New Chief of Compton’s Schools Spells Out Goals

J.L. Handy, the former assistant superintendent of Sacramento schools who was named last week to head Compton schools, says he gets up at 5 a.m. every day and goes to bed only after his work is done.

Those who know the 50-year-old educator say he has a reputation for doing his homework.

Handy figures to have plenty of both--long hours and homework--as superintendent of the troubled Compton Unified School District.

Three days after he officially takes over Sept. 1, Handy must present the district’s trustees with a budget. The district was forced to lay off employees in the last school year to balance the budget.

Classes start Sept. 11, and the district’s approximately 1,000 teachers are without a contract. Several teachers stayed away from school at times last year to protest the lack of a contract.

School buildings that house the district’s 26,000 students are crumbling. The portable classrooms that house most of the students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School were in such poor shape that they were demolished. New portable classrooms must be set up and ready to receive 700 students.

The district’s report card spells failure. Compton schools rank in the first percentile on state achievement tests--the lowest possible ranking.

Latino leaders have criticized the board for selecting Handy rather than Acting Supt. Elisa L. Sanchez. When Handy takes over his $100,000-a-year post, Sanchez will resume her old job as deputy superintendent.

If any of these items trouble Handy, he is not letting it show. What some people see as negatives for the school district, he describes as challenges.

“We’re looking at redoing buildings, we’re looking at raising test scores, we’re looking at changing dropout rates,” he said in a brief interview Monday afternoon.

He said he hopes to bridge the gap between the black-controlled district and its growing Latino enrollment. A majority of Compton’s schoolchildren are Latino, while about 3% of the teachers and administrators are Latino.

Handy said districts throughout the state are attempting to adapt to rapidly changing racial patterns. “The potential is here for making this the model for (racial harmony) in California,” he added.

Dressed in a dark gray suit, white shirt and maroon pocket handkerchief to match his paisley tie, Handy sat erect in a leather wing chair surrounded by bare walls in the blue-carpeted room that will be his office.

He had spent the day meeting staff members and had already toured six school sites. “I love it,” he said of his new job.

Before moving into an educational career in his late 20s, Handy worked in the accounting department of General Motors in Detroit.

“I really just decided I wanted to get into education and help young people based on the ones I saw . . . their lack of skills.” Many were bright youngsters, he said, but their skills were not good enough to carry them through the application and interview process.

Handy received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from San Jose State College and three years ago received his Ph.D. in school management from the University of La Verne.

He joined San Jose schools as a high school social studies teacher in 1973, but moved quickly up the administrative ladder. Four years later he was an assistant high school principal in San Jose and in 1983 became a high school principal in Sacramento.

In 1988 he was named assistant superintendent in the Sacramento Unified School District, a post he held until this June, when he was reassigned as principal of a middle school.

Handy said he decided it was time to seek a superintendent’s job.

Wilson Riles, the former state superintendent of public instruction who heads the search firm that helped Compton select a superintendent, said Sacramento officials eliminated Handy’s assistant superintendent’s position to help balance the budget.

Riles said Handy was one of about 40 applicants for the Compton superintendent’s job, which opened up early this year when the former superintendent, Ted D. Kimbrough, left to head the Chicago school system.

Handy and four other finalists, including Sanchez, were interviewed. After the board vote Friday, Sanchez graciously thanked the staff for their support over the past seven months and called her interim term a “phenomenal” experience.

Trustee Kelvin D. Filer said Handy was impressive during the interview. “He has a very dynamic presence. He knew our district, he knew our table of organization. . . . He’d read our budget. He was totally prepared,” Filer said.

Handy said he needs to take a close look at such things as the budget and the curriculum before he plots his course. But parent involvement, he said, is high on his list of priorities.

One Sacramento teacher source said Handy was bright and filled with ideas, but failed to relate to either the students or the staff. “He’s often abrupt and just abrasive,” the source said.

A former Sacramento colleague, Richard E. Stiavelli, described Handy as a “no-nonsense administrator, but I found him to be one that would listen and weigh all sides before he made a decision.”

Stiavelli, director of student support services for the Long Beach schools, was head of special education in Sacramento. He said Handy was highly receptive to new programs that Stiavelli was introducing at the time.

Handy is not one to waste time on small talk or details of his personal life. Somewhat reluctantly, he revealed that he has three grown children.

He always has played his cards close to his vest, said San Jose City Councilwoman Iola Williams, who worked with Handy in the San Jose schools.

At the time, the black population in Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, was only 4%, and the few black administrators had no support network in educational circles or the community, she recalled.

“He was one of the pioneers and that made him one of those people who had a lot of things thrown at him,” Williams said. “It was a very hurtful time and that sort of experience tends to make you pull back and think things through before you do something. . . . That accounts for a lot of his caution.”

Williams said she and Handy worked together on several committees. What she remembers best about him, she said, is that he is a “good person with good values.”