Parents Doing Their Homework in Campaign to Regain Principal

Sheila Miller was panic-stricken over her daughter’s disappearance and she recalled the school principal saying parents could phone him at home anytime they had a problem.

Her 12-year-old daughter had failed to meet her at a local park following a school play one weekend, so Miller called Gerald E. Horowitz, the principal of Robert Frost Junior High School in Granada Hills. Horowitz immediately joined the search for the girl, who eventually was found waiting for her mother on the other side of the park.

Such favorable stories of Horowitz’s accessibility and involvement with students are common among parents who are protesting his transfer to Byrd Junior High School in Sun Valley amid charges that it was politically motivated. While others dispute Horowitz’s record as an administrator, one thing seems certain: parents have mounted an unusually well-organized campaign to get him reinstated, school district officials said.

“Other schools and communities get upset with administrative assignments,” said Ruben Zacarias, associate superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “But it’s not usual for them to be this sophisticated.”

Horowitz’s supporters have organized a rally tonight at 8 at Wilkinson Center in Northridge. More than 1,000 families have been mailed flyers announcing the meeting, and the local Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. has chartered a bus to transport parents of students who live outside the San Fernando Valley.

Like many who helped organize the rally, Miller said she does not buy the school district’s explanation for the transfer.

“They told us he’s needed at the other school, but we need him more at Frost,” Miller said. “What they’re doing doesn’t make any sense.”

Tony Rivas, superintendent of the school district region that includes Frost, said he and other administrators decided to transfer Horowitz, who has been at Frost since 1978, after Virginia Holt, Byrd’s former principal, was promoted to serve as head of Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley. He said three of the 15 junior high school principals in his region also are being transferred.

Horowitz could not be reached for comment because he has been out of town. However, several people, including Sandra Zien, co-president of Frost’s Parent-Teacher-Student Assn., said Horowitz has told them he would prefer to stay at Frost.

But Rivas said “administrative transfers come with the territory--you go where you are needed when you work for the district.” He said Byrd needs an experienced administrator, such as Horowitz, because of the character of its student body.

“It’s not a middle-class school,” Rivas said. “Although the principal there got the school moving and started to develop school spirit, I think Gerry will go in and develop the same sort of enthusiasm he did at Frost.”

Many parents believe that Horowitz’s transfer was arranged by Julie Korenstein, the West San Fernando Valley representative on the school board, in retaliation for his support of Barbara Romey, Korenstein’s key opponent in last year’s election.

Vendetta Denied

Korenstein and district officials vehemently denied that she had any influence on the decision.

“This is not a personal vendetta,” Korenstein said. “If anyone is politicizing this administrative decision, it is they.”

Korenstein said Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson has contacted her about bringing a motion before the board to have Horowitz reinstated at Robert Frost Junior High School. But she said it would be inappropriate for school board members, who are elected to set policy, to interfere in administrative matters.

Bernson, who supported Romey in the last election, got involved in the reinstatement effort at the behest of parents who flooded his office with phone calls, said Greig Smith, the councilman’s chief deputy.

Korenstein’s position may cost her votes in April’s school board election. Sherri Goldsmith, co-president of Frost’s PTSA, said she voted for Korenstein in 1987, but has become disheartened by Korenstein’s unresponsiveness to the community. Other parents threatened to mount a recall campaign against Korenstein.

Union Grievances

But not everyone is dissatisfied with Horowitz’s transfer. Cathy Carey, a spokeswoman for United Teachers-Los Angeles, said teachers have filed about six grievances per year against Horowitz with the union since 1978 when he began working at Frost.

“The only thing we can figure out is he has the need to control everyone on campus,” Carey said. “He is known as someone who will transfer someone who is active in the union or who does not agree with him in one way, shape or form.”

Goldsmith said parents admire Horowitz precisely because he has been a strict disciplinarian, and because he maintained high academic standards while the school dealt with the challenge of desegregation, which occurred at Frost in the late ‘70s and early 1980s.

In fall of 1975, the school had 1,742 students, 1,578 of whom were white, according to Floraline Stevens, director of program evaluation and assessment for the district. By 1980, when a court-ordered, mandatory desegregation plan was in effect, enrollment had dropped to 758, of whom 398 were white, Stevens said.

Enrollment dropped because some students were bused to Millikan Junior High School in Sherman Oaks, said Eva Hain, a spokesman for the school district. But many parents reacted to the desegregation program by putting their children in private schools, she said.

“There absolutely was white flight, but Gerry totally changed the attitude of the parents by saying, ‘I’m the boss. This school is not going to be sloppy, there won’t be any drugs here,’ ” said Harriet Oppenheim, a Granada Hills resident whose daughter was in junior high at the time.

Frost’s eighth-grade students have consistently scored above the district average on state exams designed to test proficiency in reading, writing and math, Hain said.

In fall of 1987, about 600 of Frost’s 1,400 students were white. About 700 students were bused in from as far away as San Pedro and as nearby as San Fernando, said Ana Campa, coordinator of Frost’s voluntary busing program.

Campa said she has received dozens of phone calls in the past two weeks from parents who want to see Horowitz reinstated.

“They’re calling me day and night,” Campa said. “They like the way Dr. Horowitz cares for their children, and they are afraid they will be lost without him.”

Horowitz has been replaced at Frost by Jay E. Peterman, former principal of Columbus Junior High School in Canoga Park. Peterman, 57, has been in Europe for the past month and has no idea he has been transferred, said his 23-year-old son, Jay Peterman Jr.