Escondido School District Asks Superintendent to Step Down

The superintendent of the Escondido Union High School District has been asked by the school board to quit by June 30--a year before his two-year-contract expires--because of growing disenchantment with his management style.

School board President Bruce Studebaker said the request for John Cooper to step down from the $77,000-a-year post was made “because we’re trying to resolve turmoil in the district.”

“We have employees who are not very happy,” Studebaker said. “I want good teamwork throughout the district, from top to bottom, from the board to the administration to the teachers, so we can provide education for our kids.”

The decision to ask Cooper to quit was made unanimously by the five-member school board in a closed session last month, said Trustee Jack Cherrington, board president at the time.

“The problems we were having in the district had to do with morale and the credibility of the administration,” Cherrington said. “There was no single incident that created a problem. We recognize he has been with the district a long time. His efforts have been dedicated. He’s hard-working, a taskmaster, articulate and very intelligent, and has done a lot of good for us.

“But we found in talking around to people that there was a credibility issue with his management style. Once that trust had been violated, it was very, very difficult to re-establish it. He worked with great diligence to try to overcome it, but he wasn’t succeeding, or at least not at a pace that was acceptable to us.”

Studebaker said Cooper, 46, was being criticized by employees, including rank-and-file teachers, for turning a deaf ear to their input on personnel decisions, including such issues as teacher transfers and reassignments.

“They believe decisions are being made in a vacuum, without their input,” Studebaker said. “I’m not saying that’s correct, but that’s their perception, and it’s affecting the confidence and trust we have in the district.

“If you’re perceived as a problem, then whether you really are the problem or not isn’t the issue,” he said. “There’s still a problem.”

Cooper, who has served as superintendent for 4 1/2 years, had no comment.

Cherrington and another board member, John Damelio, met with Cooper earlier this month and extended to him several options that would allow him to stay in the district in another capacity, or to leave altogether, Cherrington said.

Cooper came back to the board with a couple of resignation scenarios, but they were considered too broad by trustees, who asked him to return again with more specifics. “We’re sensitive to his professional needs,” Cherrington said.

As complaints about teacher morale mounted over the past year, discussion over Cooper’s tenure had been a poorly kept secret, but the board was at loggerheads on how to deal with the problem until November.

“There had been varying degrees of support for John, but in November we finally reached a compromise,” Cherrington said.

Trustees had hoped to keep the matter behind closed doors until the board and Cooper could mutually announce a resolution, but Cherrington and Damelio confirmed the board’s decision this week because “misinformation was being publicly provided by some of the major players,” Cherrington said.

Cherrington said the average tenure of a schools superintendent is about four years.

He said the district will honor its commitment in paying Cooper the full amount of his contract, which runs through June, 1991, although the board and the superintendent are yet to sit down and negotiate details, including whether he will be paid off and allowed to leave the district, or will work in some other capacity.

Cooper joined the district in 1981 as a personnel director and was promoted in 1983 to assistant superintendent for instructional services. He became superintendent in May, 1985, succeeding Forest Fouts, who retired.