Principal and Bureaucracy
Jay Mathews (“A Superior Principal Is Lost,” Op-Ed Page, Jan. 4) praised the efforts of Henry Gradillas, the former principal of Garfield High, and expressed dismay that the Los Angeles Unified School District did not use Gradillas’ skills as extensively as possible to improve the district. Apparently, the head of the district’s new school-based management project found Gradillas’ “too confrontational.”
Just as most fighter pilots have more similarities than differences, so do school district administrators. They place a high premium on keeping waters calm and can disburse oil on water faster than an oil tanker with a double rupture.
When people like Gradillas, fed up with the education mess, bail out and make it big in a different business they’ll remember they knew him when. They’ll hire him as a consultant to tell them what’s wrong with them, pay him big bucks and then have a new program to do what he would have told them at his regular rate of pay.
Consultant pay is the best revenge. Sock it to them, Henry.
BRUCE C. DAVIS
Principal, Emerson School
Rosemead
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