Britton to Quit as School Superintendent

Leonard Britton, superintendent of the beleaguered Los Angeles Unified School District, stunned district officials on Thursday by announcing he will leave when his contract expires next June.

His written statement that he “would like to consider other professional opportunities” means the district must search for a new superintendent at a particularly difficult time.

School officials are facing such problems as low student achievement, overcrowding and increasing proportions of low-income students and those struggling to learn English. And the district is trying to reorganize in response to a worsening financial crunch, planning to have all its 600-plus schools in year-round operation by next summer and shifting to an ambitious school-based management system of giving campuses more autonomy.

“I believe I have had a positive influence on a number of important district initiatives,” Britton said in a letter to Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg.

Britton, 59, came to Los Angeles in 1987 after the board had spent a year looking for a new superintendent. Goldberg said she has scheduled a closed-door session of the board on Monday to discuss the situation but, like some other board members, declined comment until then.

Thursday’s announcement caught many district officials by surprise.

“Everybody’s kind of stunned,” Eva Hain, a district spokeswoman, said.

Some people speculated that Britton’s announcement a year in advance will handicap the district.

“It’s hard to believe the district will get the kind of strong, committed leadership we’ll need” with a lame-duck superintendent, said Helen Bernstein, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, which has clashed with the superintendent.

While declining to comment on Britton’s effectiveness, Bernstein said it would have been better if he had either held off on his announcement or decided to leave immediately.

But veteran board member Roberta Weintraub, a strong Britton supporter, disagreed.

“I think he’ll be absolutely devoted to solving the problems in the best way,” Weintraub said. He’s a very proud man, and he wants to leave the district with a good record.”

Although Britton, who earns $164,555 a year, has experienced some rocky times since coming from the Dade County, Fla., school system to head the nation’s second-largest district, said in an interview that he was not being forced out.

“There have been some philosophical differences and some concerns expressed from time to time from two of the board members, but no one has come forth and said they wanted to make a change,” Britton said.

“This is a decision I made on my own. I have been thinking about it for about six months.”

Britton said he has nothing specific in mind but is interested in approaching education issues from a state or national perspective. He said he is particularly interested in business involvement in the schools and in better use of technology in education.

While citing such programs as school-based management and a bilingual master plan among the achievements of his tenure, he acknowledged he has been increasingly frustrated by the district’s overwhelming problems and by the state’s failure to provide schools with the money and other resources needed at a time of explosive growth and changes in the population.

“I have found myself so immersed in working on all the problems that I can’t seem to get enough time to work on solutions,” Britton said. “You can’t be remodeling the front room and the bedrooms and the bathroom when there are flames pouring out of the kitchen.”

Britton said he was also handicapped from the start by having to “depend on people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. I didn’t know who I could count on.”

His two top deputies are both longtime district administrators who had been passed over in favor of Britton.

There was some speculation among district employees as to whether Britton’s contract, which runs to June 30, 1991, would have been renewed. Originally due to expire last month, the contract was extended by the board for one year in a show of support after last year’s strike by teachers ended.

In recent months he found himself under fire from board members more often, as some--most often Rita Walters and Leticia Quezada--took to publicly upbraiding him at board meetings on issues ranging from budget cuts to year-round schools.

Other board members, however, had said privately that the majority still supported Britton.

The first outsider in nearly 40 years to head the district, Britton arrived with a strong reputation from Miami, where he had served as an administrator for about 20 years, including seven as superintendent.

There, in a district about one-third the size of Los Angeles, he faced many of the same problems he would confront in Los Angeles. But while he earned high marks in Dade County as a conciliator and innovator, he failed to win those kinds of accolades in Los Angeles.

In Dade, he had inherited the top spot when the former superintendent went on trial for allegedly using district funds to furnish his summer home on the Florida coast.

Britton “was a calming influence” in the district, recalled Dade County’s Associate Supt. James Fleming. He won the cooperation of the business community, helped initiate one of the nation’s first experiments in school restructuring, and supervised the integration of more than 15,000 new Cuban students, brought over in the Mariel boatlifts, Fleming said.

“He was very good for education in Dade County and he cared very deeply about the children,” Fleming said. “I’m surprised to hear he’s leaving Los Angeles.”