Moffett to Return as Head of Lennox School District

Kenneth L. Moffett has been rehired as superintendent of the Lennox School District after 15 tumultuous months in the top position at the much larger ABC Unified School District in Cerritos.

Lennox board President Jim Haley said the predominantly Latino, 5,000-student elementary district will be glad to get back its popular chief administrator.

Moffett said his homecoming to a district where he served for more than a decade will be a welcome relief from the pressures and controversy that he has encountered in his brief tenure as the head of the 26,000-student ABC district.

The Lennox board, in a 3-1 vote Monday night, gave Moffett a four-year contract, leaving his salary open for negotiation. He received a $69,500 annual salary in Lennox, and ABC pays him $83,000.

Return in March

Moffett, 52, is expected to complete his contract obligations at ABC and return to Lennox by March 25. He resigned from the ABC post in November after the election of a new board majority critical of his management of that district.

Several members of the Lennox board, which had hired an executive search firm in August to find a replacement for retiring Supt. Charles Shields, then contacted Moffett to see whether he was interested in returning.

Haley said the board had some difficulty reconciling the time and $16,000 in expenses already invested in the search effort, which turned up 80 candidates, with the selection of Moffett, who did not formally apply. But he said the board couldn’t have known that Moffett--who quit his ABC post the day after the deadline for applications to the Lennox job--would be available when it launched the search for Shields’ successor.

“The way it turned out,” Haley said, “it would be crazy to pick someone who doesn’t know our schools when we could get back a very fine superintendent who has already done a lot of good things for the district.”

‘Normal Channels’ Stressed

Trustee Hector Carrio, who voted against the appointment, said he has the “deepest respect and regard” for Moffett, but believes the new superintendent should have been selected through “normal channels.” Carmen Martinez, a new member of the board, abstained from voting.

Ernesto Nevarez, a Wilmington activist and former Lennox resident, was the only member of the audience to speak against Moffett’s appointment at the board meeting.

In a telephone interview, Moffett said controversies in the ABC district kept him so busy that he didn’t have enough time to work on the educational reforms he had in mind when he moved there in August, 1986.

“I certainly don’t feel that the new board is against me, and the staff and teachers here are just wonderful,” he said. “But if I had decided to stay, we would have to start over on the problems and that’s not how I want to spend my time.”

He said long hours at the district office and commuting time from his home in Manhattan Beach also left him with little time for his family.

Controversies at ABC included a grand jury investigation on alleged financial improprieties. The investigation was requested by four parents, including two of the new board members. The grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing or mismanagement. Other controversies included accusations that one high school got preferential treatment by district officials, the shredding of a teacher-student newsletter by a high school principal and disputes over budget cuts and the disposition of surplus school property.

Moffett was first appointed superintendent of the Lennox district in 1976, after 10 years as a teacher and administrator in the Inglewood school system. In that period, Lennox was changing rapidly from a white, blue-collar town into a predominantly immigrant community.

Moffett is credited with establishing tight discipline on the Lennox campuses, recruiting a staff of highly motivated teachers and administrators and introducing new teaching programs that were praised by county and state officials.

He was also a prime mover in a district rebuilding and expansion program, which included the acquisition of an intermediate campus and the construction of a new school.