Anton Trims Some Fat--and Makes a Hit

In his first official act as superintendent of the nation’s second-largest school district, William R. Anton on Monday announced that he will give up the bodyguard-driver assigned to some of his predecessors and send him instead to be a security officer “for a school that needs it most.”

His announcement, an acknowledgement that the bodyguard’s job had become a symbol of “administrative fat” to some critics, touched off some of the heartiest cheers of a morning filled with celebration.

Several hundred people jammed the courtyard of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s downtown headquarters to welcome the city’s first Latino schools chief since shortly after California came into the union in 1850. Mariachis played and schoolchildren chanted “Viva Anton!” The crowd--including dozens of employees and their families, former and present Board of Education members, business leaders, college presidents and the deans of education schools at UCLA, USC and Cal State Los Angeles, Anton’s alma mater--sent red, green and white balloons skyward as their new leader stepped up to the podium.

Expressing satisfaction “that a kid from the barrio of East Los Angeles can aspire and become superintendent,” Anton, 66, who got the top job just days after Leonard Britton announced plans to resign when his contract ended next year, brimmed with characteristic optimism. He told well-wishers of a Spanish saying that “has been a guiding light for me throughout my career-- Si , se puede , which roughly translates into: Yes, it can be done.”

In acknowledging the many problems that plague the district, Anton, who will earn $164,555 a year, promised that his “highest priority will be to provide the educational environment which will result in marked (improvement in) student achievement for all students of the district. That must be our highest commitment.”

Later Monday, board members heard a proposal for raising achievement test scores for the district’s 610,000 students, increasing numbers of whom struggle with limited English skills or with poverty. The test scores of many students--especially blacks and Latinos, who make up 16% and 62% of the district, respectively--have remained low, opening the district to charges that it has done little to meet their needs.

In asking the board to reassign his bodyguard--provided since the 1973 slaying of Oakland schools chief Marcus Foster--Anton offered a gesture aimed at defusing criticism, particularly from the teachers union, that the district pampered its top administrators while the schools suffered.

Calling for teamwork at every level, Anton said he would push for improved employee morale, more after-school child care with the help of community organizations, increased business involvement in the schools, improved efficiency in district organization and a unified drive for more money from the state and other sources. He also promised a more welcoming climate for parental involvement and pledged to expand the district’s plans to allow more autonomy to each school and share decision-making power among teachers, principals and parents.

“Perhaps the biggest challenge before us is the critical need to restore public confidence in our enterprise,” Anton said, calling for “aggressive and positive outreach to all segments of the community.”

Such enthusiasm, coupled with a thorough knowledge of the district honed in 38 years of climbing the ladder from elementary school teacher to second in command to superintendent, will serve the district well, one of Anton’s predecessors said.

Harry Handler, who led the district from 1981 to 1987, said his former top deputy “is one of the most outstanding educators I know. . . . He made me look good.”

But it was another, much earlier schools chief who was on the minds of some at Monday’s celebration: Latino civic leader Antonio Franco Coronel. According to historian Leonard Pitt’s book, “Decline of the Californio,” Coronel headed the schools in 1852 when they were still part of the city government of Los Angeles. Since the district was not created until 1854, Anton is listed officially as its first Latino superintendent. Years ago, Sal Castro, an activist teacher and now counselor at Belmont High School, gave Anton a portrait of Coronel, who also was a mayor of Los Angeles. That portrait has hung in Anton’s office ever since, and he said Monday it will move with him to Britton’s old office.