.