Readers React:  The school board is the boss, like it or not

To the editor: Over several decades in the Los Angeles Unified School District — serving as a teacher, principal and in several administrative assignments — I learned to appreciate the difficulty of the superintendent’s job. (“Bickering between L.A. Unified leaders won’t make schools better,” Editorial, Sept. 15)

I was fortunate to have worked closely with a number of superintendents. Some were superior, some were good and some not so much. But there was one thing all these individuals had in common: They understood that their boss was the seven-member Board of Education that hired them.

Board members can be fickle, vague, driven by external political and financial forces, uninformed in their understanding of critical issues, micromanagers, egotistical and at times even dishonest in dealing with their key employee, the superintendent.

But the one thing that all the superintendents I knew and worked for realized was that they had to work with all the board members to be successful. Being able to do that is the truest test of a superintendent’s leadership skills.

Stu Bernstein, Santa Monica

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