Mario D. Fantini; Former Education Dean

Mario D. Fantini, 63, former dean of the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Fantini, a Woodland Hills resident, earned recognition as the architect of school decentralization in New York City in the 1960s and also helped decentralize schools in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The author of 15 books and an advocate of educational reform, he favored community participation and alternative schools. Born in Philadelphia, he attended Temple University, earning degrees before moving on to Harvard University, where he was awarded a doctorate in education. In 1965, he became program officer at the Ford Foundation Fund for the Advancement of Education. In 1970, he became dean of the faculty of education at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Six years later he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, where he remained until illness prompted his resignation in September, 1987. In Woodland Hills on Friday of cancer.